Love is an important part of life, but it is not the whole of life. A correct understanding of the essential characteristics of love and its position in life is the basis for establishing a correct view of love and the premise for young college students to steer the boat of love cautiously. Love is the strongest, stable and single-minded feeling that a man and a woman form the most sincere admiration for each other in their own hearts based on a certain objective material basis and the same ideal of life, and yearn for each other to become their lifelong partners. The essence of love is the lofty feelings between the opposite sex that combine human social attributes with human natural attributes.

Different views on love. Love is an old and often new topic in life. In the history of human cultural development, there are many immortal literary and artistic works that describe love. The Book of Songs in China, the Greek epic, the Roman myth and even the Christian Bible all have touching love stories. Many philosophers and psychologists also have their own unique views on love. Hume, an English philosopher, believes that love is caused by the combination of three impressions or emotions: beauty, sexual desire and affection. Hegel, a German philosopher, believes that there is indeed a noble quality in love, because she does not stop at sexual desire, but shows a noble and beautiful mind rich in itself, demanding unity with another person in a lively, brave and sacrificial spirit. Austrian psychologist Freud believes that sexual instinct is the most basic content of all instincts, and love is just an expression or sublimation of sexual instinct. All these understandings of love are far from scientifically revealing the nature of love. Idealists often separate the natural factors and social attributes of love. Platonic love is spiritual love. Plato praised spiritual love, despised secular love desire, led people to abstract love, and unilaterally emphasized the factors of love. Pantheonists define love by sexual instinct. Like Freud and Schopenhauer, they only emphasize sexual factors.

According to the Marxist view of love, the emotion between men and women based on sex becomes love because of human social attributes. Therefore, sincere love between men and women is not only the impulse and mutual need of natural physiological needs, but also the congenial interest and spiritual connection. All this is based on certain social and historical conditions and is subject to specific social relations, economic status and cultural background. Therefore, in essence, love is the strongest, stable and single-minded feeling that a man and a woman form the most sincere admiration for each other in their hearts based on a certain objective material basis and the same ideal of life, and yearn for each other to become their lifelong partners. The essence of love is the lofty feelings between the opposite sex that combine human social attributes with human natural attributes. If goodwill is different from love because it lacks social understanding of love, then friendship is different from love and often lacks biological attraction. Like-minded people can form noble friendship of the opposite sex.

From this, love is rich in content, which is usually composed of four elements: first, sexual desire, which is the physiological basis and natural premise of love; Second, emotion, which is the central link of love, is manifested in the strong feelings of the integration of spirit and flesh; The third is ideal, which is the social foundation of love and the rational guide of love; Fourth, obligation, which is the social requirement of love, is manifested as a conscious sense of moral responsibility. The above four elements are interrelated and indispensable, otherwise it is a broken or distorted love.