What is love?
When we are babies: love is attention. We can’t do anything for ourselves, and someone paying attention to us equals love to us. Our comfort, our survival depends on it.
We each “earned” the attention in different ways, and then settled on one or two ways that worked the best.
We cried for the bottle in a whiny way, suggesting to our caretaker that we are dying. Pleading, begging, modulating our cry until we got a response.
We cried for the bottle with anger, anguish, or threat. We cried to get a clean diaper. We cried to be picked up.
We also manipulated our caretakers by smiles, by reaching out to them, grabbing their fingers, maybe laugh, little manipulative signs that made them feel good, liked, maybe even loved.
Just like pets learn to push your buttons: it is all self-serving, to make us get attention and food, shelter, and petting.
