Are we ingrained with love or is it a learned trait?

Think we are ingrained with the gene to love but need to learn the trait through the love and security we are shown in our lives,especailly at a young age.

I've worked with abused children who have been so repressed and hurt they are unable to talk about their experiences. Many have never had the nuturing that most children take for granted. They need to learn gradually how to love and trust again or sometimes for the very first time in their lives.

I think that it is an instinct to love, we are built to find a partner, to mate, the cherish our families.
But I also think that upbringing can either enhance or deteriate it :)

We started as two, now we keep looking for that safe place again.

biologically speaking.. "belongingness"

ingrained..

Ingrained.

Definitely learned. I look after a child who was severely neglected for the first 3 years of his life. He wasn't shown love or afffection and even now, at the age of 8, he still struggles with physical contact and I really don't think he feels anything like true love towards the people who care for him.

Nuture over nature.

The Christians and the Hobbesians teach that man is innately evil. Locke, on the other hand, whose writings greatly influenced the founders as they wrote both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, believed man is born innately good, with a moral compass to keep him from certain actions and to point him toward love. I'd like to agree with Locke, whose writing is wonderful, but I don't.

You have to learn how to do, "Everything"!!

What You do with that knowledge And how you are after you have learned It...

Is Mostly down to You

Well, love as an ability and emotion is ingrained. It is part of your biological chemistry. When things happen, chemicals set off reactions in your body that causes feelings. It's also got to do with things that happen in your brain. It is also a learned thing to discover these tools we all have.

I am firmly against nature vs nurture or nurture over nature arguments. Both enhance the other, both is designed to work with each other.

In a child's first years of life, he/she must be shown and given (love, security, respect, constant contact) the necessary things that helps them to develop strong awareness and self-trust with the ingrained tools they possess - that is, an awareness of the ability to love and be loved in return.

It is actually a *learned* trait to REPRESS the ability to love.

Jean Liedloff writes pretty good about that kind of process.

Hope this helped.

ingrained...from the time we are born when out parents showe they love us