Its not reductionist. Its just another perfectly fine subjective view of love. Because regardless of what some think, there is no one objective way to view love.

No, I'm not falling for this sophist crap. What qtns and Baldur described was NOT subjective. What they have said is that love can be defined solely by a set of behaviors. How is that subjective? Behaviors (not the motivations behind them, since it has already been determined by qtns and B that these things are irrelevant--just the behaviors) are objective by nature, and if that is the entire criterion by which one defines love (which seems to be the case here), then subjectivity nowhere enters the picture. So, your attempt to twist this around and make it look like the opposite is just your usual semantics nonsense.

Right now in the news there are those saying that love is so complex that whipping a child until he bleeds cannot be deemed child abuse.

No doubt there are, and that's exactly WHY this shit is complex: because those people know that they can get leverage by using the truth. And many people will buy into their position fully because there is truth in the argument that discipline is important to raising happy, healthy kids, and people then associate that bad behavior with the truth. That the abusers behave badly doesn't invalidate the argument they use to justify there argument.

Think of it this way: if a rapist justified their crime by arguing "Women need sex just as much as men do," that isn't necessarily wrong. Their argument is valid, but their behavior is not. And the behavior is not wrong BECAUSE of the fact that women may need sex as much as men; it's wrong because it's rape. Therefore, it doesn't invalidate the point that a rapist used it to justify his crime. Likewise, child abuse isn't wrong BECAUSE of the broader point about discipline; it's wrong on its own demerits. Therefore, it doesn't abolish the validity of discipline because of child abusers use it to justify their crimes.

OTOH, I am inclined to reject the angry person beating someone else out of jealousy as someone who is both feeling love and expressing love. They may say, "I do this because I love you," but their actions and their anger say something entirely different.

Okay, I understand why you want to see it this way, but it just isn't true, or at best we can never really know whether those behaviors were done out of love or not. But ultimately it's irrelevant whether it is done out of love. Spouse abuse isn't wrong because of the motivations behind it; it's wrong for its own reasons (which I will assume we are already on the same page about). Can we agree on that much?

I say that actions speak louder than words.

Well, it's a nice sentiment, but ultimately it's a thought-terminating cliche and not an informative description of reality.

And that love is what you practice, not some theory you think about.

And I'm saying that love is multidimensional. It includes how you think about it, your behaviors with regard to it, AND (most importantly) the emotions behind it, the latter being most important because without the emotional component the others could not exist. Maybe you can take away the thinking part of it and the behavioral part of it and it would still be love, but you cannot take away the emotional component. Thus, our evaluation of love is has to start from there.

I've been inside marriage and inside child-rearing. And I can tell you that what you deem "reductionist" is the only thing that makes emotional sense to me from within.

Not to be an asshole, but have you ever stopped to consider that the reason your marriages failed is because you approached them all wrong? Seriously, if you based the entire validity of your relationships on your behaviors, then that isn't love. There are plenty of loveless marriages where everyone does what they are supposed to do. If what you say is true and behaviors are more important than "words", then why didn't your relationships last? Could it be that the emotional connection--if it ever existed--was lost somewhere along the way?

The arguing with the spouse doesn't invalidate the love. But it sure doesn't feel like love from within.

Of course it doesn't. But my whole point is that love doesn't end because you weren't feeling loving at the moment. If it did, then relationships would have a 0% success rate, because every time a hitch occurred, that would be the end of the relationship (unless it was founded on something other than love, anyway).

And I'll just have to assume that anyone criticizing it as reductionist hasn't experienced it that way for themself. I have.

It seems to me like you're trying to argue a fallacy of irrelevance here. Do you assume that I have never been angry or upset at someone I loved? Because that is the relevant issue here. And anyway, you're also trying to project your own feelings or perceptions onto me. You are assuming that because I haven't experienced love a certain way, then my argument is invalid. But think about what I'm really saying here. I think, if you actually gave it a fair consideration, you would see that my argument is a valid one.

Even more complicated is the fact that there is no such thing as "the relationship." You cannot experience your spouses relationship with you from within. You can only experience your relationship with her from within. The two overlap, but they are not identical. And any attempt to wrestle with "the relationship" which doesn't acknowledge that there are two relationships is doomed to be rather narrow.

This is just a semantics game. Whether you define it as two relationships or one, the part of it that ultimately matters is the shared/overlapping part, which is what is designated as 'the relationship.' Yes, your respective inner worlds are part of it and shouldn't be discounted, but I think that is generally taken for granted. Anyway, when I describe 'a relationship' or 'the relationship' from here on out, it should be assumed that I am including the inner lives of the people involved.

Theorizing about emotions as though they exist objective of people is a very silly thing to do. Very common in those who wish to treat everything as though it can reduce to logic and numbers. But not very productive when it comes to how feelings work.

I'm not following. Who here is doing that? What exactly does this pertain to?