What types of love exist, or should exist?

Healthy love should exist. Healthy love doesn't have to be boring and simply celebrating the little things, but it shouldn't have to rely on sleepless nights, dramatic first dates, and romance that seems like it's came directly from the movies. I think that healthy love is also self love; after all, you cannot love others until you love yourself.

– Caroline Hsu

Love exists all around us. I see love in my friends' laughter. I feel love in a warm embrace. Love is in the food we eat, handmade with heart. It is in the songs we sing until our voices are hoarse. There's love in smiling at a stranger and there's love in peeling an orange for a friend. If we look close, I think we can find love in the smallest of gestures.

– Maisha Kalam

I think we should never discount the power of platonic love. The deep love and admiration for our friends can sometimes fill us more than any other type of love out there.

– Chris Fong Chew 招偉明

All types; friendships, romance, pets, familial, toxic, in every little interaction we either grow or deter from loving something or someone. I think people romanticize love, ironically, too much. They only refer to couples as true, achievable love. Constant expectations and views of where we should show it. Love is something we yearn for and yet still fear. It’s much more meaningful, common, something we need to realize. Love doesn’t just exist within romance, and even in romance, how you love and care for your partner should go beyond a relationship sense. I love my partner, I love being with her, but if I wasn’t, my love wouldn’t change. If we were merely friends I would still love her, respect her boundaries, and continue carrying that love, and just not pursue romance. A deep care for a person, I think that’s really the most simplest love people should know.

– Jojo Rivas

what types of love exist, or should exist?

I adore the carnal types of love, the kind where nothing will stop someone from feeling so overwhelmed by how much they love something. This exists almost anywhere; the love for a partner, friend, thing, place. It's a good balance to keeping track of the practical parts of life too.

– Ki

When I look at the photographs from my family's photo albums, I view the photographs, both familiar and unfamiliar to myself and in my position, as a way of coping, offering understanding and imagining the histories before me that are not easily spoken. Behind every frame lies different realities that can be speculated if one squints hard enough and allows themselves to imagine them. I feel like a time traveler where I am seeing glimpses of realities that may seem so far but are still present nonetheless.

In this situation, re-imagination of the family albums can perhaps be seen as an expression of love that should exist more often. For every new interpretation made about an image, a new world is discovered and crafted from that interpretation. Questions pile up each time an interpretation is made and we can eventually find ourselves in a territory of boundless imaginations of our own histories that are in the making. We allow ourselves to exist in multitudes, as we deserve to. The photo album can be our conspiracy board where we can express our affection for one another by remaining in the present and contributing to these archives. By looking back, we learn ways to move forward and invest in the endless futures that lie at our fingertips, within the pages of the album.

– Julie Lee

Toxic vs healthy: The kind that drains and the kind that fulfills.

Familial vs platonic vs romantic: One that you can never lose, one that you can rely on, and one that makes you feel alive.

Triangular theory of love: intimacy (warm), passion (hot), and commitment (cool).

Intimacy + passion = romantic love.

Intimacy + commitment = companionate.

Passion + commitment = fatuous love.

You need all three for consummate love, or true love.

Self love, the foundation of them all.

– Sophia Wang