A baby is crying in its crib. What does it want? Attention from its parents, of course. The infant in life’s first phase is already demanding recognition. The baby has begun its quest for significance, a quest that will endure throughout their lifetime.

The tiniest human cannot put any of this into words, but from our first day on Earth we find that love is essential, as it signals to us that we matter. “You’re nobody ‘til somebody loves you,” Dean Martin crooned in a hit song of the 1960s, and a century-and-a-half earlier philosopher Georg Wilhelm Frederick Hegel declared, “To exist is to be recognized.”

Love is a major way to convey such recognition. Metaphorically, “Love makes the world go around,” as another hit song put it. How and why that globe-spinning energy operates has been the subject of literature, plays, movies, and all manner of cultural discussion. Part of the subject’s allure is the alleged mystery of how love impacts us, with poets, playwrights, filmmakers, and thinkers portraying this force as irrational, guided by passion as opposed to reason.

Yet there is a logic to the phenomenon: the logic of love. You love in order to be loved in return, particularly by someone worthy and admired whose love for you gives you significance. And/or you love because you are expected to: It is part of your value system, the social norm that you observe—for example, you are supposed to love your family and God.

Both reciprocated love and prescribed love have a key aspect in common: the appreciation........

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