Plato's Symposium

To understand the power of Love, we must understand that our original human nature was not like it is now, but different.  Human beings each had two sets of arms, two sets of legs, and two faces looking in opposite directions.  There were three sexes then:  One comprised of two men call the children of the son, one made of two women called the children of the earth, and a third made of a man and a woman, called the children of the Moon.  Due to the power and might of these original humans, the Gods began to fear that their reign might be threatened.  They sought for a way to end the humans’ insolence without destroying them.

It was at this point that Zeus divided the humans in half.  After the division the two parts of each desiring their other half, came together, and throwing their arms about one another, entwined in mutual embraces, longing to grow into one.  So ancient is the desire of on another which is implanted in us, reuniting our original nature, making one of two, and healing the state of human kind. 

Each of us when separated, having one side only, is but the indenture of a person, and we are always looking for our other half.  Those whose original nature lies with the children of the Sun are men who are drawn to other men, those from the children of the Earth are women who love other woman, and those from the children of the Moon are men and women drawn to one another.  And when one of us meets our other half, we are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy, and would not be out of the other’s site for even a moment.  We pass our whole lives together, desiring that we should be melted into one, to spend our lives as one person instead of two, and so that after our death there will be one departed soul instead of two; this is the very expression of our ancient need.  And the reason that human nature was originally one and we were a whole, and the desire and pursuit of the whole is called love.”