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Russian love-knowledge verbs are analyzed in the article, which reveal the specifics of Russian ideas about love - to admit, explain, and open up. The verb “to confess” gives love to a crime, “to explain” - to a riddle, incongruity, “to open” - to a secret. Each of these similes has a mythological and cultural-historical origin, and none of these uses is accidental. So behind the verb “explain” is an ancient (ancient Greek) myth that explains why two people feel a sudden strong attraction to each other, passion. The article explains the origin of the typical Russian representations of a couple of lovers and then spouses as two halves. We are talking here about a story from Plato’s “Feast” (a dialogue dedicated to the issues of love), about people who once lived, according to this myth, of three genders: men, women and androgynes, who had incredible power. It was for this that the last ones were cut into two halves by the will of the gods. “And when”, we read in Plato, “the bodies were thus dissected, each half longing for the other half, they embraced, intertwined, longing to grow together, and died of hunger and inactivity, because they did not want to do anything apart... From such a long time ago, people have a love attraction for each other, which, by connecting the former halves, tries to make one of the two and thereby heal human nature”. Aristophanes writes the same story about androgynes. He says that “love is called the thirst for wholeness and the desire for it.

To the same story, the “crime” of love is being built. A crime in the desire to unite contrary to the will of the gods. The etymologies of the words “gender” and “sex” indicate the same situation. The word “gender” (male and female), came from the Old Slavic “half” – half. The same picture is observed in other Slavic languages, where the root is associated with the concepts of “side”, “half”, “cut”. The situation of cutting off, separation is behind the word “sex”, which came to Russian from English, and there – from Latin. “Sexus” originally meant “separation”, “dissection” (see the single-root “section”, “segment”, “secateur. “Sexus”, like the Latin – the line of separation, separation, which was once separated, hence the attraction of the sexes, the sexual attraction, which, under any ideological tendencies, has never been questioned. The same subject constitutes a mystery, which must be hidden, and the decision to open requires courage and readiness to take risks. First of all, because it is the Slavs who love, would-be wife and would-be husband – parts of fate. Unlike the European destiny (Fortune), the Slavonic Sudzhenitsy, coming to the house to the newborn, is sure to discuss the issues of his future heart life. The article lists and analyzes examples from the love explanations contained in Russian classical literature, or rather, in Russian prose.