Question about love...

[a_little_wisp]

I like Chava's post and

giving up your happiness for another is not love. That's sacrifice, and a love killer. Love is more akin to being able to make each other happy.

Love does stick around longer than infatuation or lust. but it needs time to grow, which it can do from infatuation or mutual friendship and respect and many other ways. It can also fade with time, if it is not given enough attention. Because Love isn't always easy. It does need work, and neglecting it gets you fired.

Librarius (i love xkcd!):

Because love is about choosing.

... both of these.

You know, I definitely don't think there's a radar for knowing. Definitely not or mine is broken. My last relationship lasted a month before, in a nutshell, I said a very apologetic, "oops." And I can... honestly say I've never been in love (I love my family and friends, however, and have lived, in that). I know, however, that in the beginning of a relationship if you feel like you're forcing it- don't continue. It really isn't about sacrificing your own happiness - that sucks you dry.

My grandparents just had their 50th anniversary. ... I don't think they married out of true love, but I think it grew into that. Despite what people say, I don't think opposites ALWAYS attract. I think there has to be some similar interests, definitely some commitment thrown in, an ability to adapt, and to accept. Accept, that is, that people do change- and realize, too, that at the core there are some things about that person that will remain the same. To realize that people are human.

The falling in love bit is the easy part. That's the part where you just know (though we all realize differently). It's the holding on bit that's the most difficult- and quite possibly the most wonderful.

If you want my two cents... *looks around, cautiously, then whispers* ... I think there has to be a LOT of laughter involved to make it really work. Yep.

[librarius_qui]

...

For another thing I also keep saying is that you have not really lived, if you had not owned a dog in your life.

I might have a cat. It's more difficult to love a cat ...

[subterranean]

Ah yes but the question is, how does one know? what makes one so certain?
It could go back to believing you are in love and in truth its really only lust.
What are those emotions, those signs that can hint that what one feels is love?
As i've already said, love is blind. Could that mean we could go through our intire lives side by side with someone, and not realise that they are the ones we love?
(great piece of writing btw.)

When I was with my boyfriend last Sunday there was this moment when I hugged him and then I just suddenly shed a tear. I didn't know where it came from or how did it started but I came to that point where I know that I love him. So how did I know? How did I get so certain? I just know and I am very certain. Was that just emotions or feelings? Well, I can list down the benefits of dating him and they can be the basis to say that it is not just a blind feelings. So it's most likely a combination of those things, which are explainable and unexplainable.
.....Am I babbling or what?

[librarius_qui]

.....Am I babbling or what?

Nop', I don't think so.

OFF TOPIC
Funny: once I hadn't visited your profile, I never .. guessed you were a girl. (Which happens with many, many people, in this forum. In the playmobil forum things are usually a lot easier to figure out )

[subterranean]

OFF TOPIC
Funny: once I hadn't visited your profile, I never .. guessed you were a girl. (Which happens with many, many people, in this forum. In the playmobil forum things are usually a lot easier to figure out )

I know what you mean. Some posts make more sense when we find out, 'Ah, so (forum name) is a s/he!'

[Chava]

Niamh, just for you here is a Grook (short haiku like poem) about love;

Love is like
a pineapple,
sweet and
undefinable.

-Piet Hein

[Jozanny]

I wanted to clarify something in relation to what I posted earlier, when I wrote I don't believe in love as an entity. What I meant was I don't believe in elevating the basic emotion of love and walling it off from its reality in a social context. Western literature bears some blame for doing this, in opera, or romance, but I suspect the best writers are as equally suspicious of idealizing it as I am. Shakespeare certainly is, and Dante transforms it into a form of metaphysical purity, as opposed to a passion for (the other) to be realized, or satisfied through marriage.

Not to say that I haven't tripped myself up on my belief in my own detachment, because I have. I *fell* for husbands I both did not and did want to take, and was relieved when the one trotted off, and bitter when I realized the sightless one was playing me for the virtue of his own amusement, and I nearly married a poor fellow I despised because I thought I might as well settle for his offer, but realized I needed a bit more to settle on than what I had, and the fact that we were both getting rather stout and were physically impaired, these things just weren't enough, since we had next to zero shared interests and no real physical compatibility. What we have now is I order him around against my better judgment, and try, on my side, out of pity, to get him to live a little better, but unlike some odd couples, like Carrie and Mr. Big, I have not mellowed in appreciation for my ex. I just doubt I have the capacity for anything more than the familiar of being an ex, much the same way that a divorced couple still knows the road map in relation to the former spouse, for good or ill, and in the US, that is usually the latter.

[NovemberGuest]

I'm only 17. I'm young an inexperienced and I often think with feeling or emotions rather than with my mind...be that good or bad. I don't claim to know everything there is about love or even close to it. But a very wise fellow once told me (I don't know who told him) that "Love is a commitment, not an emotion." To tell if you are in love with someone...ask yourself, "am I willing to stay with this person forever?" I think that if more people asked themselves this question, less marriages would end in divorce. Its easy to FEEL in love...but to TRULY love someone...even when you don't feel like it...thats REAL love. Emotions and feelings change...but a true commitment to another person will not. Thats my 2 cents

[The Atheist]

But a very wise fellow once told me (I don't know who told him) that "Love is a commitment, not an emotion." To tell if you are in love with someone...ask yourself, "am I willing to stay with this person forever?"

I'd be taking bets against that person's wisdom myself, as I don't believe "love" is anything to do with commitment. We commit to people because we love them, but times change, people grow, and they sometimes grow apart.

I have no question that my ex-wife and I were in love by any description you can give it, but we had a child and we changed and for the past 16 years, we've hated each other's guts.

Why does forever have to be part of love? It won't apply to love as it works with music, food, literature or art, because you will outgrow some things which are really important to you now. Why should it be different just because the object is a human being?

I think that if more people asked themselves this question, less marriages would end in divorce.

Yet, history would prove you dead wrong. 30 years ago, pretty much every single western wedding contained vows of "till death us do part", and you cannot get much more emphatic than that, but we know that a huge percentage of those couples chose top divorce.

Its easy to FEEL in love...but to TRULY love someone...even when you don't feel like it...thats REAL love. Emotions and feelings change...but a true commitment to another person will not. Thats my 2 cents

You may need to ask yourself that question again in 20 years' time.

[Chava]

Also, I don't think it is a bad thing that relationships end in divorce. I think it is more important to recognise that two individuals have loved each other and shared good times together, but that they at some point might make each other miserable for whatever reason.

[Insomniac]

Thinking about love, huh? Can't say I know too much about that. I've just graduated high school, and I haven't had anything more than some lust and heavy infatuation that resembled love.

However, knowing now what infatuation is -- and how to spot it -- I've come to my own conclusions about love.


I love reading books. I really do. Or rather, I did. Right now, I love reading Manga (Japanese comic books).

Not too long ago, I would have said that the one thing I truly loved was reading. And I believed, then, that I would always love reading over everything else (literally)!

Then I read some Manga and found that I liked that even more than reading books!

It's still technically reading, but really, it's not the same. Is this just an infatuation I'm having, then? Will my ardor for reading Manga cool down until I would prefer to read books again? Do I really love reading books if I have a stronger infatuation for reading Manga?

Which one is actually love?

Or can love only truly be considered love when it's between two people?

Is love the same between a mother and child as it is between a man and wife? What about love between two men? Two women? A person and a pet?

How can you love someone more than you love a different person?

If a man loves his wife more than he loves his child, does he really truly love his child? Does that mean he would sacrifice his child to save the wife he loves more?

If he would sacrifice his child, doesn't that mean he didn't TRULY love his child?

And what if that man found someone he loved more than his wife? Is that true love?

What about the love he HAD for his wife? Was that merely a crush then?

Can't you argue that love is actually a large combination of good feelings?

Say a man loves his wife. He's proud of his wife, he's happy with her, he feels good around her. He wants to make her feel good and be happy because that makes the man happy. He feels good when he's around his wife.

Is love a description of how good you feel when you're around a particular person or thing? Does that mean love is actually selfishness?

Then, does love have to be reciprocated?

What if a man loves his wife, but his wife does not love him? Is it still love? If the man found out his wife did not love him, would he stop loving his wife? Can you just stop loving? If he still felt good around her, wouldn't that mean he still loved her? And if he no longer felt good around her, wouldn't that mean he didn't love her?

Isn't love just the level of how good you feel around something or someone?

If you feel good around someone, and they feel good around you, wouldn't that make you feel better? Does that mean you love that person more?

If you feel the best you've ever felt, in every way possible when you're around another person, doesn't that mean you love them? Isn't that the only outcome? Can you feel your best and happiest around a person and not love them?

Based off of everything I've just said, I think that I can define love.

Love is the act of feeling good around something, or someone, or while doing something.

True love is when you feel the BEST around something, someone, or while doing something.

Therefore, you realize you love someone, or something, when you realize that it makes you feel the best.

Love is blind because you can't just choose what you love. What you love has already been decided, and you can't just change that. You find what you love. Love doesn't find you.

Thanks, I hope I made sense.

[JBI]

Alright I'll post here, since I've refrained from doing so until now.

The thing with love is, ultimately, to deny its existence is to deny a real purpose in life (unless you fill the void with the "love" of a diety) and in that regard, only the most nihilistic person can doubt its power.

Of course, the power of real emotion has lead people to do extreme things - love then, to me at least, reads as a strong emotional connection - something which, ultimately, gives a purpose and meaning to life (as does strong hate too, though love seems more powerful). In a sense then, it is futile trying to codify it, as clearly that just does a disservice to the thing as a whole - in a sense, we really cannot no we are in love, until we have, for one reason or another, lost it - the upset of a heartbreak, for example, is given its pain by the emotional attachment we made to the other in the relationship.

That being said, one can essentially, based on idiosyncrasies, come up with a general hunch of when they are feeling love - I like to think, anyone who I can stand to be around for an extended period of time, without talking or doing anything, yet at the same time, feeling content and not sensing a lacking, is someone who I, in a sense, love. In that sense, I think of it as more of a romantic thing.

As for parental love - that's a social conditioning brought about by certain factors. That's something that, fortunately, comes much easier, as, in a sense, the process occurs gradually when young, as apposed to later, when other factors and complications enter the mix (such as sexuality, which seems to screw around with everything [hehe with the pun]).

[PeterL]

Love is a very simple matter, but most people choose not to accept the actuality. Love is a matter of certain neurotransmitters being produced and released to the blood, where they affect a variety of physical systems. The result of those chemical releases are feelings of warmth and happiness, especially with respect to the person or thing that caused the reaction. The reason for love is for survival and evolutionary goals. When we experience something that will lead to our survival or reproductive success, then the appropriate neurotransmitters are released, and we feel love.

[grotto]

Why thank you PeterL for breaking it down so simply as a basic biological chemical reaction. All the centuries of work, the study and stories broken down to nothing more than electrons firing in the brain! Alas! The mystery solved! We are but automatons continually firing off each other with no greater purpose in life than to fart, watch TV and reproduce the next batch of Wal-Mart shoppers! I feel so much better now!

May I pose a question? What if the neurotransmitters are a physical response to a field that is yet indefinable? What if the feeling (for lack of a better term) predates the physical response? Maybe the firings in the brain are the biological responses to that feeling, not the neurotransmitters firing and then love. Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?

You can see and only measure response to and against something else, what sets it all in motion from the start? Electricity is all around you, but not until it can be funneled, harnessed, made and passed through some controlled form can it be measured; so what is it before it is measure and whence forth did it come? So yes, there is work in the brain, sane as in the bowels, but where and why does it start?

Sorry, it's not that simple PeterL.

[blazeofglory]

In fact, given what we see, cases of divorces, split families, abandoned homes and the like I simply cannot say there is anything called love, deep down.

We all fulfill our own needs, urges in the name of love.

It is skin-deep. Do not idealize and depend on any person. Too much attachment is not love.