What is love?

Post Reply New Topic

What does it mean to you?

What is your personal philosophy on love?

What is love?

Oh baby, don't hurt me
Don't hurt me
No more

What katzhutte said

All of the above. It isn't one thing, but made up of multiple factors. If it's only one thing you're feeling and none of the others, it's not a deep love, but probably just a lust.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks upon tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.

Shakespeare

Not trying to be corny but I agree with it. Real love lasts.

Also this though:



I love you whether or not you love me
I love you even if you think that I don't
Sometimes I find you doubt my love for you
But I don't mind
Why should I mind?
What is love anyway?
Does anybody love anybody anyway?
Can anybody love anyone so much that they will never fear?
Never worry never be sad?
The answer is they cannot love this much nobody can
This is why I don't mind you doubting
And maybe love is letting people be just what they want to be
The door always must be left unlocked
To love when circumstance may lead someone away from you
And not to spend the time just doubting

I wish we could add likes. I haven't heard that Howard Jones song in a long time.

Love is where you find that special person that you will willingly share your trains with.

Romantic love begins as two peoples' mutually experienced, overpowering sexual desire for one another.

In order to justify giving in to that desire, it is typical for people to elevate their feelings to some sort of spiritual level, so they can avoid feeling shame or guilt over having sex which they have been taught throughout their lives is inherently sinful unless blessed by some sort of unquestioned authority.

This idea is primarily Western though (although it has influenced other cultures owing to the world-wide dominance of Western culture). In the rest of the world, arranged marriages are the norm, and from what I've seen they are generally more successful than Western "love matches" (I work in IT and many co-workers are in arranged marriages, so I have some knowledge of the subject).

Romantic love eventually leads to the sort of love felt between members of the same family. Over time, families (unless they are fundamentally dysfunctional) develop strong bonds that will cause members to defend other members to the death. Many families do fail because couples expect romantic love to continue and grow stronger, so they can't handle the disappointment of not experiencing that.

I feel love is a pre-requisite to carrying on the species. Without "love"; the human offspring would have less of a chance for survival. Once this purpose has been served and the offspring are raised the man and woman frequently fall out of love

I am determined not to start an argument about this, but I am aware of no evidence that sexual shame is somehow unique to the United States. What I will say is that when I first became sexually active in the 1970s, there seemed to be less of that sort of shame than in subsequent decades. I think this has a lot to do with the fact that I've been known to make remarks regarding sex that others here may have seen as disrespectful. As for the US, I will say that the US began moving in the other direction in the 1980s before Europe did, but in the 21st Century Europe seems to be catching up. I could put forth a number of theories as to why, but I don't think this thread was started as a forum for that discussion.

I do tend to limit anything I say on this to the West. Countries dominated by Confucianist ideas have their own sort of inhibitions regarding sex and I am not enough of an expert to try to draw a distinction.

As for Hindu India, it is true that some of their religious iconography depicts their gods engaging in sex. In that regard, they seem historically less timid about the subject although Islam and the Raj have probably affected the situation over recent centuries.

Ah. I was a teenager in the 90s, so i would have had a different experience.