What are your thoughts on romantic love?

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Yes, I know the subject title is extremely broad and open ended, so I will narrow it a little bit. So, here is my question, "What are your thoughts about romantic love based on your own personal experiences?" I mean, what is your general perception of romantic love, whether be it optimistic, pessimistic, or what not. And I guess a second question is "What influenced you to feel this way?"

As for my personal thoughts about romantic love, it is somewhere it between pessimistic and apathetic. For a long time, throughout middle school, high school, and college, I tried desperately to be in a relationship with a girl. I was disappointed after the first couple of rejections, but after continuous rejections, I became very angry and thought of all women my age as nothing more than a bunch of "superficial b*****s who only cared about the creme de le creme of males, and any guy who doesn't fit that image are overlooked and ignored". In anger, I lost all objectivity.

But when I went to college, I realized that women were not as bad as I previously deemed them to be, although I never engaged with them romantically. Although I still believe that that both men and women my age tend to be superficial and petty, which I've been guilty of as well, however I have abandoned a lot of my previous hateful and resentful thoughts.

After trying for such a long time, I've recently decided to give up the romantic pursuit, because I see it as futile and pointless. I have learned that when you search for love, you will almost never find it. I also believe that women my age find me romantically unattractive. Why? Because I come across as either too arrogant, too intelligent and therefore confusing, or I'm not physically attractive enough. Yes, I know I can't read womens's minds, however I do think a lot of them have no interest in me, so in the mean time, I will walk alone.

It all depends on how old she is, what she looks like, what she is (or is not) wearing, and whether or not she is a willing participant.

Romantic love?

As in the novel Les Liaisons dangereuses (Dangerous Liaisons) - the letter correspondence is hot!

As in Jane Austen?

As in Jane Eyre?

As in unreasonable love in Withering Heights?

That's ALL romantic, but very unrealistic. In real life, relationships become needy, demanding, boring, abusive, etc. I do think people should take it very slow in order to get it right.

It can be wonderful for a month or two.

There's a reason Romeo & Juliet are the iconic symbols of romantic love - their union was passionate and intense, but temporary and tragic. It always is. I'm not saying it's never worth having, but know going in that you can't keep it, no matter how badly you want it or how awful you feel when you lose it. In the long run, I'd say good sex is healthier and easier to get and you'll be much less damaged inside when it's over.

Well, this is hard to answer because I don't know what your personal definition of 'romantic love' is. Limerence? Sexual attraction? Lust? Or something deeper?



I agree with you whole-heartedly there. I have never looked for love, yet became sexually attached when I probably least wanted it. It's almost unfortunate, and a biological response I could've done without, especially at the age I was.

'Love' is a state I wouldn't look for, because it would be to fulfill something missing inside myself. That would feel pretty terrible in the long run, horribly lonely, and devoid. Only I can truly fill that in myself, and I can't truly 'love' or care about anyone else until I do. I've seen the same thing happen with other people. I'm convinced fear is the biggest culprit for a lack of love, so fear of being alone, fear of losing status, fear of commitment--any of it, is a brick wall to 'proper' bonding.

I guess I managed to mostly answer your question, anyway.

I wish someone was sexually attached to ME. That would be better than a romantic relationship, even.

Those don't seem mutually exclusive to me. If I'm sexually attached to someone, I'm probably considered a candidate for 'romantic love'. Unless, of course, by some strange twist of fate I only desire them as an object (human dildo), and this is exclusive to them. That doesn't quite make sense to me, but I guess it could happen. But would that be satisfactory for you?

When I think about romantic love myself I would like to focus on the Emanuelle films which I personally have enjoyed, but only the ones which was released during the 70's.

So, what does that haveto do with me and my personal experiences? Well, since the movies is a positive force in this area I will never abandon the thought of how good it would feel being in this kind of relationsship and although life isn't like in the movies, life always get's what you yourself and others make of it.

Being in a close and romantic relationsship that many wants but not everyone get's, this is the fault of how they themselves creates their life.

My former experience about romantic feelings isn't very good, in fact, it's not even worth discussing, almost, but I definitely believe that I as a man do appreciate romance, but... not if the romance get in the way of doing things in a rational and constructive way, I think.

The bottom line is this when it comes to romance for myself: I'm definitely not a very romantic person, but I do experience romance as something positive and it's something which some women are really good at. A world without it, would be terrible, I think.

Your situation sounds a lot like mine. I have totally given up.

i have no instinct for romance. i know what is is supposed to be from seeing it on TV and hearing about it and seeing couples etc.

i have had girlfriends (and still kind of do have one) and they all felt i was "inadequate" emotionally for them. they waited for me to "come around", and when i did not, they tried to teach me, but i already knew the rules. i just do not have the inclination for romance.

as far as i have learned, romance is a kind of mood setting. like giving them chocolates and flowers (even not on any special day) and having "candle lit" dinners.
like sitting on a rug on the floor in front of a fire place gently crackling away with the lights off so the room is dimly lit in flickering orange hues, while sipping champagne with strawberries in it with arms curled around each other to take their sips.

it is all poppycock to me.

why are chocolates important for romance? if i am at the supermarket and my girlfriend looks at chocolates and says "yummmm", then i pick them up and throw them in the trolley and buy them. she can have chocoalates anytime. chocolate is just food.

why are flowers important to girls? i never have worked it out. i do not think flowers smell nice. they smell like perfume. they smell like they would be severe to taste (like drinking perfume).
they are dead after they are picked, so they are always in a state of deterioration when in a vase. they are thrown out as brown shriveled trash after a week or two. and that is supposed to be a symbol of "love"? most flowers are asymmetrical, and they look like they are crumpled up colored paper (especially rose type flowers).
i know flowers have nice colors, but there are many things colored more brightly than flowers.

how does eating your dinner with the lights off and with candles lit equate to romance really? i know it is part of the recipe for romance, but i do not see personally the reason why it means anything. maybe it makes peoples faces look better in the dim yellowish light?
i need a well lit eating place. i can not eat something i do not see the precise color of.

my last female friend who was almost a girlfriend tried to surprise me once with a "candle lit dinner". when i got home, the room was only lit by candles on the dinner table. when she served the food, it was all on the same plate.
she did not know i need different plates for each ingredient (before anyone goes on about me being demanding, it was my house and i have a dishwasher, and i do all washing up (i only trust myself to wash my dishes)).
so i had to go and get more plates and separate the food types before they contaminated each other too much. i could not see a thing so i put the lights on in the kitchen and she said "mark!! ! you're ruining the atmosphere"

i thought she was talking about the energy consumption contributing to global warming, and i said that they are just 3 18 watt tubes.
she thought i was making a glib joke and purposefully misinterpreting her to be a smart ass.
she said "please!! ! not tonight mark!! ! i made this especially for us...so please stop the jokes?!?!?".
i said no more about the lights, and when i got the plates i switched them (the kitchen lights) off.

when i got back to the dining room, i could not see well (after being in the bright kitchen), and as i was separating my foods, i needed to see better, so i pulled one candle out of it's holder and held it close to the meal to see.
then a blasted pool of molten wax that was gathering in the candle (in that concave moat between the wick and the rim) poured over my lamb. i cut off the piece of lamb that the wax poured onto and discarded it. she huffed and puffed and was muttering things like "oh for god's sake".
after i got my food separated and cleaned off the cross contamination (wiped gravy off the baked potatoes etc) i went to eat it, but i needed to inspect it before i put it in my mouth with proper lighting. i can not put things i have not carefully looked at in my mouth.
i put the fork down, but i knew she would be annoyed if i switched the lights on in the dining room, so i went and got my maglite torch, and i switched it on and inspected the forkful i was going to put in my mouth and she said "ok mark!! i get it!! ! and she got up and switched the dining room lights on and said "now you can see the f*cking food i cooked!! ! i hope it passes your examination!! !! i'm going home!! !"

if only she had not chosen candles for the lighting, that scene would never have happened.
although, as it turned out, the potatoes revealed themselves as too contaminated with gravy for consumption after she turned the lights on.
i was not really hungry anyway, and after she left, i discarded the meal.

once she tried to play "romantic" songs that she said reminded her of our "love".
one of them was "unchained melody", and i did not like it. she did not know that, and she put it on and said "just listen to this mark! it is about us!".
i was in a mood of buffoonery.
i asked what the title was and she said "unchained melody", and for some reason, my mind equated it (in title meaning) with mccartneys "band on the run".
i thought that was funny and i started thinking lines like "tune at large" and "manhunt for escaped symphony" and sang in a comical way, my superimposed clownish shallow thoughts over it.

so she stopped the song (i was having fun with it though) and put another song on called "wind beneath my wings" by bette middler.

i listened to the lyrics like "i can fly higher than an eagle (derr wow?) and you are the wind beneath my wings", and i thought of alternate lines like "i can fly faster than a boeing, but you are the wind shear that sucks me unexpectedly into the tarmac" (with all those syllables irreverently crammed into the same rhythm).
i started laughing, and again, of course, she left.


my current female friend is too lazy to be bothered much with romance, and i am glad about that.

at this point, anything would be satisfactory. romance takes effort and it takes acceptance. you start with who you and your boyfriend are. and you have to build each other up. you accept. you encourage. you lead each other. you are not afraid to mess up because you know your romantic partner will not be irritated. you are not afraid of disappointing your partners because you know you will accepted no matter what.

I still believe in romantic love. It's that connection that I crave, the person who seems to read your thoughts and your conversation with them just flows. It's like they get inside your head. It admit that it's not common and it's hard to come by, but when you find it, it's like gold. It's like a high. You try not to let it infect you but you can't help yourself. You crave it even more. When you reach those kinds of depths, everything else pairs in comparison.

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Last edited by BPalmer on 29 Mar 2009, 11:27 am, edited 2 times in total.

It looks like my point of view about love is simply very old. Call it romantic love? Well, then romantic love scares people.
I lately got involved in what had the look and feel of romantic love with a girl, but I could not sort it out due to my blindness about her feelings and needs. So I asked for advice a couple of female friends of mine.
Well, it turned out girls, at least the part of them that I happen to know, are not inclined at all to romantic love even if they enjoy romance.
So the recipe I squeezed, one more time, from this story is the following: take care not to appear in love even if you are, nonetheless don't let them lack a little romance. It makes no sense to me, but this is what a couple of friends taught me, I'd better trust them on the subject.
I'll abide by this rule, at least while I can get to know the girl that can love me and I can love. Never give up (completely)!

The importance isn't necessarily about the chocolates or the flowers, it's that old cliche 'it's the thought that counts'.

Bringing chocolates or flowers or having flowers delivered by interflora are a romantic gesture, because the underlying message is: even when were apart I was thinking of you, thinking about you brings happy thoughts to mind, and because you make me happy I want to do something to bring a smile to your face and make you happy.

Historically, though, flowers were used to send messages, the Victorians had a language of flowers and a suitor could send different messages to the object of his affections with different flowers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_of_flowers



You do realise, don't you, that you have quite peculiar eating habits?

Tbh, if I had worked hard to set a romantic scene, and you had been so inconsiderate and rude and obnoxious, I probably would have walked out too!

Being in a relationship often means compromise and sometimes doing things that you don't necessarily really like doing, just to make the other person happy. I'm not saying that a vegetarian should eat a steak to make their partner happy, but okay, so you usually like to see what you're eating, and the low light meant that the conditions weren't ideal. Would it have killed you to have eaten what was cooked? And the whole thing with the separate plates, while you're eating with other people, can you not try to even have the different foods on different parts of the same plate?

I understand the being fussy about kitchen cleanliness. I can't stand it when I go round to people's houses and I see that they wash their pots in a bowl of water with washing liquid, which ends up dirty, and they scrub a plate 'clean' and put it in the drying rack with dirty soap suds on it, instead of rinsing things first.

If they offer me a cup of tea or some food, I'll say yes to be polite. Yes, I know it's not ideal, but it's really not going to kill me. You can overcome OCD-ish stuff like that. Hypnotherapy and other relaxation techniques are supposed to help. Part of me instinctively says sod it, people should just accept you and your quirks, and you should be able to do what you want. But another part of me says that you are missing out on so many pleasures by being so uptight.

Being OCD-ish needn't necessarily be a problem, but when it's impacting on your life and preventing you from living normally, then I'd say it's a problem.

While your lack of appreciation of the finer points of romance seem to be just that (although with a big spoonful of lack of empathy) your eating habits seem to me not just to fall into the realm of lack appreciation of what women consider to be 'romantic' (and a total failure to be empathetic or willing to compromise), but they do seem to veer into that OCD to the point of preventing a normal life territory.

I mean, some people prefer their gravy on the side, some people prefer it over their meat, some people prefer it poured over everything, but most people wouldn't throw their food away if it wasn't served 'precisely' how they wanted it. That's extreme.

Romantic love is exactly what the 'name' implies so what is it exactly that you are asking. You need to be more specific.