Defining Love

[eudaemonia]

I'm going to assume that this discussion pertains to a particular category of love, that is, romantic love.

What is your definition of love?

A profound emotional, passionate and sexual attraction between two human beings that reflect a high regard for the value of each other as a person.

What experiences helped shape your definition?

Maybe partially due to being somewhat love-starved as a child and but definitely due to learning pretty quickly in early adolescence that some boys were sincere about you and some weren't. Also, noticing that not a lot of adults had very happy marriages but that a few did and seemed very affectionate and caring for one another, and wondering what that rare quality was all about. Perhaps also having been a child of the 70s and witnessing so much sex-for-sex's sake attitude that didn't seem to result in people being any more happy than the uptight Catholics I was raised around.

What have you read that helped form your definition?

The Psychology of Romantic Love, by Nathaniel Branden. One of the first psychologists to not dismiss the validity and importance of romantic love in mature relationships.

What are the limits on loving? Can we love more than one person at a time (again, all outside the category of familial love)?

If we're talking about limits on loving in the romantic context, as I've outlined it, I suppose there is some limit. Some individuals claim they can be romantically in love with multiple people and that monogamy is unnatural, while others vehemently disagree.

What freedom do we gain through love? What constraints do we take on through love?

This requires more thought. I'll come back to it.

What is the difference between being in love and loving someone?

The presence or absence of that tripartite emotional-passionate-sexual attachment I mentioned above.

 

[midwestyankee]

Quote:
What is the difference between being in love and loving someone?

The presence or absence of that tripartite emotional-passionate-sexual attachment I mentioned above.

Here's where I step in to mix things up a bit. First off, would you please clarify something? Which state posseses the aforementioned tripartite attachment and which does not? My assumption is that you mean that being in love includes the sexual attachment while loving someone does not.

That said, I'd be interested in how you view my distinction between the two. I see being in love as that early stage in love where our beloved is the center of our universe, we can hardly function without being in our beloved's presence, and our every waking thought comes to our consciousness filtered by the existence of our beloved. Some call this "puppy love" but I think that's a demeaning term. Being in love is a powerful state but it's a temporary state. It's highly charged with sexuality and attraction but it is primarily self-centered.

During this time nearly all our thoughts and impressions of love have to do with how our beloved makes us feel. We walk down a pretty street and we see our neighbor's tulips differently because our beloved once said that she loved tulips. We wake up in the morning and wonder if our beloved is awake and thinking of us just as we are thinking of her. However, during this highly charged period an essential aspect of long-term love is missing: we don't extend ourselves exclusively for the benefit of our beloved, even if it causes us pain or loss. In fact, during this time we tend to see any pain caused by love as much more penetrating than it really is for we have not yet come to terms with the fact that some suffering is a natural part of love.

Loving someone else is an act of will. We may not choose whom we love, for love does seem to descend on us unawares sometimes, but we do choose whom we love. That is, we choose to act lovingly and caringly toward someone. We give them help when they need it, we give them space when they need it, we sacrifice our own needs if they as it of us. Loving someone means doing what you can to make their life better, happier, and more complete. Loving is an other-centered activity. Sure, we often receive wonderfully positive emotional fulfillment from the loving, but loving is not about us it is about our beloved.

This is a condensed version but I hope it offers something to think about discuss.

 

[it_matters]

well mixed

Here's where I step in to mix things up a bit. First off, would you please clarify something? Which state posseses the aforementioned tripartite attachment and which does not? My assumption is that you mean that being in love includes the sexual attachment while loving someone does not.

That said, I'd be interested in how you view my distinction between the two. I see being in love as that early stage in love where our beloved is the center of our universe, we can hardly function without being in our beloved's presence, and our every waking thought comes to our consciousness filtered by the existence of our beloved. Some call this "puppy love" but I think that's a demeaning term. Being in love is a powerful state but it's a temporary state. It's highly charged with sexuality and attraction but it is primarily self-centered.

During this time nearly all our thoughts and impressions of love have to do with how our beloved makes us feel. We walk down a pretty street and we see our neighbor's tulips differently because our beloved once said that she loved tulips. We wake up in the morning and wonder if our beloved is awake and thinking of us just as we are thinking of her. However, during this highly charged period an essential aspect of long-term love is missing: we don't extend ourselves exclusively for the benefit of our beloved, even if it causes us pain or loss. In fact, during this time we tend to see any pain caused by love as much more penetrating than it really is for we have not yet come to terms with the fact that some suffering is a natural part of love.

Loving someone else is an act of will. We may not choose whom we love, for love does seem to descend on us unawares sometimes, but we do choose whom we love. That is, we choose to act lovingly and caringly toward someone. We give them help when they need it, we give them space when they need it, we sacrifice our own needs if they as it of us. Loving someone means doing what you can to make their life better, happier, and more complete. Loving is an other-centered activity. Sure, we often receive wonderfully positive emotional fulfillment from the loving, but loving is not about us it is about our beloved.

This is a condensed version but I hope it offers something to think about discuss.

Nicely put, Yankee. Sounds like a bit of Osho study in there. That all-affecting charge of beginning energy, where every sense is attracted by your partner... so sweet, so wonderful and intoxicating and at times painful. Yet while that state undeniably involves the Self completely, it doesn't feel true to say it is purely egotistical.

For me the attraction and the coming together is about merging, and as biology would have it, about procreation (even if we find ways to cheat nature and have our pleasure anyway): it is about creation, and my love and involvement with a partner is about that light that we hold between us in our hands, between our two bodies. I find a meeting where there is no connection, expecially a physical meeting, to be the most achingly empty encounter there can possibly be.

For the altruistic, outward-reaching love, I am a strong believer in the health of the Self being primary -- health meaning balance as well, so if you are sitting in your gym body-building for a mirror, and never applying your strength or resolve to a greater community, that would for me be a sign of little health - and little of that giving love. Lovingkindness for the Buddhists, compassion? When you have kids you are naturally given the possibility for that care, should you be healthy enough to take it.

There is -- or can be -- an amazing sweetness in the gift given, and the gift received. So while concern for those around us may be an act of will at some point in our lives, it can become something easier and greater as we grow older. Expecially if we grow older with one partner, if we become more and more human, even to the point where we see the first love fade, maybe even the second love, and relate to our partner with a quiet friendship and acceptance. Maybe the flush of creation becomes the warmth of caretaking what taken root.

 

[Pyro Paul]

Love. heh

im sure many people have said this but...
Love is pain.
Love is waiting endlessly for a precious soul who may not come back
Love is bearing the harsh cold for a life who's light is black.
Love is the dim light to which we run
Love is the pain of them holding the gun.

Love... is standing there... with out her.
Knowing its better when she is with him.

Love will make us suffer through pain
Make us watch as they may never come back again.

and why?

Because
Love is pain.

 

[Pyro Paul]

To begin: What is your definition of love?

What experiences helped shape your definition?

What have you read that helped form your definition?

Taking familial love as a given, what other forms of love can you identify?

What are the limits on loving? Can we love more than one person at a time (again, all outside the category of familial love)?

What freedom do we gain through love? What constraints do we take on through love?

What is the difference between being in love and loving someone?

Love is pain.
my thought of this is shaped by the countless times i've watched the ones i love slowly change or die infront of me.

Love of a familiy,
True love, feeling tied exspecialy to one person, and knowing that they feel the same way about you.
Lustful love, love of a person whom you see as perfect on the outside or inside.
Sinful love, love a person simply because of the thrill it gives you, the excitiment of it being wrong.
Lost love, loving a person who doesn't love you back.
Lonely love, Loving a person who can't love you back.

being in love is purely attraction based on initial thoughts and contact. mostly you say this after you have learned of which you have in common with the other. or how intresting and perfect the seem.

Loving some one is devoting yourself to them emotionaly, feeling tied to them and having an importance of being with them. sometimes even sacrificing your own good for them. them not returning it is a possibility, such as, most women who are abused Love, the person that abuses, although they are bad and hurt them.

 

[ZGuy32]

My Anwsers

My definition of love is the complet feeling in ones center, ( where ever one says it is) where the bodies phiscial and mental emotions meet. To make one know what they know is true even if you never got any farther than a 30 min talk about what ever came up in a conversation.

Meeting someone who had this effect on me.

Lots.

This is completly dependent on the person because people can love in so many different ways the only real anwser would be to say too may.

None. Yes, in a special way for each one.

We gain the freedom of all the joy it can bring us. The pain it that can follow it.

To be in love with some one is you have strong feelings for them and would like to be with them. For loving some one you are willing to do what is needed for them to be happy even if it means you lose being with them.

 

[Sensual Man 05]

Zguy, that's a really good description. I agree that it's a feeling you feel in the center of your body (I assume that's what you're saying). And not having that love returned is like getting punched in that center. Anyways, love does have a physical effect on the body.

 

[ZGuy32]

i'm used center as a term to identify where ever you feel the effects for me it is just above my stomach and to the right of my heart. for others it could be any where depends on them.

 

[midwestyankee]

Another day, another definition: love is acceptance against the greatest odds.

 

[eudaemonia]

Another day, another definition: love is acceptance against the greatest odds.

Hmm. Could you expand on what you mean by acceptance? I'm having trouble processing this ..

 

[Cathleen]

Another day, another definition: love is acceptance against the greatest odds.

I'm thinking fairy tale on this one Yank. I know I'm not in the best of spaces at the moment and see only greatest odds but where does acceptance fit here? If you please.

 

[midwestyankee]

Hmm. Could you expand on what you mean by acceptance? I'm having trouble processing this ..

I'm thinking fairy tale on this one Yank. I know I'm not in the best of spaces at the moment and see only greatest odds but where does acceptance fit here? If you please.

This definition is admittedly partial but it's an important part of the definition. It's really as simple as being open to someone else regardless of the circumstances that bring you together or keep you apart. Some relationships would appear to have no chance of survival if one were to look only at surface condtions. However, if the two share an acceptance of each other despite extraordinary differences or extraordinary obstacles, then the pathway to love is made open to them.

 

[Cathleen]

This definition is admittedly partial but it's an important part of the definition. It's really as simple as being open to someone else regardless of the circumstances that bring you together or keep you apart. Some relationships would appear to have no chance of survival if one were to look only at surface condtions. However, if the two share an acceptance of each other despite extraordinary differences or extraordinary obstacles, then the pathway to love is made open to them.

I don't like it but I think I understand it, have even experienced it perhaps. So the pathway to love is open to them, I get that fine --- I guess it's the structure (lack of a better word) of the love or the togetherness that might be lacking that prevents me from embracing this concept.

 

[midwestyankee]

I don't like it but I think I understand it, have even experienced it perhaps. So the pathway to love is open to them, I get that fine --- I guess it's the structure (lack of a better word) of the love or the togetherness that might be lacking that prevents me from embracing this concept.

This part of the definition doesn't hold any structure, if that's what you're getting at. It's really just a statement of the importance of being open to one another because without that there is no path to love.

 

[M's girl]

Hmm. Could you expand on what you mean by acceptance? I'm having trouble processing this ..

Have been thinking about this one too. Maybe it's the same as being able to accept the things you cannot change in order to be able to be happy.... also in a relationship. Also: you don't always have to agree on everything, more important is it to agree you can disagree on certain things.

 

[it_matters]

Another day, another definition: love is acceptance against the greatest odds.

I think the odds aren't that bad, unless you are expecting some specific outcome. And yes, we have to plan, and yes, we try to find a path that brings us and keeps us together. But the amazing variety of humans out there... I think there is no gamble at all in accepting, in connecting. That's the only thing to practice, accepting the other, but also accepting your self.

And see what becomes of it. So many of us shake our heads, looking at what we imagined, and seeing what it really became...

 

[Nightbird]

bump bump

 

[wicked woman]

'Tis the season to share your love.

*hey I'll take any excuse *

 

[midwestyankee]

I think the odds aren't that bad, unless you are expecting some specific outcome. And yes, we have to plan, and yes, we try to find a path that brings us and keeps us together. But the amazing variety of humans out there... I think there is no gamble at all in accepting, in connecting. That's the only thing to practice, accepting the other, but also accepting your self.

And see what becomes of it. So many of us shake our heads, looking at what we imagined, and seeing what it really became...

The odds can be very long, indeed. Consider the obstacles that two people must overcome if they fall in love after meeting online but live on different continents. Consider the odds of a relationship surviving long periods of separation. Consider the odds of a relationship surviving despite major differences in age, religious beliefs, economic status, or political beliefs. It's all well and good to say that love will find a way but the truth of the matter is that love can't always find a way.

At some point in such a challenged relationship, one or both partners realizes that the challenges may be too great and that is when the need for complete acceptance is at its highest. There is a great gamble, for to love and lose brings a world of hurt. Many people never recover from this hurt and the fear of facing such a painful experience again keeps many from ever accepting another person in full love again.

That act, fully accepting another into your heart despite the certain knowledge that great pain will come from it, that is the act of love that I tried to describe earlier.

 

[Cathleen]

The odds can be very long, indeed. Consider the obstacles that two people must overcome if they fall in love after meeting online but live on different continents. Consider the odds of a relationship surviving long periods of separation. Consider the odds of a relationship surviving despite major differences in age, religious beliefs, economic status, or political beliefs. It's all well and good to say that love will find a way but the truth of the matter is that love can't always find a way.

At some point in such a challenged relationship, one or both partners realizes that the challenges may be too great and that is when the need for complete acceptance is at its highest. There is a great gamble, for to love and lose brings a world of hurt. Many people never recover from this hurt and the fear of facing such a painful experience again keeps many from ever accepting another person in full love again.

That act, fully accepting another into your heart despite the certain knowledge that great pain will come from it, that is the act of love that I tried to describe earlier.

I tend to agree, perhaps it's the 21st century kind of thing. Meeting people online certainly is easy and the challenges that face the potential relationship are some that rarely, if ever, had existed previously. Sometimes it's worth the effort to push through the challenges. I guess I'd say it's always worth the effort to try if both are willing.

The rub, in my opinion, is that very often in life, love is not enough to make it work. Love is powerful, wonderful, amazing, and lots of things but it also isn't alway enough.

 

[midwestyankee]

I tend to agree, perhaps it's the 21st century kind of thing. Meeting people online certainly is easy and the challenges that face the potential relationship are some that rarely, if ever, had existed previously. Sometimes it's worth the effort to push through the challenges. I guess I'd say it's always worth the effort to try if both are willing.

The rub, in my opinion, is that very often in life, love is not enough to make it work. Love is powerful, wonderful, amazing, and lots of things but it also isn't alway enough.

Cate, as always there is much wisdom in your post. Love is rarely enough, in fact. Making a successful relationship takes much commitment, a willingness to make and accept mistakes, and a certain amount of luck.

In one of my most profound moments of self-awareness I realized how much I wanted to learn how to love a certain someone. It wasn't how much I wanted to love her or how much I thought that I already loved her. Instead, the insight was that I wanted to learn to love her. I was very fortunate to receive that bit of insight because it helped me see that love was a journey, a journey that two take together. Over time, if you pay attention properly, you learn how to walk together in harmony. You learn that even when you wander off the joint path for a bit, you're still on the journey together. Where the two of you end up is always going to be a mystery, so it matters most that you accept the journey and learn to walk well together.

I'm rambling again...sorry.

 

[sinnamongyrl]

I dont know that i can even define LOVE,i do know that it takes A LOT,,i mean A LOT for me to love someone(romantic love).I mean one HELL of a man,,,it has not hapened very often for me,,,but it did happen.let me think on this and get back to this thread.Dont know if there is a diiff between loving someone and being in love,,not for me anyway,,,,,BUT my love is not a possesive kind of love,,with my love,,i still wish your your freedom and happiness,,,,,,yeah,,,i will be back to this as asoon as i can piece it all togther

 

[bobsgirl]

...Over time, if you pay attention properly, you learn how to walk together in harmony. You learn that even when you wander off the joint path for a bit, you're still on the journey together. Where the two of you end up is always going to be a mystery, so it matters most that you accept the journey and learn to walk well together.

I'm rambling again...sorry.

Yes, exactly. Sometimes it takes one person to drag the other along until the other finds her bearings again. The key is that the stronger one must realize his partner is floundering, and be willing to accept the role of the stronger one.

Now I'm the one rambling...

 

[midwestyankee]

I dont know that i can even define LOVE,i do know that it takes A LOT,,i mean A LOT for me to love someone(romantic love).I mean one HELL of a man,,,it has not hapened very often for me,,,but it did happen.let me think on this and get back to this thread.Dont know if there is a diiff between loving someone and being in love,,not for me anyway,,,,,BUT my love is not a possesive kind of love,,with my love,,i still wish your your freedom and happiness,,,,,,yeah,,,i will be back to this as asoon as i can piece it all togther

If you can piece it all together, you're doing better than I. Please do come back with more to say.

 

[midwestyankee]

Yes, exactly. Sometimes it takes one person to drag the other along until the other finds her bearings again. The key is that the stronger one must realize his partner is floundering, and be willing to accept the role of the stronger one.

Now I'm the one rambling...

That was a fine and insightful ramble, BG.