If you will indulge me ...

[genderbender]

but seriously Bender ... have you never pondered a hypothetical question before? i didn't mean that this thread was a game ... in spite of the fact that i truly do know how to give and receive love ... real love ...

and you know what ... i think i would rather be the person who is loved more .... cause it is hard to continuously live with the pain of loving one more than the other has to give ... been there done that ... and i don't want to be there again ...

I've been married four times. I've had an extended affair with a married woman. I've had a whole shitload of messed up relationships. The drama of the extended affair was wilder than you can imagine. I demanded of her that she be monogamous with me and she agreed! Besides, she lived a thousand miles away and we only got together once a month for about five or six days. She'd leave her daughter with her husband and fly to where I lived for six days of fun and games.

I mention that not to show off, but to say I know how fucked up relationships can be. Its painful to love someone whose affections aren't reciprocated equally. I recognize that my neediness has driven me to do many self-destructive things. I also know that out of my neediness I've hungered for women to fall in love with me while I played the "take it or leave it" game. There's great power in that, especially when you find a needy woman hungry for attention.

The reason this particular hypothetical doesn't interest me is that it suggests there is something good about either arrangement. I think there's a recipe for pain here, a pain I've lived through more times than I can to think about. I'm much more interested, as I say above, in exploring what keeps us from giving and receiving love. When we're able to do that we have the possibility of creating love that is reciprocal, founded in kindness and trust.

Hypotheticals are fine, but this one touches a tender spot for me.

 

[BiBabe:)]

I think I'd rather be loved by someone more than I love them. Being loved gives a person a feeling like none other. Back a year ago when I was a sophmore in college, a guy I was friends with told me that he was in love with me. The feeling that this man gave me inside when he said those beautiful, kind words to me was like none other. It made me feel so great.

I have never been in love with someone. Unfortuanately I haven't felt that emotion towards another. I do love many, but I am not in love with anyone. A friend of mine, however, is in love with a guy who doesn't return her love. The way she has described it to me, she feels empty inside.

I never want to feel empty inside, especially with my love-life. Therefore, I'd rather be loved more than I love, than love more than I'm loved. But that's just me.

Until later

Stacie

 

[DriveSouth]

I have never been in love with someone. Unfortuanately I haven't felt that emotion towards another. I do love many, but I am not in love with anyone. A friend of mine, however, is in love with a guy who doesn't return her love. The way she has described it to me, she feels empty inside.

Stacie

Not sure I'd agree that love is an emotion...