Define love!, Put on your rose tinted glasses Options

[MrRandomQuotes]

Mostly pointless, occationaly rewarding but mostly frustrating. Meh my cynacism. I need coffee to bring out the romantic.

[craziness]

*bump*

if love is true, can it overcome all feats? can you really experience true love more than once in a lifetime? do you ever stop loving someone once you have truly loved them?

it is so difficult to define love, it's such a fluid concept, so simple yet so impossible to grasp. i see it more as a force that overwhelms you, something you can't control and renders you powerless, stops your logical thought processes from functioning and makes you temporarily insane

[michael1384]

In an infinite number of parallel universes, this thread was entitled, "What is love?" and made me smile.

But is isn't in this one, so nyeh.

[gothictheysay]

if love is true, can it overcome all feats? can you really experience true love more than once in a lifetime? do you ever stop loving someone once you have truly loved them?

In short, no, yes, depends, according to me at least. I expect everyone would have different ideas on that, though. I think there can be things that get in the way of love that are out of someone's control - extreme long distance, for example - but it doesn't necessarily mean that the love isn't "true" if it can't overcome something. I thought that way for a while, but realized that there are some factors that affect our lives that can unfortunately get in the way.

Not sure I know what "true love" counts as, other than reciprocation. I find that concept a little odd. I think I would always have a tender spot for someone I loved, somewhere in me. But I definitely feel pretty differently towards a couple people I have loved, and while I still care about them, I wonder if "love" is the right word. It's a different kind of love, definitely.

[Hobbes]

I've heard a quote in the past, that sadly I know not the source of, and that has probably been extensively paraphrased so that Google is of no use, which goes something like this:

"To love someone is to educate them about who you are."

And whilst I can see that, in some ways, it doesn't sound like the most romantic bunch of words, it does make sense. It was said to me in an advisory manner when I had ended a relationship due to some misunderstandings, some personality clashes, and some total disregard for the person that I am/was.

There's a lot of implications in the sentence, I think, and most of them seem far beyond my capabilities of explanation. Make of it what you will.

Oh... and, incidentally, I don't think that it represents EVERYTHING regarding love.

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if love is true, can it overcome all feats?

Part of the answer to this is probably to question whether love is 'true' if only one person feels it? Is love something which comes from a person, or a partnership? If you are "in love" with someone, does that carry the same weight as two people who are "in love with each other"?

The reason I ask: you love your partner, but they cheat on you. Is this love? Is it a "feat to overcome"? I don't know.

Perhaps the more common illustration would be long-distance relationships, or a relationship where the partner becomes very ill ("in sickness and in health"). Many people would say that, regardless of the strength of love, a long-distance relationship will not last. Others - including many individuals on this forum, I suspect - would argue the opposite. Also, can love conquer the difficulties when one partner is no longer able to perform the necessary duties expected in a relationship? And I don't specifically mean sex. Physical disability and/or mental illness may be able to turn the person you love into a shadow of their former self. If they are no longer "the same", can love overcome that?

can you really experience true love more than once in a lifetime?

A friend of mine believes in soul-mates: that there is one person - and one person only - who "fits" you completely. Whilst I can be somewhat of a romantic idealist from time to time, I don't necessarily agree with this. Believers might claim that it is only 'true love' when it is with your soul mate, and that any previous love was not as real as you may have thought. And perhaps, if a relationship ends, maybe it didn't contain the level of love you'd estimated. But if you lose a partner in more tragic circumstances, would a future relationship take away that original love? I don't think so...

Personally, I think that true love can exist more than once.

do you ever stop loving someone once you have truly loved them?

I've been asking this a fair bit myself, recently. Do feelings for partners ever fully go away, even after the relationship ends? If I look back over my past relationships, in their various forms, I'd have to say that I have some form of feelings for each individual involved - but some of them are negative. They are still a by-product of the positive feelings I had at that time though.

My opinion is that, yes, you can stop loving a person you once loved. It might become a lessened feeling, or a dissipate over time, or turn into something more akin to resentment or regret. But I think, if you want it to, it can go.

it is so difficult to define love, it's such a fluid concept, so simple yet so impossible to grasp. i see it more as a force that overwhelms you, something you can't control and renders you powerless, stops your logical thought processes from functioning and makes you temporarily insane

Not sure I know what "true love" counts as, other than reciprocation. I find that concept a little odd. I think I would always have a tender spot for someone I loved, somewhere in me. But I definitely feel pretty differently towards a couple people I have loved, and while I still care about them, I wonder if "love" is the right word. It's a different kind of love, definitely.

Love is many different things, to many different people: some find love an obsessive pull, the desire to be with someone throughout every second; others find love to be inherently coupled with 'nesting' and family; I know several people who find very little difference between love and lust; and others would view love as the remaining contentment that exists when all other fleeting emotions have passed, when you still want to be with someone when the excitement of 'novelty' has gone.

My view? Probably a combination of these, and more besides. I don't mind admitting that I become emotionally attached to people rather quickly, and soon find myself questioning what I am feeling ("Is it love? Is it lust? Is it desire? It is need? Is it obsession?"). Being single also makes me question what I felt in previous relationships.

I don't think I could ever be so bold as to define love with any certainty. I have friends and family in "loving" relationships that, from my point of view, look to be full of upset, turmoil, misunderstanding, and disagreement. But I assume it works for them, and they feel it is love? Who am I to argue that MY definition is the right one?

[gothictheysay]

I don't mind admitting that I become emotionally attached to people rather quickly, and soon find myself questioning what I am feeling ("Is it love? Is it lust? Is it desire? It is need? Is it obsession?").

Ah yes - I have that problem too. I always want to jump in with the "l" word, and I have to hold my tongue for a bit.

It's interesting you mention relationships that seem troubled. I think it's very hard to tell when you are just disagreeing a lot, or working through difficulties, from when you are starting to get "bad for each other", as they say. I would think that my father and his girlfriend love each other, even though they argue quite often and seem unhappy more than I think I could tolerate in a relationship. Very interesting to ponder.

[Hobbes]

Ah yes - I have that problem too. I always want to jump in with the "l" word, and I have to hold my tongue for a bit.

In all my relationships, I have been fairly quick to use that dangerous "l" word. But I've been pretty much 100% certain that doing so wasn't going to scare her off. They all said it back, so it couldn't have been that bad

The one relationship where I held back, I almost literally did have to "hold my tongue". But she knew what I was about to say, and quizzed me on it

It's interesting you mention relationships that seem troubled. I think it's very hard to tell when you are just disagreeing a lot, or working through difficulties, from when you are starting to get "bad for each other", as they say. I would think that my father and his girlfriend love each other, even though they argue quite often and seem unhappy more than I think I could tolerate in a relationship. Very interesting to ponder.

A friend of mine has been with his girlfriend for about seven years, and witnessing their behaviour with one another and what they say about each other, I honestly have no idea how they are still together - and the majority of our mutual friends say the exact same thing. Perhaps, when they are alone together, they are an entirely different entity and we are all massively mistaken. But all I tend to hear about their relationship is, "I almost walked out," or "I almost packed his bags for him," or "I almost asked you if I could crash at yours".

I suppose "almost", is the key word. But still, I could not live in that kind of relationship...

..not again!

If my friends and I try to evaluate their relationship, our assumption is that they are mainly together because they are too scared of ever having to be apart again and doing things by themselves. A "relationship of convenience" is the label sometimes.

But we're probably being overly harsh, and misreading their partnership entirely. Still, it seems somewhat odd to us.