Ok.. I'm feeling mildly soppy.. meaning I'll probably regret making this post and showing my occasional soppyness.

Consider this a game of defining the undefinable. I don't know if you can define it, but just to reply with "It's not something you can define" would be boring, and I may be forced to make a " " face at you. I don't like being mean, so don't do it! *ahems..*

So yeah.. go ahead, try and define love in any way you can, a poem, a statement, a definition, whatever.

If you're feeling sick just reading this post then.. sorry! But really.. it's christmas soon! Don't be all bah humbug... .

When you'd put someone elses life before yours.

An intense feeling of deep affection for another.

A nice, sterile Psychological answer for you there.

When the life you share is more important to you than your successes alone.
When you would be willing to die rather than live without the one you love.
The deep feeling of warmth you get every time you see your partner, even when you've been together for years.

I may come back and try to do familial love later when I've thought it over.

Love is one of those few transcendent things that require no definition. Love simply is, and that's all that needs to be said.

Not needing someone, but choosing to be there because you want to be around them.

When you get stupid about someone and don't see their flaws, or at least see them and think they're cute. Once you move past that and find out that their flaws are annoying, you decide that they're worth dealing with anyway.

When you feel you're half of something, instead of feeling like you're complete on your own.

>_>

vvv *points to signature* vvv

I seem to recall seeing a fridge magnet once suggesting that it was remembering to leave the toilet seat down.

Caring for someone more than you care about yourself.
Feeling ridiculously tender towards them for no reason at random times.
Trusting them, and being able to have fun with them, being able to laugh with them.
Missing them all the time when they're not around, even when you're out with other people, and feeling like you could stand to be around them all the time without getting pissed off all the time.

There's like loads more. It's butterflies in the stomach and grinning when your phone lights up and you know it's from them. It's indescribable.

</hopelessromantic>

When I get tingles down my spine and butterflies in my belly when I am waitinting for that person to open their front door.

When I know my life would never be the same if they died.

When I can be so open and vunerable to a person knowing they will never judge me, just want to understand me more.

When I hug a person and I hear a kind of white noise, because everything else is irrelevant, and only that person in my arms and the feelings we have for eachother are in my mind.

It's rarely so dramatic as giving your life for someone. More often it's quiet and seems ordinary to everyone except those who are experiencing it.

There are so many different forms of love that I don't pretend to know them all, much less define all of them in a concise statement.

For me...it's something like Pat's signature: we're both weird, and our weirdness is compatible. We're probably even weirder together than apart, and that's okay because it makes us laugh.

My life isn't dramatic or glamorous, but most days I feel like I'm the luckiest person alive and no one even knows it. I hope that's one commonality between all forms of love. Everyone should feel that way at least once in their lives.

(I take no responsibility for how embarrassingly soppy I am in this post. I'm under the influence of cold meds. Everyone is bound to be more mushy then, right? )

Reason I started this topic is because my emotional vocabulary is pretty much pathetic.. it's like awful... but here's my turn at this game I've invented.

When they can do something you normally find annoying, but it seems nice when they do it.

When they they smile it draws out your own, and when they're upset you are too.

When you buzz over rediculously silly things like leaning against each other on a train seat.

When you find yourself doing things you wanted to hurl when you saw other soppy couples do and love it!

When you'd treasure a hand made gift from them, over a gold bar from a stranger.

If I could only choose one statement that i had to come up with myself: "Love is when you're content with someone"

I'm content with my math teacher, but she's a small, angry Korean woman who happens to be very good at teaching math (being why I am content with her)--please tell me we are not in love.

I also have no real business being in this topic, because I don't quite know what love is. BUT

Waikiki (^)says that love is light. If it's right. If it's right. If it's right. I think I'll steal their definition

Love? I call him Kai and he enriches my life in a million different ways every single day.

There's no better, purer love then what you get from your own child - especially when they're younger, before life has a chance to jade them at all. In his eyes, I can do no wrong, EVERYTHING I do is hilarious and when you get a smile or a laugh, well, it's straight from the heart. No pretences.

Outside of him - I would define love as being absolutely prepared to put that certain someone before yourself no matter what. Knowing that you're a better person for being with them and endeavouring to continue to make yourself a better person in order to keep yourself in their esteem.

Ahhh, beer and stupid 'o clock postings. Life doesn't get much better than this.

Me and my (now ex) boyfriend talked about this a few times. What is love? I'd throw an idea at him and he'd criticise it for whatever reason. I said alot of things people above had said, and alot of it came around to "that could be being naieve or ignorant' which is very true. Alot of times when we're in 'love' the person isn't necissarially "good" for us, but it may seem like its the best thing in the world at the time.

For me, I'd describe it as some sort of emotional attatchment, weather due to being needy of attention or needy of something material they give me. I'd also say its something like always wanting to work out problems with the person. I know people put up with alot of s*** from their significant others, or even parents, and they're still willing to be with the person and learn a new way of living with eachother.

Ah, dont you love how this topic brings the sappyness out of everyone....

*Roar* I bring soppyness to the forums.. fear me! Fore I am Soppzilla...

/spam

A warmth that wraps you up and feels like it could sustain you forever. A horrid longing when you are apart, but the slightest memory can give you incredible joy. Being unable to concentrate on anything for long without thoughts drifting to them, but embracing it like an exciting new wonder each and every time.

Unfortunately I'm not very good with flowery words. I just know that if you share it with someone then you are the luckiest person to ever live. And once its broken it's like a suffocating weight that crushes your chest, and you feel nothing could bring joy again.

It's one of those things - so very hard to define and yet so very, very easy to abuse and lose in an instant. *shrug*

/spam I was suppose to go to bed two hours ago. This is why. ^

Yeah, tell me about it... you live and learn I guess. *shrug*

QUOTE

Alot of times when we're in 'love' the person isn't necissarially "good" for us, but it may seem like its the best thing in the world at the time.

I would argue that's still love. I don't believe anyone here has actually said love has to be good for you. I've cared extremely deeply for people who have been no good for me at all, but the feelings were still there. Just because they didn't care about me doesn't mean I didn't care for them.

I didnt say it wasnt love though I guess maybe the quotations around it kind of implied it, I think I was referring to some people in lust. I know alot of times someone isnt good for me and I care about them very deeply, one of the sad things about love. =(

I was watching a movie last night that stated, "Love is an incurable sickness" and I think that about sums it up.

Witless, were you asking for us to define romantic love, or all and any kinds of love?

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

*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

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.

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.

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.

--





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?



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.



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.





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?

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.

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



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.