What defines love????

So ask me a direct question. Sorry I am drinking. But I will answer honestly.

 

I was asking for clarification but again i feel you are just being evasive.

 

I am not.

I married for love at the age of 16, we are still together.
Love grows as I do.

How am I being evasive?

 

Then what does foreseeing relationships ending or destructing have to do with drinking with friends? And what does drinking with friends have to do with defining love?

I'm grateful you asked a direct question.

 

If one is distracted by others as it is easily done, the temptation is a human trait.
I have been tempted, I cannot lie.
But my gut indistinct told me it was wrong.
Love must be remaining faithful.
But that is just my view.

 

Thank you. But i also feel relationships can be much too complex to see where it leads. People change, situations change, etc. Drinking with friends is only a small example.

Apologies if you weren't trying to avoid my posts.

 

No, I would not avoid you.
Yes, a small example.
Once bitten, twice shy, is an old proverb, it does explain some things.
You can PM me for more info.

 

Love is one of the most common words in the English language and it has many different contexts and meanings

Material Love.
Can include anything from arts, including music, to material items such as cars, to simple everyday things such as your favorite foods
These can change over the years as you grow older

Love of your family.
This is probably (or should be) the longest lasting love and include both your parent and children. Not to mention your grandchildren (which I am soon to experience) and other relatives.

Personal Love.
No need for explanation, but when solely driven by sexual desire, without friendship and shared interests, it can be very short lived.

The strange one.
Friendship growing into love between 2 people brought together by shared interests who accept that they will most likely never meet.
To me, the finest example is the relationship between Tchaikovsky and madam Von Meck. They shared thousands of letters, which now fill two volumes of a book.
My second example must be 84 Charring Cross Road. When made into a film, many people were very disappointed when it beat their film by being chosen by the Queen for the Royal Film Performance.

 

Wonderful post.
Thank-you.


Love is never easy to explain to those who have never experienced it.

 

you know, that is an interesting question and I am sure there are different answers for every one. But, I would think it would start with physical attraction and maintained by the closeness that is developed over the years. If there is a break in the connection or closeness, say one person gains a greater interests, whether it be work, a hobby, or another person, then generally speaking it is over.

 

That can be very true.
I know you are a very loving and dedicated person.

 

I guess love could be defined as putting one's needs above yours in the interest of supporting and nurturing a relationship. But it is more complicated than that, so perhaps a combination of the greek words of storge, eros and agape. Meaning it begins with physical attraction and the erotic component and over the years you develop a fondness that transcends friendship and hopefully becomes unconditional or agape at some point to where you will do anything within reason to keep that person happy. But none of the other components ever go away, they are just changed as you grow to know each other better. You can not have one without the other.

 

Very true. I have two music threads, one for love songs, and one for songs that make you cry.
I know the songs that make you cry are more popular. Now, what does that tell us?

Love can be blind, love can be impulsive, love can be possessive, love can change us.
Is it better to have loved and lost, then never to have loved at all?

 

For a long time, when I was younger, I thought love was something that didn't concern me.
Whenever I thought I was in love I ended up being rejected so I came to think I wasn't made for this sort of things.
At the same time, I spent a lot of time thinking about what love was, what made people fall in love and what kept a couple together or made them separate at a certain time.
I saw my parents, they had been together for many years, since they were young. I don't know if they really loved each other after all this time. But they were together, even now that they are old. Maybe once couples were together for the children, out of habit, for convenience or simply, by external observers, we do not really know what bond holds them together, and it is not our business.
There are couples in which the two are very different in character, others in which they seem to share their world view. Others where tastes are completely different. Others who quickly burn their relationship in passion until then they tire of each other. Some, however, almost seem, from what they say, that they are not interested in passion and sex at all. Of course over time, they tell us that the passionate aspect is destined to diminish and other are the things that eventually hold a couple together.
Yet I know couples who have been together for a long time and seem to be well together and having fun after so many years.
They are normal people, they respect each other's freedom. Even when they disagree with each other, they eventually accept themselves as they are. Sometimes you get so used to seeing them together that you can no longer imagine them alone, each on his own.
I once listened to an interview on the radio with a philosopher who spoke of love and I was impressed by one of his sentences. Speaking of the death of his wife, he said that from that moment in his life the witness of his existence had been missing.
As for me, I don't know if I will ever have such deep thoughts. I always remain very ignorant on the matter.
I believe that a relationship is something that is always in the making and that much depends on how much the people involved cares to keep it alive.
It almost seems like a compromise between knowing the other well and the fact that there is always something hidden, so you can discover something new.
Security and trust and uncertainty. Nothing is taken for granted.
The erotic aspect I believe has a fundamental importance at the beginning of a relationship.
Over time it is important that this aspect is never overlooked, maybe it takes a lot of imagination and fantasy, and a good chemistry between the two helps.

 

What a brilliant and thoughtful post.
I think you understand love.
I really hope you find it in your life.

 

Thank you.
Actually, I've been dating someone special for me for a year and three months.
To be honest, the thing that pushed me the most at first was a strong physical attraction.
When I met her, I found her a very interesting person but I was very curious from a sexual point of view, also because she is a very particular woman and very different from the others I have known.
I believe she fell in love first. I had the impression that she would do anything for me, and I don't deny that I took advantage of the situation. Or at least that was my feeling about it, I felt guilty at the beginning.
While in her social life and work she showed to be self-confident, in moments when the situation between us became intimate, she had a thousand doubts because she thought that I did not like her due to the particular physical structure of her body. I always reassured her and, on this, I wasn't lying because I was really attracted to her physically and mostly I was very curious about what sex would be like with her. At the same time I was taking great care of my appearance, I assiduously attended the gym to train and often went swimming. When we met on the weekend I tried to show myself to her at my best. Until finally she gave in and we made love. I have tried to be a very attentive, tender and caring, but very determined lover. In the end we had a full sexual intercourse.
Then we did it again because she liked it too. And in the end we spent the whole weekend making love and cuddle each other. After love, she curled up on my body and abandoned herself to sleep on my body, in my hug. It was as if she felt safe in that place. It was a situation of great tenderness, until she woke up and looked for me or it was I who tried to wake her with kisses and caresses.
When I had to go home I was terribly sorry. When I was alone I felt an almost physical lack.
Now the thirty months mentioned in the article in your link have not yet passed
Who knows

 

Love is as mysterious as its ever been.

Call it chemical; we don't know what chemicals are. We don't know how an atom relates to time. We don't know anything.

 

When you start falling in love, your brain releases chemicals like vasopressin, adrenaline, dopamine, and oxytocin that light up your neural receptors and make you feel both pleasure and a euphoric sense of purpose. In short: you're addicted to the one you love. "Romantic love is an addiction.

 

What I do know is that I can love with the intensity and purity that many claim you ONLY have for a child. It's easier when nature is helping, and it comes more naturally maybe, but it is not true that you cannot experience that depth or type of love any other way.

 

That isn't a response to what I'm saying. You can name these chemicals anything you like. I could call adrenaline "magic fairy dust," and it would give me as much an inkling as to what they actual are in time and space. The truth is, we still lack a fundamental understanding of the atom (and, at the moment, it seems hopeless.) Ever hear of the double slit experiment? Particle or wave?

No one knows what the atom is; therefore, no one knows what a chemical is. We don't understand matter; we don't understand time; we don't understand space. But oh, the naming of things, we have a good grip on that.