What qualifies as love and what does not? How do we define love? What pieces or specific things are necessary and sufficient for defining love? I believe in the very powerful, abstract concept of love. That it is this inexorable, unyielding force. The stuff of movies and romance novels. I believe that loving someone means that you want nobody else. That you want to be with them forever, and that you would accept the person you're with no matter what. That being said, I also believe that people change, and that you can fall out of love with them if you realize something about them that you didn't know before. These are sort of conflicting definitions, and so, it is obviously confusing. I rely on an inner sense to guide me through, but a definite definition would help because the inner sense may not be impartial or uninfluenced by the society in which I have grown. What is your definition of love? What must it include, and how do you know that you are in love?
My definition of love is caring about someone more than you care about yourself. Loving for the sake of being in love and feeling that high that comes from being in love is purely selfish and not true love; true love is loving someone because you would do absolutely anything for them and truly admire and respect them as people.
damn...I was gunna go that route, too. Way to shit in my cheerios! Love is an indescribable chemical imbalance, really. It makes people stupid and smart at the same time, all the while creating hormones and endorphins and all kinds of random chemical crap in your brain. I never know if I'm "in love" only because I judge it on how much I'm willing to do for the person and how much I care for their well-being. Right now, I guess you could say I'm "in love" with my boyfriend, but me being me, I can easily fall out of love if necessary. My heart is on constant 24 hour guard
Meliai took my answer, worded it better, and posted it for herself before I found the thread. Evidently, I am not loved by her.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3p0x4nEVMMM&feature=related"]YouTube - NIGHT AT ROXBURY - WHAT IS LOVE (WEDDING).mp4
I personally think people think about love too much and not actually feel it. Well let me elaborate... We all feel it, yes. BUT, we also think about it and ponder over it so much until we've got this fixed idea of what love "should be". I don't know if that's all that desirable in my opinion. To me, love is something that makes you feel one with the other party. You get that special connection when you love something or someone. When I was having a rough time a while ago, a very good friend of mine psychically/spiritually visited me from across the ocean, totally out of the blue. And she said to me exactly what I needed to hear. She is a friend, not a girlfriend, but we love each other. But it also doesn't mean it always "has to be" long lasting or else it's not true love type thing, either. For instance in romantic situations, some people are capable of genuinely loving each and every time they fall in love. And they pretty much almost die inside every time they become heartbroken. But what gets them back up in the end is love, too. Because they believe in it, they know what it feels like, and because they themselves are.
Hi all, new here and just stumbled upon this thread ... and thought it would be nice to make this my first post The basis for love is respect, something that - in my opinion - is a very rare thing. If you see how human beings treat each other on a day-to-day basis you'd have to come to the conclusion that there ain't too much love around.
Love is the willingness to sacrifice yourself (from the very small to the very large) for another person. The greeks were pretty smart in some ways... they talked about four different kinds of love: Storge, Eros, Philia and Agape. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_words_for_love
