Love fades?

[Guest]

Everyone is always saying how love is grand, how love is great, and how it can conquer the world. It is better to love than not love at all. I do believe in that, and I do hope that someday, I will find that to be true. However, at the same time, I can't help but feel that love fades. I feel that love cannot last forever. Sure, you can care for someone forever, but all the passion that you may once have for that person can fade. It makes me sad to think that, but isn't it true? Is love truely a lasting feeling?

 

I am still at a young age. When I was younger, everyone has been telling me to marry for love. Now, as I am older, I have people telling me to marry for money. Marry for stability. Since love fades, the only bind that you have between you and your partner is that marriage paper, or other major responsibilities.. kids.. comfort.. etc. But not love.

 

Any thoughts, comments?

[BlockHead]

I happen to believe that marriage is a social and legal contract between a man and a woman. The purpose of marriage is to bind two people for the benefit of children. Raising children is extremely difficult, and a two-parent home is better suited for the children. Marriage is not an extended date.

 

Everyone is always saying how love is grand, how love is great, and how it can conquer the world.

I want to see the power of love burn holes through things.

I would love to play with a high-power CO2 laser (>200 Watts). Yes, it is insanely dangerous, but still, it would be fun.

 

However, at the same time, I can't help but feel that love fades. I feel that love cannot last forever.

There is love and there is an erotic sexual fantasy. What is the difference.

Erotic sexual fantasy: Effortless! Fades over time. Basically, ego boundaries temporarily collapse. Call it nature’s way of fooling two people into pairing with each other. From what I have read, this usually lasts for about three months.

Love: Requires effort! Self-sustaining. The hope is that real love will take root once the sexual fantasy fades away. It involves individual growth.

 

When I was younger, everyone has been telling me to marry for love.

Do you even know what love is?

Now, as I am older, I have people telling me to marry for money. Marry for stability.

Financial stability is a nice thing, but that doesn’t make a successful relationship.

 

I know this may seem like a radical idea, but I think you should look for a compatible partner. If you are going to live with this person, you will have to get along with this person.

 

If you are looking for romance, forget it, because that is a myth.

[Arabess]

Originally posted by Guest

Now, as I am older, I have people telling me to marry for money. Marry for stability. Since love fades, the only bind that you have between you and your partner is that marriage paper, or other major responsibilities.. kids.. comfort.. etc. But not love.

 

Any thoughts, comments?

 

Those things are very valid relationship keepers. For alot of people, they work quite well. For the ones it didn't work for....they end up on Prozac or having affairs. You have to inventory your own heart to find out what you can and can not live with.

 

I've said it before....and I'll say it again. If I don't roll over in the morning and want sex with the person next to me....all the stability, financial status and comfort in the world.....wouldn't mean a damn thing to me. I would be miserable.

 

Then again, there are people who place their values in another direction. Neither is right or wrong....it's just a personal call.

[Quixotic_Dancer]

Originally posted by Guest

I feel that love cannot last forever. Sure, you can care for someone forever, but all the passion that you may once have for that person can fade. It makes me sad to think that, but isn't it true? Is love truely a lasting feeling?

 

 

That's quite a profound question you've raised. I'm not sure I can offer a "spot-on" answer, but...well, I've thought some about this, too. And I think that part of the problem is that love is a pretty useless word. Everyone uses it as if everyone means the same thing by it, but do we? I've felt what I might call love for several men in my life, but each time, the amalgam of feelings was completely different! And they "felt" completely different to me, tasted differently in my heart, if that makes sense.

 

So, maybe one answer is not to focus on love, whether you feel it for someone, whether it fades, or ebbs and flows. Maybe its more helpful to hold a prism up to that love and break it up into its spectrum: The passion's still strong, but the respect has faded. Or the friendship's still there, but the lust band is now invisible. And then you can make the decision whether or not to shore up those apects of the love which...need it.

 

So, maybe is love isn't like a rainbow, with evenly spaced bands of color, maybe it's more like...um, a doppler shift?

 

I am still at a young age. When I was younger, everyone has been telling me to marry for love. Now, as I am older, I have people telling me to marry for money. Marry for stability. Since love fades, the only bind that you have between you and your partner is that marriage paper, or other major responsibilities.. kids.. comfort.. etc. But not love.

 

This seems to me like a very different question. This actually brings to mind something I just read in "The Power of Myth" by Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers. I'll try to paraphrase...Campbell said that the purpose of marriage was to join with the person you recognized as your missing half, and to form a unit that became more important to you than yourself. He said the dissolving of two separate people into a unity was what marriage was. Yielding to the needs of the single unit then became a natural thing. He said, "Your identity is in a relationship"..."It is, in a sense, doing one's own thing, but the one just isn't you, it's the two together as one." He went on to say that marriage was not about having children together, or combining incomes...those were purely secondary aspects of marriage, and marriages based on considerations like that would fail.

 

I don't know what that does for anyone else, but I found that passage really moving. I guess that Campbell is saying we should marry the person we can sacrifice our ego for, and that, if it's the right person, it won't even be difficult.

 

I wish I could be more clear right now...but ayway, that's my two cents.

[BlockHead]

Quixotic_Dancer

I guess that Campbell is saying we should marry the person we can sacrifice our ego for, and that, if it's the right person, it won't even be difficult.

I can’t think of a worse fate than losing one’s own ego boundaries. Most guys instinctively resist it.

 

Controlling People by Patricia Evans p33

Without a psychic boundary, we would be like drops of ink diffused in a pool of water---easily absorbed into other people’s definitions of us, even other people’s purposes. We would come to believe that they are our own, without even realizing it.

 

p35

Since little attention is given to the reality of a psychic boundary, people may mix up their own reality with that of another person. This carries a great significance, because it allows all kinds of problems to develop in all kinds of relationships.

 

p42

A woman I’ll call Betty walked into a café where I was having coffee with a friend. She was accompanied by her daughter, whom I’ll call Suzy, about seven years old.

“What kind of ice cream do you want?” asked Betty, as they looked over the flavors laid out in tubs below the glass-topped counter.

“Mom, I want vanilla,” said Suzy.

“Have chocolate chip,” said her mother.

“No. I’ll have vanilla.”

“You’d like chocolate-walnut better.”

“No. I want vanilla.”

“You don’t want vanilla. I know you prefer some kind of chocolate,” said her mother.

“I want vanilla.”

“You don’t want vanilla.”

“Yes I do.”

“Well, aren’t you a strange one,” said her mother.

Interesting. Betty projected her like of chocolate onto Suzy. I can see a similar thing happening in a relationship except that one partner surrenders.

[moimeme]

QD - I loved your analogy, but I think there's something elemental missing. Clearly, I'm not speaking from the experience of a lengthy marriage, but I think of my oldest, dearest friends. There is a deep, enduring affection for them which always lives in my heart. I may not notice it always, but it is definitely there. I cannot imagine but that that's what exists as the foundation for any long-term love. Yes, things like passion and lust may ebb and flow - though one hopes respect won't ebb - but underneath them all lives that affection; that bond that will not break.

 

This certainly seems true of the long-married and still-in-love couples I've known, anyway.

 

sacrifice our ego for

 

Hm. I might agree with the concept but not so much that wording. I'd be more inclined to nuance it towards the sense that one allows oneself to be completely vulnerable/open to that person without fear (in short, not dropping ego but dropping ego defense) and that sacrifice as gift (but NEVER unilaterally) is easy to offer.

[Quixotic_Dancer]

Originally posted by moimeme

sacrifice our ego for

 

I'd be more inclined to nuance it towards the sense that one allows oneself to be completely vulnerable/open to that person without fear and that sacrifice as gift (but NEVER unilaterally) is easy to offer.

 

Yeah, I wasn't that crazy about my wording either. I'm tired and not feeling that articulate now. I like your tweaking much better.

 

(Yes...tired...but I keep lookiing at posts and not going to bed...perhaps I should go add something to the Shackers Anonymous thread )

[moimeme]

...tired...but I keep lookiing at posts and not going to bed

 

Ahhhh. The hallmark of the addict LOL. The eyes are drooping and you can't sit up in the chair but you keep saying to yourself 'just one more little one'

 

BWAHAHAHAHAHAH we've hooked another one!