EthanSPK Posted October 11, 2017 Share Posted October 11, 2017 Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more ♪ ♫ ------------- Hey pals, this is something I've been asking myself for a loooong time. What is love? Does it have a deep universal meaning, or is it subjective? I'd love to expand myself on this topic, but can't organize my ideas properly and would need tons of examples. Link to post Share on other sites
Hoosfoos Posted October 11, 2017 Share Posted October 11, 2017 From my experience, it's a neurochemical con job. 1 Link to post Share on other sites
Springsummer Posted October 11, 2017 Share Posted October 11, 2017 From my experience, it's a neurochemical con job. So that the music, movie and literary industries can con people's money. Link to post Share on other sites
Chilli Posted October 11, 2017 Share Posted October 11, 2017 Ahh , you need to organize thoughts on what love is , wtf for ????????? Believe me , once you've been in love you'll know all about it. you won't be here organizing thoughts and analyzing it, 2 Link to post Share on other sites
wimms Posted October 11, 2017 Share Posted October 11, 2017 To understand love it may help to understand what it is not, what is the opposite of it. Many subscribe to a view that opposite of love is indifference. It is not. Opposite of love is hate in its many forms, and at the core of any hate is REJECTION. Rejection is the deepest fear of all human beings. It comes in many forms and contexts, but if you mull over what is happening to you at any time, you can always sense that what really hurts the most in essence is rejection. So if the opposite of love is rejection, then we can see that love is ACCEPTANCE. And thats the fundamental truth of love. Some may see that as Agape but it's not. This fundamental truth underlies all forms of love. And there are many forms of love. You love coffee, you love your pet, you love your child, siblings, movies, friends, traveling, your lover, etc. and they are all somewhat different kinds of love. But underlying them all is the same common theme - acceptance. Without acceptance, there is no love. Acceptance can come without expectations or with them. When you feel acceptance with no expectations, it is called unconditional love. You can't be disappointed when you do not impose any expectations to be met. If you simply experience something with full acceptance of whatever it is, this is love right there. Even indifference can be a form of love. When you require expectations to be met to be acceptable for you, this is conditional love. It is needy, fragile, fearful, unreliable. It can always turn in a snap to hate and rejection. And this is how we hurt the ones we love the most. Any expressed inconvenience in a form of accusation of the other is basically rejection of their being who they are in the moment. They failed to meet your conditions to be loved. It can be very short and even unnoticable event in the relationship being sustained by a longer term general acceptance and is easily overlooked, but any anger, judgement, contempt is communicating rejection for not meeting your expectations. This is why it is so hard to love someone who is negative and belittling, they way too often exhibit rejection and without even awareness it triggers your deepest fears of rejection. This hurts. The more open and vulnerable you are to another person, the more it hurts. This in turn triggers your protection mechanisms, which deals with unacceptable sensation of pain with .. rejection. There is another way, accepting unacceptable as is and focusing on how to improve the situation together without judgement and accusations, but by diverting the source of the pain from the person you claim to love to the problem at hand. Acceptance is what builds up intimacy, trust, openness. Any rejection murders it one bit at a time. Feeling being accepted as you are with no signs of rejection of any parts of you is what feeling being loved is. The mere lack of rejection is sufficient to feel loved. Infatuation or falling in love occurs as a process of mutual acceptance and incremental exposure of oneself to the other in their imperfect form, craving for acceptance. If acceptance happens, validation occurs and this feels good. Infatuation also blinds us and encourages acceptance of what we'd otherwise might have found unacceptable. It's a trap. Acceptance does not even need to be real. It can be imagined. Thats how limerence occurs. Most modern relationships are conditional love at its worst. You don't meet my list of expectations? I don't love you anymore.. Of course no relationship can be completely unconditional. Having conditions isn't bad, it is necessary. It's how pathetic or needy your conditions are and how you express them that makes or breaks the relationship. Even the best of relationships are a mix of conditional and unconditional love. It's what the mix is that defines how good it is. There is so much hate and rejection around us everywhere it is saddening. This forum is no exception and for good reasons, but there is still too much excessive hate even in the most hurtful relationship failures. Of course, I'm not negating anything that's been said about love, it is also neurochemical, all other descriptions are valid in their context, it's just one way to look at it that helps me notice love or the lack of it, and to cultivate meaningful connection and growth as opposed to friction and fights. 1 Link to post Share on other sites
Cookiesandough Posted October 11, 2017 Share Posted October 11, 2017 Love is a really broad word. 1 Link to post Share on other sites
thefooloftheyear Posted October 11, 2017 Share Posted October 11, 2017 Never having to say you're sorry? TFY 2 Link to post Share on other sites
nospam99 Posted October 11, 2017 Share Posted October 11, 2017 My first 'applause', no, standing ovation post: @wimms, wow, well said Link to post Share on other sites
Mysterio Posted October 11, 2017 Share Posted October 11, 2017 Love to me is caring about someones well being beyond your own. Be it a pet/kids/ParentsFriends/Lovers. 1 Link to post Share on other sites
blondygirl13 Posted October 11, 2017 Share Posted October 11, 2017 love is so blind , love is when someone is being with you unconditionally and care about you as much as they do Link to post Share on other sites
umirano Posted October 11, 2017 Share Posted October 11, 2017 (edited) Being in love is a physiologically fueled drug trip. To love is to uncompromisingly act in someone else's best interest, without expecting anything in return. Love as such is hard to define. Maybe it's a word like time. It doesn't really exist as a physical entity. But it's a concept that we need to describe our world. Edited October 11, 2017 by umirano Link to post Share on other sites
taiko Posted October 12, 2017 Share Posted October 12, 2017 So that the music, movie and literary industries can con people's money. No so that the resulting side effect, the children will have a team caring for them. And should the parents make it to senior citizen status that someone would provide companionship Link to post Share on other sites
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