View Full Version : What is Love?
What is it? Many people have many definitions, but what is love to you.
Ah, the age old question. Pondered by legendary philosophers such as Aristotle and Haddaway.
Obviously, it's going to mean different things to different people, and moreover, there are many different kinds of love. Still, of all the famous quotes trying to put the most intense human emotion into words, this one has always come nearest to the truth for me (the underlined part is my own):
"Today I begin to understand what love must be, if it exists. When we are parted, we each feel the lack of the other half of ourselves. We are incomplete like a book in two volumes of which the first has been lost. That is what I imagine love to be: incompleteness in absence."
-- Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
Tacitus
08-06-07, 07:13 PM
Live is that sick feeling you get in the put of your stomach while still being able to gaze into someone's eyes and smile for hours on end.
If you break, they'll be there to fix it. If they break you'll happily sacrifice everything to fix them.
That slight feeling of panic when you wake up in an empty bed....yeah I still get it. :)
spudracer
08-06-07, 07:41 PM
"...oh baby, don't hurt me...don't hurt me no more..."
:rotfl:
On a serious note, What is Love is a song by the group Haddaway that was made popular by the Chris Kattan/Will Ferrell movie Night at the Roxbury.
m0dern_pr0phet
08-06-07, 11:35 PM
Love is waking up at 6 in the morning to catch a train for one hour into the city to have coffee with someone before they start work.
Love is when my girlfriend finally agrees to sit down and watch the Star Wars Trilogy with me.
I'll be sure to let everyone know when that happens...
Banggagiba
08-07-07, 05:24 AM
Love is the best excuse to act stupid. :D
Love is!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0cCD8lLsTo&mode=related&search=
Movie_watcher_18
08-07-07, 10:48 AM
did not get that video!!!
i would not know what love feels like cuz i have never been in( boyfriend love)
but i think you should be bestfriends with someone, and know everything about them
undercoverlover
08-07-07, 08:14 PM
Live is that sick feeling you get in the put of your stomach while still being able to gaze into someone's eyes and smile for hours on end.
If you break, they'll be there to fix it. If they break you'll happily sacrifice everything to fix them.
That slight feeling of panic when you wake up in an empty bed....yeah I still get it. :)
exactly
Holden Pike
08-07-07, 08:25 PM
http://photo.sing365.com/music/picture.nsf/Warren-Zevon-photo/0C66D4F9090AB3C548256C950008DD12/$file/Warren+Zevon+.jpg
"You can't start it like a car
You can't stop it with a gun..."
I sometimes think people see love as dependending totally on somebody. The whole 'you complete me' attitude means that if that person you 'love' were somehow not around (sickness, break-up ect..) then you would fall to pieces. If our partner becomes our source of happiness then if we have a fight with them or get angry with them it will affect everything else in our lives. Does love mean your love has to become the centre of your universe?
Maybe there's another kind of love? A love that comes out of being able to be happy without that person, but then meeting that person makes you even happier. Prior to meeting my special girl I learned how to be open with close friends or family about pretty much anything, how to have heaps of fun with friends apart from having a girlfriend. No single person can make your life full of joy because ultimately they aren't perfect. True love as i've found it to be isn't temporary or fleeting, isn't about making that person the centre of your universe, but rather for me it's a longlasting closeness with her that makes everything i enjoy so much more enjoyable. Even with her faults and her ability to make me feel as tiny as a mouse, she makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside whenever i see her. To feel so safe and calm when she's nearby is a real comfort. I see it like two people who are complete and happy in and of themselves, joining together like two streams making a rushing river. Propelling each other forward in the same direction.
I'm thinking out loud a bit here, but yeah that's what i reckon.
http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h122/js0573/Movie%20Posters%20and%20Promos/saturdaynightlive.jpg
spudracer
08-10-07, 07:48 AM
Sorry jrs, I'm gonna have to one-up you here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmQeIyGPByM
Tacitus
08-10-07, 09:09 AM
"...oh baby, don't hurt me...don't hurt me no more..."
:rotfl:
Haddaway? Good Lord! :D
I sometimes think people see love as dependending totally on somebody. The whole 'you complete me' attitude means that if that person you 'love' were somehow not around (sickness, break-up ect..) then you would fall to pieces. If our partner becomes our source of happiness then if we have a fight with them or get angry with them it will affect everything else in our lives. Does love mean your love has to become the centre of your universe?
I'm thinking out loud a bit here, but yeah that's what i reckon.
I like the way you think :yup: I say to my clients, they need to work on being happy without a partner, if someone comes along, they become a bonus to their life, not their life :nope:
Powdered Water
08-13-07, 07:54 PM
"Love is A Battlefield" Pat Benatar
Yes i just went there.
Johnny Dangerously
08-14-07, 09:46 PM
Love is the ultimate restriction while simultaneously being the ultimate freedom.
Love is an extreme and its never a balance. Love will make you do the most courageous things, love will make you do the dumbest things that this world can offer you.
Love can fill your day to where nothing can bring it down, love can also destroy your life or possibly end it.
What is love? Its the most unbalanced legal drug in the world today in which everybody is an addict.
Iroquois
08-30-07, 05:54 AM
"Falling in love is the ultimate act of revolution, of resistance to today's tedious, socially restrictive, culturally constrictive, humanly meaningless world." -- The CrimethInc. Ex-Workers' Collective
Why should I tell you?:rotfl:
Love is chocolate, plain and simple.
Well OK not really, but it comes damn close.
Ðèstîñy
09-18-07, 03:53 AM
L is for the way you look at me
O is for the only one I see
V is very, very extraordinary
E is even more than anyone that you adore
Love is all that I can give to you
Love is more than just a game for two
Two in love can make it
Take my heart and please don't break it
Love was made for me and you
(trumpet instrumental)
L is for the way you look at me
O is for the only one I see
V is very, very extraordinary
E is everything for you and me
Love is all that I can give to you
Love is more than just a game for two
Two in love can make it
Take my heart and please don't break it
Love was made for me and you
Love was made for me and you
Love was made for me and you
Love is chocolate, plain and simple.
Well OK not really, but it comes damn close.
Chocolate is heaven http://bestsmileys.com/angles/3.gifhttp://bestsmileys.com/angles/5.gif
http://bestsmileys.com/angles/6.gif
something that doesnt exist
thmilin
09-18-07, 06:49 PM
i agree with yoda, spooky, and the revolutionaries.
i'm a pessimist and an optimist about this. i agree it shouldn't "complete you" - you should be MOSTLY complete before you may actually encounter a healthy version. and there are, as others have said, many versions. platonic, familial, romantic ...
but whichever side you look at it from, the desirable one, I should think, is healthy. that doesn't mean we DO the healthy love, however. i think some of us would agree the "all consuming, you complete my existence and without you i am nothing" love may not be healthy.
however ... i do think many ... most ... all? of us actually want that, healthy or not.
it's something timeless we can't get rid of as humans.
because, as others have noted, love can be downright dangerous and make us do stupid sh|t. it can make us change into other people, do things we'd never have done.
if it's a positive, healthy love, those things we change into and do are GOOD things. if not healthy, we behave like addicts run amock. suspicious and possessive or giving up our thoughts to the other person or cutting others out of our life to satisfy them or ourselves or locking ourselves away with them and gluttoning away like a junkie with a crack needle or a food addict with a fridge full of Bad Food.
love is like alcohol. taken in moderation, it can add value and fun to your life. it can make you feel brave and wise and free and happy.
love is a feeling.
however, it is also a bond.
that's the clincher. some of us are talking about bonds and some of us are talking about the feelings we get from those bonds. two different things.
then there's ideal love - what we think we want or say we want or know we want.
then there's real love - what you actually get, have, experience, or do when you're in the situation and have to be human and live with it.
--
if we take the absence theory, that applies to all sorts of love. you love your dog, you love your mother, you love your husband equally if one of them goes missing you feel the absence and hurt. but of course, most people would love all those things in different ways and feel the absence in different ways/levels.
--
i think it's not so much absence but fulfillment after absence. or rather, knowledge of the fulfilling satisfaction you WILL have when you are reunited with that which you love.
you do not love chocolate, necessarily. you deduct that you love chocolate because you enjoy a feeling when you are not eating chocolate that you know what eating chocolate is like, and can plan and anticipate the next time you'll eat chocolate. while you are eating the chocolate, you are revelling in reuniting with the chocolate sensation you so enjoy and are already thinking about the fact that you will be SEPARATED again from the chocolate ... only to repeat the cycle.
--
ideally ...
loving another is a selfless giving and deference to another's well being that ends up giving back to you. you didn't give to receive in the first place, you give for the joy in whatever loss of self, because you take pleasure in it and see it as no loss. you take joy in caring for another's emotions and well being. you take joy in taking that joy. it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, a self-fuelling engine. that person gives back, for the same reason. you feed one another's souls, in giving.
you're flawed of course so there will be mistakes and corrections to the fuel intake valves, machine, gas used. readjustments happen. fights, apologies, forgiveness, because you both so long to continue giving and having the love of the other, you'll naturally correct yourselves.
ironically, as bound to break as we are, as humans, we are as bound to fix it.
however, being IN love is an entirely different issue. IN love is being caught up in that engine and being willing to give almost anything for the joy of the giving engine. you dont' care if you haven't slept in 72 hours while having sex, you will keep going until you pass out. etc. you don't care if you have to flip off your whole family and elope to get married, or you met The One and they're the same gender as you. In love is the newness that comes with having found someone you believe to be your self perpetuating love engine "other half" and you are giddy with the discovery.
You could be absolutely wrong but you hope you aren't.
Until you discover otherwise, you enjoy the "love feeling." Which isn't the same as "loving another" or "being in love."
The "love feeling" is the feeling of chocolate I described.
The "knowing" deep down, no matter what, that you can trust in that person, that flawed as you both are, different as you both are, what you share is unique, unlikely to break, more likely to strengthen over time, a knowing so ultimately fulfilling to you both as a pair in a way it would never be fulfilling to you both in other pairs (it could be more or less fulfilling, but you would never know that, until it happened).
--
I think the "knowing" is the love. The real essence. It's the same knowing that has a married couple who lived together 50 years die within two days of each other. They're satisfied. They had the love.
I think the "knowing" is the love. The real essence. It's the same knowing that has a married couple who lived together 50 years die within two days of each other. They're satisfied. They had the love.
:bawling:
fbuenanry
09-22-07, 06:28 AM
love is unexpainable and unstoppable feeling..it made you happy, sad, hurt,blah, blah..it's undefined feeling.
Holden Pike
09-22-07, 10:23 AM
According to Linus van Pelt, Love is...Security.
http://bestuff.com/images/images_of_stuff/210x600/linus-van-pelt-6708.jpg
Sexy Celebrity
09-22-07, 12:41 PM
It's the same knowing that has a married couple who lived together 50 years die within two days of each other. They're satisfied. They had the love.
My great-grandparents both died in July 1988. She died on the 19th and he died on the 28th. Oddly, 1928 is the year they got married.
Xui Wan
09-25-07, 03:57 PM
What is love?
hmm, such a hard thing to describe! I know it changes as life goes forward, I know everyone of my relationships were based on "LOVE" the feeling of love that I had understood to be love. At one time in my life, I thought it to be that feeling of needing another person, that feeling of never being alone and being happy and content in each other presence. I thought it to be a fulfilling feeling of what a man and a woman do. As I grew older I learned that Love was not jealous, however this aspect was very difficult to learn, as it meant the basis of my relationships were not really based on love but more a state of pride and lust! I have learned that love is being ok with or with out someone. Love can handle break ups. Love can handle time. Love makes you want to be the best person you can be with or without the person of its affection. Love changes for better, if it seems you go crazy without it then it truely can't be love. Love is sane. Love makes you want to do. Love is warm and never hurting. I have found the love I carry for my family, friends and partners of past relations to be very simular in that there is a deep respect. A respect for who they are and who they are becoming, I have found my love for my ex's to be very great, I know that I will never be a part of their lives in the context that I once was, however that I do appreciate the role they played in my life, and the teachings about love they have taught me. I think Love is one of those life long lessons that one must learn and perfect over the course of ones life. Many things affect how we percieve love, how we were treated as children, how we learned to love one another and it is our life process to relearn how to love and find the truer of happiness and Love better.
I too think that love is that which comes only after Loving oneself... I don't think you can truely give love if you have not come to a point of giving it to yourself, however I believe you can give comfort and feelings of LOVE.
two halves will never make two wholes... I think in order to have the love you so diserve one must first love and take care of the one who will be with you always... YOURSELF!
but as spooky put it...
just thinking out loud is all...
Xui
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just thinking out loud is all...
Xui
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Not bad thoughts :yup:
VeronicaJ
09-27-07, 12:59 PM
Love is..
that one feeling, sometimes it feels like you're drunk, without the woozy sight and the hangover the morning after, for it takes away all your rationality, and makes you trust on your instinct more than ever. It's like flying in an airplane, only without the plane, just the feeling your stomach gets twisted, but you don't need to vomit.
Love is, the drug that's more expensive than cocaine, and more healthy than a paprika, but yet it is not for sale
It's wonderful, oh how i love Love.
thebest
09-27-07, 03:01 PM
I always thought true love was the soul's recognition of its counterpoint in another.
The Greeks thought about and defined love as 5 different types. There's lust,the Jedi idea of unconditional love of all beings,the way a man loves a fine cuban cigar,familial/friendly love and the kind we're all talking about. I made a speech once about how love is a promise that you will do everything in your power to protect and fulfill another person without feeling you're detracting from yourself.
Plus it's scary. Freakin' pant-wetting.
Banggagiba
09-28-07, 09:10 AM
Love? Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate. - John Milton (The Devil's Advocate) :D
Okay, no long screed from me on this one. Love is the feeling in the pit of your stomach when what you love isn't near. In essence love like so much else can only be defined in its absence. When ya got it, it isn't a factor, when ya don't its definition is crystal clear.
Chocolate is more like sex than love, fleeting but oh so wonderful. Love is more permanent. I don't feel empty without chocolate.
Johnny Dangerously
12-10-07, 02:48 AM
id like to also add that love is blind optimism :)
Lockheed Martin
12-10-07, 07:29 AM
How'd I miss this topic? I've been thinking about love a lot lately, primarily the lack of it.
"Love is our response to our highest values." - Ayn Rand
For me, this is the closest to a true definition of love I've ever heard. The thing that survives the neurotransmitter imbalance, the thing that lasts well into old age is not just an evolutionary relic, true it's forged in the flames of that passion but it's a far stronger, nobler thing.
True love is a mutual sense of value and respect, a profound knowledge that the person you love understands you as you understand them. Two people forming an enduring bond based on appreciation of the same values, the same understanding of the world and the same ambitions. I've never held the belief that opposites attract, which is more of a mutual dependency, but that love is deepest expression of our love of our self, to the degree that we consider our partner a part of it and protect it and value it as highly as the rest.
It's not romantic in the traditional sense, I know. But I've never understood a love of mutual destruction or a love born of guilt or duty. Any love that demands abasement or destruction of the self is closer to the psychology of torture than anything spiritually fulfilling. Love is not living for another, basically, love is living for your self, except your self happens to occupy two bodies.
Which is all lovely, except only a handful of people ever actually find it. I'm going to go kill myself now.
fbuenanry
12-12-07, 08:08 AM
id like to also add that love is blind optimism :)
very well said dude! :)
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