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.
__________________
life without movies is like cereal without milk. possible, but disgusting. but not nearly as bad as cereal with water. don't lie. I know you've done it.
Reply to Topic
