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How do you define “love?” More particularly, I am interested in seeing if “love” for you necessarily implies a relationship with another being. Or do you think it can be used in a broader, more “political” sense?
Personally, I feel that we can only pretend to love either another being or a group of other beings if we know them personally or have some level of emotional intimacy with them. We cannot truly pretend to love strangers … as long as they are still strangers to us.
First I need to show the definition from a dictionary (although everybody knows), then I will express my own definitions about love regarding about another being or things.
Oxford dictionary defines love:
noun
1. an intense feeling of deep affection.
"babies fill parents with feelings of love"
2. a great interest and pleasure in something.
"his love for football"
verb
1. feel deep affection for (someone).
"he loved his sister dearly"
2. like or enjoy very much.
"I just love dancing"
For me, I define love is, at the beginning, you like someone or something so much, you dream to have him/her/it so much, you have to find way to get/have that person or it. Love is when you go to sleep at night, you still think about that person or it. You can't wait for the day to come to see and be with the person or thing you love. You feel like you can't live without that person or thing. That's crazy, eh?
Then love can change from being passionate to feeling resonsible and tolerant. Even with things, when you love them, you want them to last for long, you have to take good care of them, to keep them in good maintenance regularly, to treat them gentlly, or else they can break easily (or actually you break them).
Specifically to the OP's topic about relationship with another being, from my obeservations and experience, I see the followings:
At the beginning, people felt in love with someone, they had the feeling as described above.
Later, the feeling above fades away slowly or fast (depending on different people), but people still need that person they have been being with, or they feel responsible to take care of that person, so they tolerate. If they leave that person, they feel guilt because they think about why they felt in love with that person at the beginning.
I do think being responsible and tolerant and patient is love, especially with your child/children. First you want to have a baby, one and then two or three. At the beginning, you love them so much because they are cute, but they come with lots of work too. So, you love them, you take care of them. Eventually, they grow up, they give you lots of problems, you still need to take care of them. You are resonsible for them and you tolerate them and hope and dream for them to be better and have a good life when they grow up. That is love.
With your spouse/partner, when you pass the first stage, then later in life, you argue, fight, make up, and if you really love that person, you have to think how to change yourself and change the situations to be better and have peace. And when your spouse/parter get sick, you take care of him/her, that is love.
I read somewhere that it's easy to love someone who is loveable. It's not easy to love someone who makes your life miserable; but you still can love that person, that is really true love.
So, love to me is not only when things are rosy, you stay with your spouse/partner/children/parents; but when things are tough/rough, you still stay with them and find ways to make things better and get through.
Last edited by AnOrdinaryCitizen; 01-31-2023 at 07:10 AM..
Jill, you may be right, at least in some cases, including mine.
I certainly do not "love" strangers, but I do respect them,* which can have much the same outcome, which is treating them well or being concerned for their well-being. I also love, or respect, either individual or classes of non-human things, some of them being animate or at least living, such as dogs* or gardens, and others being inanimate objects, such as mountains or paintings.
*Until they do something to alter my respect or love for them.
Last edited by Archaic; 01-31-2023 at 07:30 AM..
Reason: Should have included "dogs" in that footnote! LOL
First I need to show the definition from a dictionary (although everybody knows), then I will express my own definitions about love regarding about another being or things.
Oxford dictionary defines love:
noun
1. an intense feeling of deep affection.
"babies fill parents with feelings of love"
2. a great interest and pleasure in something.
"his love for football"
verb
1. feel deep affection for (someone).
"he loved his sister dearly"
2. like or enjoy very much.
"I just love dancing"
For me, I define love is, at the beginning, you like someone or something so much, you dream to have him/her/it so much, you have to find way to get/have that person or it. Love is when you go to sleep at night, you still think about that person or it. You can't wait for the day to come to see and be with the person or thing you love. You feel like you can't live without that person or thing. That's crazy, eh?
Then love can change from being passionate to feeling resonsible and tolerant. Even with things, when you love them, you want them to last for long, you have to take good care of them, to keep them in good maintenance regularly, to treat them gentlly, or else they can break easily (or actually you break them).
Specifically to the OP's topic about relationship with another being, from my obeservations and experience, I see the followings:
At the beginning, people felt in love with someone, they had the feeling as described above.
Later, the feeling above fades away slowly or fast (depending on different people), but people still need that person they have been being with, or they feel responsible to take care of that person, so they tolerate. If they leave that person, they feel guilt because they think about why they felt in love with that person at the beginning.
I do think being responsible and tolerant and patient is love, especially with your child/children. First you want to have a baby, one and then two or three. At the beginning, you love them so much because they are cute, but they come with lots of work too. So, you love them, you take care of them. Eventually, they grow up, they give you lots of problems, you still need to take care of them. You are resonsible for them and you tolerate them and hope and dream for them to be better and have a good life when they grow up. That is love.
With your spouse/partner, when you pass the first stage, then later in life, you argue, fight, make up, and if you really love that person, you have to think how to change yourself and change the situations to be better and have peace. And when your spouse/parter get sick, you take care of him/her, that is love.
I read somewhere that it's easy to love someone who is loveable. It's not easy to love someone who makes your life miserable; but you still can love that person, that is really true love.
So, love to me is not only when things are rosy, you stay with your spouse/partner/children/parents; but when things are tough/rough, you still stay with them and find ways to make things better and get through.
I only got past the first sentence and stopped in my tracks. Love to you means to find a way to get/have that person? Find a way? Really, are you serious? That is very unhealthy and manipulative thinking. Almost scary. That is NOT love, that is psycho.
I personally like the dictionary definition, I can hardly improve upon it.
I see love as an abundant thing. I don't want it to be scarce. I want a life FULL of it. Giving it, hopefully getting it. Yes, please!
I don't like qualifications of love as being, "only REAL love if..." Nah, spare me the contracts. There are a million kinds of love, an infinite array of flavors of love available...some might be best to sample rarely, and some may be one's bread and butter. All are love. Love is not diminished in value by commonality. You can't run out of it. Unlike time, energy, or money, it's infinite. It may be one of very few things we get to experience, that is.
This is part of why I'm not a possessive person, and I don't deal well with possessive behavior. No one person can own my love in a way that may demand I not give it to anyone else. That just isn't how I operate.
But love also does not dictate or demand terms, as far as I'm concerned. I can love a person and not want to have sex with them. I can love a person and not like or even respect them, too. That's a pretty weird one, though, and I was thinking about that earlier today actually.
My father... I don't respect him very much. I dislike many of his actions, views, and some elements of his personality and there have been at least a few specific things he's done in my memory that I cannot forgive. And yet I love him. I do, really! I long to see him. I worry about his wellbeing. And in a bigger way I do forgive him for being just...human, and flawed, as we all are. I enjoy talking with him, sometimes I really like him. I know what areas we relate well on, and which ones we don't. I used to feel OK about standing my ground and disagreeing with him on some things, but we found out recently that he has dangerously high blood pressure, so I carefully avoid arguments now. He used to get a lot more upset than I felt was necessary when we disagreed, and I used to just wonder why he was getting his dander all up...now I just don't want him to be agitated. Seems bad for him.
That flavor of love...it carries some obligation. It's doing service to a role, and to "the family"...which, although I've spent most of my life living far from my relations, that still does matter to me.
I do believe that I can love a stranger. Sometimes I may watch a person's creative work, that they are putting their passion into, and they are sharing something with an audience that feels intimate. Not sexual, but emotionally intimate. It's something that comes from the soul. And I feel a burst of joy about them, I feel honored that I'm a human and they are a human and we are sharing this thing. I feel moved to feelings of love, "affection", wonder. I'm happy to call that a form of love.
With my children, the love I felt for them during pregnancy and when they were little was animal, hormonal. It was joyful and tender and fierce. They were my entire world. As they grew up, this diminished but a different kind of love grew in its place. Where I got to know them as the people that they were becoming. Pride in their accomplishments, fear and worry about their wellbeing. Every time we share a joke, or they call to let me know how they're doing, it warms my heart. The shift feels completely natural...it is a creature knowing when the young must leave the nest.
I still have a kind of love for my ex husband even though he was abusive and awful at times. Even if I know that I could never be with him again, not if he were the last man on this earth, and even if I'd rather not even talk to him if I can help it, and often think, "wtf is wrong with you?" when I do. What is that love like? It is acknowledgement that I finished growing up with him and he guided me through a lot of it. There were a lot of things I needed to learn and he helped me to do so. We went a long ways together, we had two kids together. There is a bitter tinge to it because I sometimes feel that it did not have to be the way it was...that it should have, or could have been better, gone better. That we were denied a happily ever after and we both deserved better than we got in the end, from one another. It is a love that sheds frustrated tears over what might have been, even still and perhaps always. I don't like him. Don't really respect him much. But I still, at least a little, love him. I always say, if he were in the hospital (he hates being in the hospital, it scares him) and no one were there for him, I'd show up. Even now.
I am eternally grateful that my present husband doesn't resent this. He's one of the most thoughtful, patient and understanding human beings I have ever known. In him, many kinds of love converge and echo and resonate and harmonize. We have both the reliable comfort of daily life partnership love...and the bursts of joy that go "zing!" in one's brain. The nurturing and the protecting. The liking and the respecting. All the good stuff. I didn't actually believe that this was possible for me, and I did not plan to ever marry again. This was a love that surprised both of us.
For me, love is complicated.
And I'm happy to let it be that way.
I'm agreeing with Sonic in that love is certainly not always rational and logical - how CAN you love someone you don't like or respect? A lot of us love parents who weren't that great to us...I love them in SPITE of all that and I don't even want to, really. But it's there, very very deep and sometimes I don't even want to admit it.
And sure, many of us have been in relationships where we at least think we love someone who isn't very good for us or to us. Some might say that can't be love - depends on how broad your definition is and there have been many kinds of love defined by great thinkers (philia, pragma, storge, eros, ludus, mania, philautia, and agape by the Greeks) and from psychology: infatuation, romantic, conjugal, fatuous, empty, consummate) so yeah, that covers a LOT of territory.
I'll start by asking anyone reading to do a quick search on the phrase "types of love." You will find at least eight (and there are more).
"Love" is a nebulous word that can have multiple interpretations. "Do you like cars?" - What do you mean? Chevys, Fords, vans, trucks, sports cars, steam powered cars, electric cars, railroad cars?
Vague feelings of not wanting to kill do not translate to "love." Acceptance of "Yeah, at one point, I had positive feelings or even infatuation" do not translate to ongoing feelings of love. Admitting it can be dog hard, but freeing from past traps.
Rather than my continuing to write and you read, do yourself a favor. Look at each of those types of love, relate them to the individual you are thinking about, and ask if that type fits.
The original question in the OP is vague. The exercise may help your understanding of yourself and your relationships.
The term love has a different emotional feeling and meaning to everyone. What I define as love or my emotional feeling towards someone I love could be different than other people. Some people love differently or in another ways. You can love a stranger or fall in love with someone you never met because of how you feel about them. Maybe an athlete that brought you great joy, a musician who's music touched your heart or an actor or actress that blew you away with their performance but maintaining that love for them after you met them is a different story.
To me, love is conditional with peaks and valleys. The people I love the most are my children and I would give my life for them. But lets say as they get older they evolve in adults who display characteristics that I do not like my love for them may wane. And if they turn out to be horrible people then I will have no love for them, regardless of them being my children. I had girlfriends in the past that I loved but those feelings aren't there any more. I love my parents now more that I did when I was younger. lastly I love my wife differently than I did when we were first dating, and as we get older my love for her will change. Essentially to answer the OP's question, there is no definitive definition for the word "love".
The word LOVE is so overused, I feel it lost much of its power and meaning.
I don't ever say I love shoes. Or any other objects. Or actors I never met. I don't say I love food. The word LOVE for me is very deep and powerful and is only used for very few people in my life.
In other languages the word LOVE is only used for people that you actually, really love. It is much more sparingly used and kept its original power.
I don't even say I love my friends. Maybe my few very good friends that I have for 25 years but we don't say that to each other. LOVE for me is reserved to my partner, my family and my pets. That's a deep love that is in no comparison to friends that may come and go and drift away. A person you REALLY love doesn't fade away.
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