What is love?

[Unseen]

How do you define love? For me, love is wanting what is best for the other person, even if it’s not what you’d want for yourself.

Parents express their love, for example, by encouraging a son or daughter to take go to college in a faraway place because it’s a great opportunity, even though they would much prefer to have her attend school nearby.

Similarly, your best friend and regular companion comes to you for advice. S/he has been offered a job that will mean moving far away. It sounds like a great opportunity. You are asked for your counsel and you say, “Of course you must accept this opportunity.”

True love is to be found only in a healthy parent/child relationship and in the relationship between true friends.

The big loser is romantic love, which is basically a blend of obsessiveness and possessiveness.

[_Robert_]

You don’t think romantic love can also encompass true friendship, especially after years and years?

[Jody Lee]

Hmmm…Love is tricky, yeah? But I think there can be true love between partners minus the obsession.

[jakelafort]

Love is sharing half of your favorite meal. It is getting as much satisfaction from their pleasure as your own. It is feeling their pain…not running…doing utmost to relieve their pain. It is honesty except when honesty is on balance a bad decision. It is a form of intimacy in which you reveal things to the other you will not otherwise share. It is compromise for sake of other. it is knowing and enjoying baffling idiosyncracies. It is comfort. It is safety. It makes the universe intelligible. IT IS UNATTAINABLE. FUCK IT!

In terms of the jealousy/obsession in romantic love. Seems like polyamorous couples do it with aplomb. I wonder how asexuals get on. That is an interesting issue for doctorate in some area of social psychology. You are welcome whoever you are. I will project it telepathically to the person sitting their dwelling on finding the right topic, any topic…

[Unseen]

_Robert_ wrote:

You don’t think romantic love can also encompass true friendship, especially after years and years?

As years go by, romantic love often improves into friendship. Many couples stay together, loving each other as friends, even after the passionate sexual bond has dissolved.

[Unseen]

Jody Lee wrote:

Hmmm…Love is tricky, yeah? But I think there can be true love between partners minus the obsession.

Their passion bond collapses into a deep friendship.

[Unseen]

jakelafort wrote:

Love is sharing half of your favorite meal. It is getting as much satisfaction from their pleasure as your own. It is feeling their pain…not running…doing utmost to relieve their pain. It is honesty except when honesty is on balance a bad decision. It is a form of intimacy in which you reveal things to the other you will not otherwise share. It is compromise for sake of other. it is knowing and enjoying baffling idiosyncracies. It is comfort. It is safety. It makes the universe intelligible. IT IS UNATTAINABLE. FUCK IT!

In terms of the jealousy/obsession in romantic love. Seems like polyamorous couples do it with aplomb. I wonder how asexuals get on. That is an interesting issue for doctorate in some area of social psychology. You are welcome whoever you are. I will project it telepathically to the person sitting their dwelling on finding the right topic, any topic…

What you describe in your first paragraph isn’t unattainable at all. It is the kind of love that exists in good parents for their kids or in the case of true friends. It actually exists.

As for your second paragraph, polyamory is an exercise in POWER over the partner (“See, I let my partner try a different partner, yet I still have her/him.”)

[jakelafort]

Yes, that is true..parents for their kids.

Interesting take Unseen, bout power in polyamorous. I think polyamorous people would laugh at that notion.

[Jody Lee]

 

[jakelafort]

Thanks Jody

I think it is the first music vid i watched in its entirety.

[Jody Lee]

No problem.  Did you dance? 😊

• This reply was modified 6 years, 6 months ago by Jody Lee.

[jakelafort]

Not sure it can be characterized as dancing but some sort of spasmodic paroxysms of movement.

[Jody Lee]

It counts.

[jakelafort]

I will take it but i am gonna repurpose it as paroxysms of spasmodic cosmic love.

[Unseen]

jakelafort wrote:

Yes, that is true..parents for their kids. Interesting take Unseen, bout power in polyamorous. I think polyamorous people would laugh at that notion.

Well, then perhaps they aren’t romantic relationships at all, but friendships as I define them. Eh? I’m right either way.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 6 months ago by Unseen.

[Author]

Posts