Like everything else in the world today “LOVE” is highly marketable to women and men alike. Let’s look at Valentine’s Day a perfectly social holiday infatuated with the ideal of buying cards, chocolates, flowers, jewelry & eating at restaurants to celebrate LOVE. However, for me to say that love is a “prepackaged form of manipulation of the system” is farfetched. I will not refute the fact that love is a good way to make money for many industries; but I still believe that if two people truly love each other I discontinue the idea of love being manipulated by “the system”.
As for Sternberg’s Theory of Love I am one to say that it is not perfect but a good foundation for the definition of love. Personally Intimacy, Passion and Commitment I would say are necessary conditions for love to blossom. To this day I believe in love nevertheless it is hard to find but not impossible you have to be willing to compromise, be patient, caring and committed to the person you say you love. Otherwise love becomes distant & difficult. To close love is an overpowering emotion & if it is found hold on to it, because I think in my (I repeat my) opinion that it is essential in order to maintain healthy socio-psychological life.
Most people I encounter each day would agree that love is misinterpreted and very much misused each day.In the conference given by Prof.Peter Salovey at Yale College, love is defined as the following: passion,intimacy,and commitment.If you have these three then you are plainly and simply in LOVE. I must admit that I agree--not completely because there is always a "but"-- but so far he appears to be right.It is possible to lack one or the other, but then you fall into different types of love....I do believe the media influences this idea of love very much into our minds. A perfect example would be the popular movie,"Twilight." In this movie, involves a girl and a vampire in where the girl is deeply willing to make the sacrifice of giving up her "soul" to be with her vampire love.Once again I do admit I own all four books,but I believe I have the maturity to understand this is absolutely fiction.To my understanding, we are living in a very materialized society in which if you don't take a girl out to eat at South Beach's fansiest restaurant then you must not like her very much(this is false, of course).I believe we have to be very careful when analyzing if it's love what we feel or are we infactuated with the person?There is absolutely nothing wrong with being alone or being with someone.
In the western world the majority has bought into the idea of “compassionate love” in some shape or form. I think we are influenced greatly from our environment especially from one that spends a lot of time and money constantly bombarding us with advertisements and products. This drive that has been almost implanted in us, to reach this fairy type love, is what leads us to, as stated by Hatfield, the spending of money on weddings, accessories, cars, clothing, and so much more. The media has found love very profitable and is milking it and selling it for what it’s worth and people are eating it up and buying it. There’s a lack of consideration and a large amount of excess in the idea of “compassionate love”. We are taught to follow our hearts and to think about what we want and do anything and everything to get it and we lose respect for others. The form to reach a compromise between love and respect is in practicing self control, in reasoning and pacing ourselves.
Abuse doesn't have to to do anything with love! Real love is when you wish best for the person that you love, and when you want this person to be happy (with you, or without you). The bad emotions can come when we make a bad chose. But it is wrong to use love for excuse in abuse, because we always can leave and make a better chose. Passion, communication,trust... are just part of love and needs constant maintenance.
Ok, I know you have certain ideas about love, but the issue here is to problematize them. To present them at least under the gaze of questioning. Even what we think "is" needs to be presented and justified, not just assumed. Now can you do that in 100 words? I think it's worth trying.
It’s difficult to pinpoint what love is because I think our environment has an enormous impact on what we think terms are to begin with. It’s as though are thoughts are not our own; whatever or whoever teaches us defines love for us. The media has taken this term “love” and transformed it into the perfect means for selling products and lifestyles such as weddings, babies, cars, clothing etc. So is love this selfish, materialistic, passionate type love? Or is it affectionate, trustful, and moderate? Can it really be narrowed down to three elements such as Zick Ruben suggests? Or only into two as Elaine Hatfield states? I think that there are different people as there are different settings and these can manipulate perceptions and actions. Is there room for respect in love? I think that depending on the type of love one is talking about. But exactly who is deciding what love is or isn’t, what is the norm and what is abnormal? I can state what I think love is but perhaps society has already bombarded me enough so that my response is still acceptable in western society since life here is all I have ever known.
The problem with the “love” Hollywood presents, is that reality does not replicate the same "happily ever after" end result. We have learned to thrive on that temporary excitement of “falling in love.” Impulse and luck are simply two words to describe this “love.” Although we know that there is no guarantee of happiness by acting in this manner we all some what believe that we might find that rare treasure. Do we choose to be indifferent or ignorant to this false conception? The Hollywood version of love is hardwired in our minds. Why else would we buy hundreds of make-up products to enhance ourselves, why else do we buy each month’s Cosmogirl magazine? Why else do stop eating to fit into those extreme skinny jeans? Luck is rare and impulse is not entirely on our good side at the end of the day. No wonder there are several divorces. We give in too quickly to desires and we don’t stop and think if there is respect, balance, and willingness to compromise in part of the other partner. Is desire the only reason we love or want to be loved? Is it still brainwash that causes us to think this way? Perhaps if we look at this in an evolutionary stand point we may see a correlation between desire and hereditary traits. We can say that those who learned to adapt to threatening stimuli survived through the means of having company. We all want someone to love us and we all want to love. It is good to have this pleasure. To have the spiritual and physical pleasure found by loving. Humans need this! Take for example, those soldiers that have posttraumatic disorder need the kindness and love from their families, friends and counselor to help cope with this stress. A continuous lack of love and care will cause to person exhaustion and even death. If we do not have this love, we either take it by force or wither away. No wonder there are several cases of divorce, violence, and manipulation.
The epistemology of love asks how we may know love, how we may understand it, whether it is possible or plausible to make statements about others or ourselves being in love. Again, the epistemology of love is intimately connected to the philosophy of language and theories of the emotions. If love is purely an emotional condition, it is plausible to argue that it remains a private phenomenon incapable of being accessed by others, except through an expression of language, and language may be a poor indicator of an emotional state both for the listener and the subject. Emotivists would hold that a statement such as “I am in love” is irreducible to other statements because it is a nonpropositional utterance, hence its veracity is beyond examination. Phenomenologists may similarly present love as a non-cognitive phenomenon.
The claim that “love” cannot be examined is different from that claiming “love” should not be subject to examination-that it should be put or left beyond the mind’s reach, out of a dutiful respect for its mysteriousness, its awesome, divine, or romantic nature. But if it is agreed that there is such a thing as “love” conceptually speaking, when people present statements concerning love, or admonitions such as “she should show more love,” then a philosophical examination seems appropriate: is it synonymous with certain patterns of behavior, of inflections in the voice or manner, or by the apparent pursuit and protection of a particular value (“Look at how he dotes upon his flowers-he must love them”)?
If love does possesses “a nature” which is identifiable by some means-a personal expression, a discernible pattern of behavior, or other activity, it can still be asked whether that nature can be properly understood by humanity. The ethical aspects in love involve the moral appropriateness of loving, and the forms it should or should not take. The subject area raises such questions as: is it ethically acceptable to love an object, or to love oneself? Is love to oneself or to another a duty? Should the ethically minded person aim to love all people equally? Is partial love morally acceptable or permissible (that is, not right, but excusable)? Should love only involve those with whom the agent can have a meaningful relationship? Should love aim to transcend sexual desire or physical appearances? May notions of romantic, sexual love apply to same sex couples? Some of the subject area naturally spills into the ethics of sex, which deals with the appropriateness of sexual activity, reproduction, hetero and homosexual activity, and so on.
Should the ethically minded person aim to love all people equally? Is partial love morally acceptable or permissible (that is, not right, but excusable)? Should love only involve those with whom the agent can have a meaningful relationship? Should love aim to transcend sexual desire or physical appearances?
Deep questions, Adanelis, but I have to be blunt, are these "really" yours? If so, nice pondering, if not, well...
We cannot describe love properly. We can love someone with passion as we can be obsessed with someone. I can say we love someone when we know him/her well. We know their qualities, their weaknesses. We also know the repulsive things about them as the good things about them and we l accept them sincerely and completely the way they act with us and with everyone else. Obsession is when we like someone and we cannot fight against it. We are deprived to think and even to react against it. Sometimes, we don’t like the way he/she acts but we love him/her against our will. To love someone properly, we should know him/her in order to trust him/her totally. Without trust, we cannot love someone. This love will perish. In order to have an happy couple, we should identify ourselves to the person we choose. We cannot live with someone we hate. We should find many qualities we have together. We must be similar. Obsession doesn’t allow us to choose
What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of love? Do you think of a beautiful; selfless feeling? Or do you think of a way of controlling another person? Your answer might vary according to the love experiences you might have had. Do you think it is possible to have compassionate love without having passionate love first? I think what you have when your first start dating someone is passionate love. You have sexual attraction and affection towards them. Then, after getting to know the person and spending time with them, you develop compassionate love. It takes time to trust someone and have that attachment. Can someone be so crazy in love that they are willing to hurt or even kill? Apparently yes, there has been many cases where people get so attached to their significant other that they get crazy jealous and extremely possessive. Will this be considered love? Or should we call it manipulation instead?
First of all, I agree the “love” is a prepackaged form of manipulation of the system especially now. For example, let’s see how the media radio, television, newspapers, magazines influence people so much to “Buy a product” such as: take a cruise to the Bahamas for your better half on Valentine’s day, buy a nice car to your spouse, loose some weight to impress her so she will love you more, buy her a diamond ring and “she will love you forever” there are only few examples how we “invest” to get love or to continue building a existing “love relationship”. It sad but it is true the “most of us” are “buyers”. In my opinion, “true love” is commitment, connection between you and your “partner”, “mutual respect”, caring, and obviously “chemistry”. I personally think if you need someone that loves you “that way you are” but not “what you have or want you can offer”. I recommend this movie “Shallow Hal” to watch it, and you will discover how people are so manipulated by “external beauty” and “they forget about the inner beauty”. To conclude, you need to learn to “love yourself” before you want to love someone, otherwise; it is not going to work even you “buy nice products” to the person you are interested to be with.
Aldous Huxley predicted a future in which the human mind is saturated by media, consumption, and inane issues which drown human conciousness into irrelevance. Arguing against a fear based overlord controlling people by inflicting fear, Huxley instead insists that human's incessant appetite for distractions would cause the downfall of man, as those things we "love" eventually ruin us.
With such a hypothesis proposed, one must ask, "what is love?" By taking into account a broader sense of love, one is able to pinpoint human behaviors more accurately (rather than viewing "love" as something that happens merely between beings). If Huxley's "Brave New World" scenario were to be true, humans would basically revert to primal, animalistic desires in search of their short-run personal interests. By watering down their pyramid of hierarchical needs (Maslow,1943), people would give birth to an exorbitant society bereft of morality as inflicting oneself with pleasure becomes the ultimate reality.
In such a society, "love" is merely a euphemism for companionship, as people realize that their survival in such a cut-throat world depends on a partner's paycheck. For those who are even more hedonistic, "love" could serve as a euphemism for sex (as it does for many today), as the word's concept has become so abstract as a Jackson Pollock painting.
As society regresses further into Huxley's bleak dystopia, one can see parallels between present day "love" and this futuristic sham that is compassion. Ultimately seeking survival, countless people buy into the system created by a consumer society which entails finding a partner (for fear of social stigma and for monetary security), getting married (unless you're gay, then your love is not real), buying a big house (consume, consume, consume), and have as many children as possible (who cares about overpopulation?). In essence, "love" is just a nice word to throw around as humanity carries on its libido driven existence.
Love is dangerous and in my opinion it can become an addiction. This word "love" has been around for who knows how long and still no one has mastered this art. Today, the media has manipulated our perception of love that they are pretty much telling the consumers what to love and how to love. Love is definitely the most marketed idea in our society from television(soap operas)to actual holidays just for loving one another(valentines day). Don't get me wrong love is a beautiful thing and everyone loves to be shown some love from time to time but like any enjoyable desire in life there can be an excess. Love is such a pure emotion but the media has destroyed this purity and I believe has changed this word of love to the present day word of, "lust".
Love is dangerous and in my opinion it can become an addiction. This word "love" has been around for who knows how long and still no one has mastered this art. Today, the media has manipulated our perception of love that they are pretty much telling the consumers what to love and how to love. Love is definitely the most marketed idea in our society from television(soap operas)to actual holidays just for loving one another(valentines day). Don't get me wrong love is a beautiful thing and everyone loves to be shown some love from time to time but like any enjoyable desire in life there can be an excess. Love is such a pure emotion but the media has destroyed this purity and I believe has changed this word of love to the present day word of, "lust".
It would, I believe, be lovely to have strong feelings of pure (or in some circles unpure) desire for a person to which you were connected to on a deep level, someone who you could and would share practically anything with, be it your thoughts, feelings, lifestyle, etc...
What I've come to find so far in my life, through not only theories but also my personal experiences, is that while passionate love does indeed exist, those feelings slowly seem to decline as the relationship goes on, and lead into a different aspect of love that I would agree to be labeled compassionate or companionate love. Now, this is where I steer off the main road for a bit..
Why do I think this way? A bit of a nature vs. nurture debate arises. Is it due to my genes? I'm sure we've all read evolutionary approaches to sex/relationships in which the majority argue that men have the drive to attract, spread their seed, and move on; besides commitment implications, this doesn't leave much room for passionate love. How about my experiences? Of the relationships I've been in, (of which I only count 1 as truly mature), the same pattern has occurred. Passionate --> compassionate. I can understand why people call anything otherwise "rare".
But then I ask myself, could there exist a relationship that breaks the mold? I'd LIKE to think so, and I feel it could be possible.. and if the researchers who focus primarily on the deterioration of passionate love would call the condition "rare" or "uncommon", well then, that would give just enough leeway to hint at it's existence. Thus, ultimately, the question becomes: HOW TO ATTAIN IT?
And that is what I wouldn't know or near assume an answer to. I could imagine some traits, scenarios... say no one in the relationship ever got "lazy" with being romantic, a type of familiarity argument, or say every time someone achieved something they were proud of, the other would not only notice but acknowledge and appreciate them for it. But that requires a little mind control, right?
I say this because, if flaws (and by flaws I mean things in the other person you do not like/do not appreciate; not a fatal error like it's usually defined) can bring you back to reality from that cloud of passion one rides upon, then is it necessary to lie to yourself a little? The majority of passionate relationships, I've noticed, involve a bit of selective blindness... they are champions of the other's traits and ways of being they find godly, and they are blind to what in any other case they would consider flaws, and if not "blind", then brush them off as unimportant.. but as we all know eventually they become all TOO important... Does continual, bliss-inducing passion rely on this deceit? Indeed it is a form of lying to yourself... imagine writing a beautiful poem for your prospective Odysseus or Penelope, and many months later, looking back on it, not only does it not fire up flares of emotion, but, besides a nice smile it may bring to your face, it almost seems just a bit, foreign?
Whatever the case, if there really was a "set route" into having passionate love to a heightened degree throughout a relationship, then, as all things, finding that route would depend on the person; if it involves a deceit, some honesty can be expected sacrificed to keep this. If it involves much more active romance and seduction, then more energy and time can be expected to maintain that. And what if there exists no set route, no road to rely on? Then it already is, as it is to many, up in the air, a chaos that eventually falls into some order; hell, could the former not be another word for passionate love, and the latter for compassionate love? Maybe that is why the line from passionate to compassionate seems so easy to draw upon. Beyond all this, it all comes down to the ultimate acknowledgment of what real love is, beyond our own ideas of what love entails.. it is the acknowledgment that real love requires sacrifice, one way or another.
What is love and how you define it? Is it a feeling that everyone has or is it something our minds made up. How do you determine that you are in love? What are the necessary means to be considered in love? The articles have tried to explain what love is in the philosophical way. I am still lost and trying to understand the mind and how it deals with love.
I find it quite interesting actually that humans are the only such beings to express such a strong feeling of love. We do not label other animal's intimacy as "love", but rather merely "mating." Do fish love? Do beetles love? Sternberg's theory is another attempt at defining such a feeling that we do not even know all about. Love can have many forms and shapes, pertain to various relationships, and even turn someone into a personality they are not.
Passion,intimacy,and commitment are all the basis of love, but love is much more. Each of these come in different variations, and different forms. Analyzing love is like attempting to learn about blackholes, or time travel. All we know is theoretical and uncertain. We build on information that we assume rather than test. Love though is just an emotion, like any other.
It is very hard for me at this point in my life to truly explain to myself what love is. While I agree with the color wheel concept of love, I feel it is incomplete. Just as there is a vast array of hues resulting from infinite combinations of colors, shouldn't it be the same with emotions- if comparing it to this wheel? And can't love transcend into these different kinds as the relationship goes on?
Must it be so technical? So black and white?
Since I believe desire to be a product of the brain (for I attribute it to our chemical drive to procreate), I must admit I believe love is a product of the mind... And the mind, as we have seen, is not easily understood. The explanation of its very existence leaves us with questions, theories, and that simple "I can't explain why or how, but it's there" feeling. I feel that because love is in the mind, we can't every well label it as one would a disease or a limb. Essentially, it is qualia. We each experience love different as time goes by and our lovers change. We might love our husbands and wives of years differently today than we did months prior. We might love someone a certain was and love another entirely differently with the same conviction or intensity. We might feel different elements of compassionate love and passionate love, and then feel entirely different elements or elements that have not yet been categorized in either! Because love is such a subjective emotion, it would be too ambitious to try to label it for a general audience. We can only base it on what we observe (and as we all know, deceit is not so easily observable) or what we simply feel ourselves (a fault, given qualia).
What we can contend to is that the media abuses this emotion and tries to make it marketable. It gives us a false idea of what love SHOULD be rather than portraying it as a unique experience for everyone. It gives us delusions on what our relationships should be like- making things feel all too scripted, and tragic when something doesn't go according to plan. It's staining our potential experience by giving us concepts of what can't even be controlled! And how fair is that to an emotion so complex we can't even put into words? In all fairness to love, we're trying to put into a general definition an emotion no two people feel the same.
A lot of people don’t know what love is and they go out and search for it the wrong way. Some say that love is a feeling or emotion. But I say, love is just a crazy mental state. How could one feel or know when he or she’s in love. Does the persons actions, tells you that they love you. Is love suppose to hurt or do you enjoy it? Since love, to me, is a mental state am I suppose to feel hurt by it or joy? What I mean by that is, do I believe the man that tells me that he loves me but yet cheats on me or beats on me. Or should I feel happy when a man takes me out to the park for picnics or a walk on the beach, is that expression of love.
Love, there seems to be so many words to describe it and yet there aren’t enough to do so. Love varies from person to person because no ones point of view is the same. Love also depends on the person you love, the love you have for your mother is not the same you have for an aunt, a friend, or a boyfriend/girlfriend. Is it love when you sacrifice yourself for another? Is it love when you kiss someone? Is it love when a woman stays with a man who beats her? Is it love when you tell someone you love them? Is it love when you manipulate others thinking its for their own good? People will agree or disagree, but it all falls upon who you are, how you were raised, and what your point of view on love is. Some people get married quickly because they’re madly in love but the relationship starts to deteriorate. I knew once of a couple who spent $60,000 for their wedding but the marriage didn’t even last a full year, the woman left him and now he’s stuck paying for the wedding. Why did this happen? Everyone who attended the extravagant wedding thought this couple is so lucky to have found each other, they’re going to last forever. We buy the Love that the media sells us because its what we all want. We all want that Disney version of Love and to live happily ever after. Everywhere we look, love and advertising go hand in hand. Whether they’re selling you a car, perfume, clothes , etc. Victoria Secret is a good example of this because the commercials and advertising they do for it is very sexual. It oozes sex appeal and people like it, its what sells.
I agree that people is influenced by what they see in the movies or what our society shows us as LOVE.Since we are kids we are influence by what the society presents us as "normal", meaning that whatever our society approve is label as "normal". I also think everybody has a different meaning of love,there is persons that they don't need a partner to be happy or feel complete,while other persons need to be love by other in order to be complete. I think we love how we were taught , and we are slaves of our society not only about "love" but also in every aspect that surround us.
What is love? Does it exist? Can you say you really know, or do you only “think” you do? I mean who can really say what they know, how many times have you known something without any doubt that it was so and then been proven wrong. Is love just something we say because we think we have to, does it even mean anything anymore or is it just a word exchanged by people in social groups? It is all relative to the individual, to the environment, to the social network that surrounds it, love is not one thing, that is if it is anything at all.
I think that if we had a choice about who we love probably half the world would be in a very happy and stable place. There’s always that great guy/girl that you know ,you two would have the greatest relationship with, like your best friend. For example , I had this best friend in high school . We had the same thoughts and ideas we practically matched , students and teachers would ask us if we were a couple and a lot of people thought we were in love because we just enjoyed each other. But even thought I did love him a lot it was in no way anything romantic , at least for my part. I would have given anything for it to be.So my thought is if we had a choice about falling in love with someone , we probably wouldn’t choose who we hook up with. I think for some people love becomes a disease, an obsession , which could become deadly. No matter what love is or what it could be ,nothing compares to couples who just don’t seem as though they should fit together, yet they are both happy in their marriage, and you can't figure out why? Of the many factors influencing our idea of the perfect mate, one of the most telling, according to John Money, professor emeritus of medical psychology and pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University, is what he calls our “lovemap”a group of messages encoded in our brains that describes our likes and dislikes. It shows our preferences in hair and eye color, in voice, smell, body build. It also records the kind of personality that appeals to us, whether it's the warm and friendly type or the strong, silent type. Personally I guess we will never know what love really is , if its emotional or psychological or just something more.
Like any other aspect of life, LOVE is one of society's standards just like rules and laws in politics. For us humans we have that aspect marked in our path because we have to be dependent of something. A good society depends on how stable relationships are between men and women. It begins with a man and woman committed to each other; they, in turn, commit to their children; the family commits to society. In other words, love and compassion should flow outward, like throwing a stone in a pond.
To me, that's what true love and compassion are all about! It applies to every race, color, creed and disability. To be in love, I think we become a part of each other experiencing every joy and sadness together. Like every man, I like to look at beautiful women. It's only natural for women to look at handsome men. But I think I know why men generally have more of a sex drive. Even with the Women's movement, I suspect that men still pursue women. That's not to say that women don't pursue men just as forcefully. But I wonder about the marriage proposal; who really proposes to whom? Is just how we are, is that pursuit that makes us who we are.
Love is not something that can really be described in words, everyone with his or her own perception. The best definition in the English dictionary is "to show good attitude towards another person." Love, however, is more than an attitude or, as some call it, a form of brain-washing or a mental state. It is neither just the manifestation of sexual desires, although it does play a role in a love between men and women.
Love, no matter how someone percieves it, is an unexplainable feeling that people feels towards other people. It is something that makes one cares for another without selfish or fearful intentions. Love trancsends all reality and understanding and can only ever be understood by someone who has felt it. Also, love is not just the romanic version between a man and a woman we see in the media and culture. it can also be felt between family members, friends, and God. An example being the love of a mother hor her child; willing to sacrafice and even die for it. love can also be complexed, such as in the case of family members who often argue, but would still be there for each other when either of them are in trouble. in the end, love is not bound to any laws and is unconditional. it can never be understood by any man, no matter how brilliant the mind; yet it can be felt by all who are open to it.
It is intimidating how many emotions of love I have felt but if asked to describe any of them I would be completely clueless. To clarify, love is expressed in a mostly personal manner. By this I mean that the actions of selfishness or selflessness are all depending on the individual. The need of attachment can be based on selfish manipulation. Regardless, with those same conditions love relationships fit together like puzzles. Accepting other’s morals no matter how lowly they may seem becomes a part of working society. I don’t understand what “they” sell as love. Is love not a personal experience? Even though Disney, for example, shows the glory of successful marriages and happy endings/ lives. We go through the effects of passionate love with the hope of finding compassionate even though we know what “happy endings” can be like because we have seen them. So instead of compassionate love being a form of social domestication, doesn’t social domestication come as an effect after the experience of passionate love? Nonetheless, the prepackaged forms of love that are forced unto us by our systems do serve a great purpose. Agape and pragma loves are surely what we would like offered to us but if we get instead ludos then we feel hurt even if that is what we offer. So the selling of ideal love does show a standard of how love should be like so once again human kind does not aim towards calamity or chaos.
I believe the human mind is capable of making up the idea of love. I can not say wether i believe love does not actually exist. I believe love may be something that is produced by society and through evolution. I think certain kinds of love are absolutely real, however, like the type of love between a mother and a child. It is hard for me to say this because i have in my life, felt "in love". The cynic in me wants to think it is simply a biological process. The romantic in me, however, would like to believe that it is a real, long lasting, beautiful thing. I agree though that it is very hard to decifer what is real and what has been programmed into us by our culture. -Francisco Sanchez
It is possible to love and respect one another. The respect stems from identifying the other person as their own individual with a unique personality, will, and purpose. By not projecting our own thoughts and ideals onto them, we are immediately on our way to respecting them.
I have several questions about the definitions of compassionate and passionate love. Compassionate love was defined as mutual respect, attachment, affection, and trust. Is it possible to love someone without trusting them? What is meant by “attachment” in this definition? Is it to be interpreted as desiring to have the person near to you? If so, is this truly “love” if it does not take into consideration the person’s own free will and desire for independence?
Passionate love was defined as intense emotions, sexual attraction, anxiety, and affection. If “passionate” love is assumed to be short term, are these “intense” emotions short-lived, as well, or do they linger after the experience?
Hatfield suggested that a balance of the security and stability of compassionate love combined with the intensity of passionate love is rare, even though most people desire it. Why is that? Are there deep, underlying psychological issues and cultural faults that lead to this “shortage” of balanced relationships?
The topic of love is interdisciplinary – it blends philosophy, psychology, and even the math of probability. I thoroughly enjoyed this post, as everyday I learn more about this interesting subject :)
I want to start off with one of my favorite quotes about love : "Love is just a word until someone comes along and gives it meaning." Love for me is very dangerous because it could really lead to manipulation, hatred, abuse, and even makes us kill. I understand that love is sometimes a good feeling but I have always rather choose to not fall in love with anybody. I do agree with that love is kind of a disease because when you get hurt by the person you "loved", which happened to me before, it makes you depressed, not wanting to eat or sleep, and much more. From that day, I choose not to fall in love anymore, but to be honest it isn't that easy. I do believe what Hatfield suggests that passionate love is transitory, usually lasting between 6 and 30 months. It don't last for life, there's always a point that it will be over soon or later. It is possible to love and respect one another because if you choose to love that person there is always respect. To end this, love is just a fantasy no matter what.
I like to think that one could be loved and respected at the same time. Although the saying is said, "To have respect, you must be feared", I don't think that's necessarily true. because if a person loved another person enough, she would definitely consider showing her loved one respect. Also to respond to the first question, yes I believe that we are taught to love. Just as we are taught morality, or how to ride a bike; we are taught to love. In most magazines one would see either thin women or men with perfect hair and teeth and these are the people a lot of people try so desperately to be because they could see themselves with that person from off the magazine page(passion). A child in an abusive household would probably take the role of his father and grow up to believe that to show love is to be aggressive with his loved one(intimacy). And finally, a daughter grown up with a single mother that has different boyfriends every other day might learn from her(mother) that love is only temporary, sort of say, and that when she gets tired of one man she moves on to the next(commitment). Now those are, or can be, bad ways to learn how to love(if one would call that love) but it shows that love is indeed learned.
32 comments:
Like everything else in the world today “LOVE” is highly marketable to women and men alike. Let’s look at Valentine’s Day a perfectly social holiday infatuated with the ideal of buying cards, chocolates, flowers, jewelry & eating at restaurants to celebrate LOVE. However, for me to say that love is a “prepackaged form of manipulation of the system” is farfetched. I will not refute the fact that love is a good way to make money for many industries; but I still believe that if two people truly love each other I discontinue the idea of love being manipulated by “the system”.
As for Sternberg’s Theory of Love I am one to say that it is not perfect but a good foundation for the definition of love. Personally Intimacy, Passion and Commitment I would say are necessary conditions for love to blossom. To this day I believe in love nevertheless it is hard to find but not impossible you have to be willing to compromise, be patient, caring and committed to the person you say you love. Otherwise love becomes distant & difficult. To close love is an overpowering emotion & if it is found hold on to it, because I think in my (I repeat my) opinion that it is essential in order to maintain healthy socio-psychological life.
- Oscar Garay
Most people I encounter each day would agree that love is misinterpreted and very much misused each day.In the conference given by Prof.Peter Salovey at Yale College, love is defined as the following: passion,intimacy,and commitment.If you have these three then you are plainly and simply in LOVE. I must admit that I agree--not completely because there is always a "but"-- but so far he appears to be right.It is possible to lack one or the other, but then you fall into different types of love....I do believe the media influences this idea of love very much into our minds. A perfect example would be the popular movie,"Twilight." In this movie, involves a girl and a vampire in where the girl is deeply willing to make the sacrifice of giving up her "soul" to be with her vampire love.Once again I do admit I own all four books,but I believe I have the maturity to understand this is absolutely fiction.To my understanding, we are living in a very materialized society in which if you don't take a girl out to eat at South Beach's fansiest restaurant then you must not like her very much(this is false, of course).I believe we have to be very careful when analyzing if it's love what we feel or are we infactuated with the person?There is absolutely nothing wrong with being alone or being with someone.
p.s. like this post =)
In the western world the majority has bought into the idea of “compassionate love” in some shape or form. I think we are influenced greatly from our environment especially from one that spends a lot of time and money constantly bombarding us with advertisements and products. This drive that has been almost implanted in us, to reach this fairy type love, is what leads us to, as stated by Hatfield, the spending of money on weddings, accessories, cars, clothing, and so much more. The media has found love very profitable and is milking it and selling it for what it’s worth and people are eating it up and buying it. There’s a lack of consideration and a large amount of excess in the idea of “compassionate love”. We are taught to follow our hearts and to think about what we want and do anything and everything to get it and we lose respect for others. The form to reach a compromise between love and respect is in practicing self control, in reasoning and pacing ourselves.
Abuse doesn't have to to do anything with love!
Real love is when you wish best for the person that you love, and when you want this person to be happy (with you, or without you). The bad emotions can come when we make a bad chose. But it is wrong to use love for excuse in abuse, because we always can leave and make a better chose.
Passion, communication,trust... are just part of love and needs constant maintenance.
Ok, I know you have certain ideas about love, but the issue here is to problematize them. To present them at least under the gaze of questioning. Even what we think "is" needs to be presented and justified, not just assumed. Now can you do that in 100 words? I think it's worth trying.
It’s difficult to pinpoint what love is because I think our environment has an enormous impact on what we think terms are to begin with. It’s as though are thoughts are not our own; whatever or whoever teaches us defines love for us. The media has taken this term “love” and transformed it into the perfect means for selling products and lifestyles such as weddings, babies, cars, clothing etc. So is love this selfish, materialistic, passionate type love? Or is it affectionate, trustful, and moderate? Can it really be narrowed down to three elements such as Zick Ruben suggests? Or only into two as Elaine Hatfield states? I think that there are different people as there are different settings and these can manipulate perceptions and actions. Is there room for respect in love? I think that depending on the type of love one is talking about. But exactly who is deciding what love is or isn’t, what is the norm and what is abnormal? I can state what I think love is but perhaps society has already bombarded me enough so that my response is still acceptable in western society since life here is all I have ever known.
The problem with the “love” Hollywood presents, is that reality does not replicate the same "happily ever after" end result. We have learned to thrive on that temporary excitement of “falling in love.” Impulse and luck are simply two words to describe this “love.” Although we know that there is no guarantee of happiness by acting in this manner we all some what believe that we might find that rare treasure. Do we choose to be indifferent or ignorant to this false conception? The Hollywood version of love is hardwired in our minds. Why else would we buy hundreds of make-up products to enhance ourselves, why else do we buy each month’s Cosmogirl magazine? Why else do stop eating to fit into those extreme skinny jeans?
Luck is rare and impulse is not entirely on our good side at the end of the day. No wonder there are several divorces. We give in too quickly to desires and we don’t stop and think if there is respect, balance, and willingness to compromise in part of the other partner. Is desire the only reason we love or want to be loved? Is it still brainwash that causes us to think this way? Perhaps if we look at this in an evolutionary stand point we may see a correlation between desire and hereditary traits. We can say that those who learned to adapt to threatening stimuli survived through the means of having company. We all want someone to love us and we all want to love. It is good to have this pleasure. To have the spiritual and physical pleasure found by loving. Humans need this! Take for example, those soldiers that have posttraumatic disorder need the kindness and love from their families, friends and counselor to help cope with this stress. A continuous lack of love and care will cause to person exhaustion and even death. If we do not have this love, we either take it by force or wither away. No wonder there are several cases of divorce, violence, and manipulation.
The epistemology of love asks how we may know love, how we may understand it, whether it is possible or plausible to make statements about others or ourselves being in love. Again, the epistemology of love is intimately connected to the philosophy of language and theories of the emotions. If love is purely an emotional condition, it is plausible to argue that it remains a private phenomenon incapable of being accessed by others, except through an expression of language, and language may be a poor indicator of an emotional state both for the listener and the subject. Emotivists would hold that a statement such as “I am in love” is irreducible to other statements because it is a nonpropositional utterance, hence its veracity is beyond examination. Phenomenologists may similarly present love as a non-cognitive phenomenon.
The claim that “love” cannot be examined is different from that claiming “love” should not be subject to examination-that it should be put or left beyond the mind’s reach, out of a dutiful respect for its mysteriousness, its awesome, divine, or romantic nature. But if it is agreed that there is such a thing as “love” conceptually speaking, when people present statements concerning love, or admonitions such as “she should show more love,” then a philosophical examination seems appropriate: is it synonymous with certain patterns of behavior, of inflections in the voice or manner, or by the apparent pursuit and protection of a particular value (“Look at how he dotes upon his flowers-he must love them”)?
If love does possesses “a nature” which is identifiable by some means-a personal expression, a discernible pattern of behavior, or other activity, it can still be asked whether that nature can be properly understood by humanity.
The ethical aspects in love involve the moral appropriateness of loving, and the forms it should or should not take. The subject area raises such questions as: is it ethically acceptable to love an object, or to love oneself? Is love to oneself or to another a duty? Should the ethically minded person aim to love all people equally? Is partial love morally acceptable or permissible (that is, not right, but excusable)? Should love only involve those with whom the agent can have a meaningful relationship? Should love aim to transcend sexual desire or physical appearances? May notions of romantic, sexual love apply to same sex couples? Some of the subject area naturally spills into the ethics of sex, which deals with the appropriateness of sexual activity, reproduction, hetero and homosexual activity, and so on.
Should the ethically minded person aim to love all people equally? Is partial love morally acceptable or permissible (that is, not right, but excusable)? Should love only involve those with whom the agent can have a meaningful relationship? Should love aim to transcend sexual desire or physical appearances?
Deep questions, Adanelis, but I have to be blunt, are these "really" yours? If so, nice pondering, if not, well...
We cannot describe love properly. We can love someone with passion as we can be obsessed with someone. I can say we love someone when we know him/her well. We know their qualities, their weaknesses. We also know the repulsive things about them as the good things about them and we l accept them sincerely and completely the way they act with us and with everyone else. Obsession is when we like someone and we cannot fight against it. We are deprived to think and even to react against it. Sometimes, we don’t like the way he/she acts but we love him/her against our will. To love someone properly, we should know him/her in order to trust him/her totally. Without trust, we cannot love someone. This love will perish. In order to have an happy couple, we should identify ourselves to the person we choose. We cannot live with someone we hate. We should find many qualities we have together. We must be similar. Obsession doesn’t allow us to choose
What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of love? Do you think of a beautiful; selfless feeling? Or do you think of a way of controlling another person? Your answer might vary according to the love experiences you might have had.
Do you think it is possible to have compassionate love without having passionate love first? I think what you have when your first start dating someone is passionate love. You have sexual attraction and affection towards them. Then, after getting to know the person and spending time with them, you develop compassionate love. It takes time to trust someone and have that attachment.
Can someone be so crazy in love that they are willing to hurt or even kill? Apparently yes, there has been many cases where people get so attached to their significant other that they get crazy jealous and extremely possessive. Will this be considered love? Or should we call it manipulation instead?
First of all, I agree the “love” is a prepackaged form of manipulation of the system especially now. For example, let’s see how the media radio, television, newspapers, magazines influence people so much to “Buy a product” such as: take a cruise to the Bahamas for your better half on Valentine’s day, buy a nice car to your spouse, loose some weight to impress her so she will love you more, buy her a diamond ring and “she will love you forever” there are only few examples how we “invest” to get love or to continue building a existing “love relationship”. It sad but it is true the “most of us” are “buyers”. In my opinion, “true love” is commitment, connection between you and your “partner”, “mutual respect”, caring, and obviously “chemistry”. I personally think if you need someone that loves you “that way you are” but not “what you have or want you can offer”. I recommend this movie “Shallow Hal” to watch it, and you will discover how people are so manipulated by “external beauty” and “they forget about the inner beauty”. To conclude, you need to learn to “love yourself” before you want to love someone, otherwise; it is not going to work even you “buy nice products” to the person you are interested to be with.
Aldous Huxley predicted a future in which the human mind is saturated by media, consumption, and inane issues which drown human conciousness into irrelevance. Arguing against a fear based overlord controlling people by inflicting fear, Huxley instead insists that human's incessant appetite for distractions would cause the downfall of man, as those things we "love" eventually ruin us.
With such a hypothesis proposed, one must ask, "what is love?" By taking into account a broader sense of love, one is able to pinpoint human behaviors more accurately (rather than viewing "love" as something that happens merely between beings). If Huxley's "Brave New World" scenario were to be true, humans would basically revert to primal, animalistic desires in search of their short-run personal interests. By watering down their pyramid of hierarchical needs (Maslow,1943), people would give birth to an exorbitant society bereft of morality as inflicting oneself with pleasure becomes the ultimate reality.
In such a society, "love" is merely a euphemism for companionship, as people realize that their survival in such a cut-throat world depends on a partner's paycheck. For those who are even more hedonistic, "love" could serve as a euphemism for sex (as it does for many today), as the word's concept has become so abstract as a Jackson Pollock painting.
As society regresses further into Huxley's bleak dystopia, one can see parallels between present day "love" and this futuristic sham that is compassion. Ultimately seeking survival, countless people buy into the system created by a consumer society which entails finding a partner (for fear of social stigma and for monetary security), getting married (unless you're gay, then your love is not real), buying a big house (consume, consume, consume), and have as many children as possible (who cares about overpopulation?). In essence, "love" is just a nice word to throw around as humanity carries on its libido driven existence.
Love is dangerous and in my opinion it can become an addiction. This word "love" has been around for who knows how long and still no one has mastered this art. Today, the media has manipulated our perception of love that they are pretty much telling the consumers what to love and how to love. Love is definitely the most marketed idea in our society from television(soap operas)to actual holidays just for loving one another(valentines day). Don't get me wrong love is a beautiful thing and everyone loves to be shown some love from time to time but like any enjoyable desire in life there can be an excess. Love is such a pure emotion but the media has destroyed this purity and I believe has changed this word of love to the present day word of, "lust".
Love is dangerous and in my opinion it can become an addiction. This word "love" has been around for who knows how long and still no one has mastered this art. Today, the media has manipulated our perception of love that they are pretty much telling the consumers what to love and how to love. Love is definitely the most marketed idea in our society from television(soap operas)to actual holidays just for loving one another(valentines day). Don't get me wrong love is a beautiful thing and everyone loves to be shown some love from time to time but like any enjoyable desire in life there can be an excess. Love is such a pure emotion but the media has destroyed this purity and I believe has changed this word of love to the present day word of, "lust".
It would, I believe, be lovely to have strong feelings of pure (or in some circles unpure) desire for a person to which you were connected to on a deep level, someone who you could and would share practically anything with, be it your thoughts, feelings, lifestyle, etc...
What I've come to find so far in my life, through not only theories but also my personal experiences, is that while passionate love does indeed exist, those feelings slowly seem to decline as the relationship goes on, and lead into a different aspect of love that I would agree to be labeled compassionate or companionate love. Now, this is where I steer off the main road for a bit..
Why do I think this way? A bit of a nature vs. nurture debate arises. Is it due to my genes? I'm sure we've all read evolutionary approaches to sex/relationships in which the majority argue that men have the drive to attract, spread their seed, and move on; besides commitment implications, this doesn't leave much room for passionate love. How about my experiences? Of the relationships I've been in, (of which I only count 1 as truly mature), the same pattern has occurred. Passionate --> compassionate. I can understand why people call anything otherwise "rare".
But then I ask myself, could there exist a relationship that breaks the mold? I'd LIKE to think so, and I feel it could be possible.. and if the researchers who focus primarily on the deterioration of passionate love would call the condition "rare" or "uncommon", well then, that would give just enough leeway to hint at it's existence. Thus, ultimately, the question becomes: HOW TO ATTAIN IT?
And that is what I wouldn't know or near assume an answer to. I could imagine some traits, scenarios... say no one in the relationship ever got "lazy" with being romantic, a type of familiarity argument, or say every time someone achieved something they were proud of, the other would not only notice but acknowledge and appreciate them for it. But that requires a little mind control, right?
I say this because, if flaws (and by flaws I mean things in the other person you do not like/do not appreciate; not a fatal error like it's usually defined) can bring you back to reality from that cloud of passion one rides upon, then is it necessary to lie to yourself a little? The majority of passionate relationships, I've noticed, involve a bit of selective blindness... they are champions of the other's traits and ways of being they find godly, and they are blind to what in any other case they would consider flaws, and if not "blind", then brush them off as unimportant.. but as we all know eventually they become all TOO important... Does continual, bliss-inducing passion rely on this deceit? Indeed it is a form of lying to yourself... imagine writing a beautiful poem for your prospective Odysseus or Penelope, and many months later, looking back on it, not only does it not fire up flares of emotion, but, besides a nice smile it may bring to your face, it almost seems just a bit, foreign?
(continued from top)
Whatever the case, if there really was a "set route" into having passionate love to a heightened degree throughout a relationship, then, as all things, finding that route would depend on the person; if it involves a deceit, some honesty can be expected sacrificed to keep this. If it involves much more active romance and seduction, then more energy and time can be expected to maintain that. And what if there exists no set route, no road to rely on? Then it already is, as it is to many, up in the air, a chaos that eventually falls into some order; hell, could the former not be another word for passionate love, and the latter for compassionate love? Maybe that is why the line from passionate to compassionate seems so easy to draw upon. Beyond all this, it all comes down to the ultimate acknowledgment of what real love is, beyond our own ideas of what love entails.. it is the acknowledgment that real love requires sacrifice, one way or another.
And that's a whole other beast, entirely.
What is love and how you define it? Is it a feeling that everyone has or is it something our minds made up. How do you determine that you are in love? What are the necessary means to be considered in love? The articles have tried to explain what love is in the philosophical way. I am still lost and trying to understand the mind and how it deals with love.
I find it quite interesting actually that humans are the only such beings to express such a strong feeling of love. We do not label other animal's intimacy as "love", but rather merely "mating." Do fish love? Do beetles love? Sternberg's theory is another attempt at defining such a feeling that we do not even know all about. Love can have many forms and shapes, pertain to various relationships, and even turn someone into a personality they are not.
Passion,intimacy,and commitment are all the basis of love, but love is much more. Each of these come in different variations, and different forms. Analyzing love is like attempting to learn about blackholes, or time travel. All we know is theoretical and uncertain. We build on information that we assume rather than test. Love though is just an emotion, like any other.
-Marcus Calpakis
It is very hard for me at this point in my life to truly explain to myself what love is. While I agree with the color wheel concept of love, I feel it is incomplete. Just as there is a vast array of hues resulting from infinite combinations of colors, shouldn't it be the same with emotions- if comparing it to this wheel? And can't love transcend into these different kinds as the relationship goes on?
Must it be so technical? So black and white?
Since I believe desire to be a product of the brain (for I attribute it to our chemical drive to procreate), I must admit I believe love is a product of the mind... And the mind, as we have seen, is not easily understood. The explanation of its very existence leaves us with questions, theories, and that simple "I can't explain why or how, but it's there" feeling. I feel that because love is in the mind, we can't every well label it as one would a disease or a limb. Essentially, it is qualia. We each experience love different as time goes by and our lovers change. We might love our husbands and wives of years differently today than we did months prior. We might love someone a certain was and love another entirely differently with the same conviction or intensity. We might feel different elements of compassionate love and passionate love, and then feel entirely different elements or elements that have not yet been categorized in either! Because love is such a subjective emotion, it would be too ambitious to try to label it for a general audience. We can only base it on what we observe (and as we all know, deceit is not so easily observable) or what we simply feel ourselves (a fault, given qualia).
What we can contend to is that the media abuses this emotion and tries to make it marketable. It gives us a false idea of what love SHOULD be rather than portraying it as a unique experience for everyone. It gives us delusions on what our relationships should be like- making things feel all too scripted, and tragic when something doesn't go according to plan. It's staining our potential experience by giving us concepts of what can't even be controlled! And how fair is that to an emotion so complex we can't even put into words? In all fairness to love, we're trying to put into a general definition an emotion no two people feel the same.
A lot of people don’t know what love is and they go out and search for it the wrong way. Some say that love is a feeling or emotion. But I say, love is just a crazy mental state. How could one feel or know when he or she’s in love. Does the persons actions, tells you that they love you. Is love suppose to hurt or do you enjoy it? Since love, to me, is a mental state am I suppose to feel hurt by it or joy? What I mean by that is, do I believe the man that tells me that he loves me but yet cheats on me or beats on me. Or should I feel happy when a man takes me out to the park for picnics or a walk on the beach, is that expression of love.
Love, there seems to be so many words to describe it and yet there aren’t enough to do so. Love varies from person to person because no ones point of view is the same. Love also depends on the person you love, the love you have for your mother is not the same you have for an aunt, a friend, or a boyfriend/girlfriend. Is it love when you sacrifice yourself for another? Is it love when you kiss someone? Is it love when a woman stays with a man who beats her? Is it love when you tell someone you love them? Is it love when you manipulate others thinking its for their own good? People will agree or disagree, but it all falls upon who you are, how you were raised, and what your point of view on love is. Some people get married quickly because they’re madly in love but the relationship starts to deteriorate. I knew once of a couple who spent $60,000 for their wedding but the marriage didn’t even last a full year, the woman left him and now he’s stuck paying for the wedding. Why did this happen? Everyone who attended the extravagant wedding thought this couple is so lucky to have found each other, they’re going to last forever. We buy the Love that the media sells us because its what we all want. We all want that Disney version of Love and to live happily ever after. Everywhere we look, love and advertising go hand in hand. Whether they’re selling you a car, perfume, clothes , etc. Victoria Secret is a good example of this because the commercials and advertising they do for it is very sexual. It oozes sex appeal and people like it, its what sells.
I agree that people is influenced by what they see in the movies or what our society shows us as LOVE.Since we are kids we are influence by what the society presents us as "normal", meaning that whatever our society approve is label as "normal".
I also think everybody has a different meaning of love,there is persons that they don't need a partner to be happy or feel complete,while other persons need to be love by other in order to be complete.
I think we love how we were taught , and we are slaves of our society not only about "love" but also in every aspect that surround us.
cecilia ramos
What is love? Does it exist? Can you say you really know, or do you only “think” you do? I mean who can really say what they know, how many times have you known something without any doubt that it was so and then been proven wrong. Is love just something we say because we think we have to, does it even mean anything anymore or is it just a word exchanged by people in social groups? It is all relative to the individual, to the environment, to the social network that surrounds it, love is not one thing, that is if it is anything at all.
I think that if we had a choice about who we love probably half the world would be in a very happy and stable place. There’s always that great guy/girl that you know ,you two would have the greatest relationship with, like your best friend. For example , I had this best friend in high school . We had the same thoughts and ideas we practically matched , students and teachers would ask us if we were a couple and a lot of people thought we were in love because we just enjoyed each other. But even thought I did love him a lot it was in no way anything romantic , at least for my part. I would have given anything for it to be.So my thought is if we had a choice about falling in love with someone , we probably wouldn’t choose who we hook up with. I think for some people love becomes a disease, an obsession , which could become deadly. No matter what love is or what it could be ,nothing compares to couples who just don’t seem as though they should fit together, yet they are both happy in their marriage, and you can't figure out why? Of the many factors influencing our idea of the perfect mate, one of the most telling, according to John Money, professor emeritus of medical psychology and pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University, is what he calls our “lovemap”a group of messages encoded in our brains that describes our likes and dislikes. It shows our preferences in hair and eye color, in voice, smell, body build. It also records the kind of personality that appeals to us, whether it's the warm and friendly type or the strong, silent type. Personally I guess we will never know what love really is , if its emotional or psychological or just something more.
Like any other aspect of life, LOVE is one of society's standards just like rules and laws in politics. For us humans we have that aspect marked in our path because we have to be dependent of something. A good society depends on how stable relationships are between men and women. It begins with a man and woman committed to each other; they, in turn, commit to their children; the family commits to society. In other words, love and compassion should flow outward, like throwing a stone in a pond.
To me, that's what true love and compassion are all about! It applies to every race, color, creed and disability. To be in love, I think we become a part of each other experiencing every joy and sadness together. Like every man, I like to look at beautiful women. It's only natural for women to look at handsome men. But I think I know why men generally have more of a sex drive. Even with the Women's movement, I suspect that men still pursue women. That's not to say that women don't pursue men just as forcefully. But I wonder about the marriage proposal; who really proposes to whom? Is just how we are, is that pursuit that makes us who we are.
Love is not something that can really be described in words, everyone with his or her own perception. The best definition in the English dictionary is "to show good attitude towards another person." Love, however, is more than an attitude or, as some call it, a form of brain-washing or a mental state. It is neither just the manifestation of sexual desires, although it does play a role in a love between men and women.
Love, no matter how someone percieves it, is an unexplainable feeling that people feels towards other people. It is something that makes one cares for another without selfish or fearful intentions. Love trancsends all reality and understanding and can only ever be understood by someone who has felt it.
Also, love is not just the romanic version between a man and a woman we see in the media and culture. it can also be felt between family members, friends, and God. An example being the love of a mother hor her child; willing to sacrafice and even die for it. love can also be complexed, such as in the case of family members who often argue, but would still be there for each other when either of them are in trouble. in the end, love is not bound to any laws and is unconditional. it can never be understood by any man, no matter how brilliant the mind; yet it can be felt by all who are open to it.
Victor Mustelier
It is intimidating how many emotions of love I have felt but if asked to describe any of them I would be completely clueless.
To clarify, love is expressed in a mostly personal manner. By this I mean that the actions of selfishness or selflessness are all depending on the individual.
The need of attachment can be based on selfish manipulation. Regardless, with those same conditions love relationships fit together like puzzles. Accepting other’s morals no matter how lowly they may seem becomes a part of working society.
I don’t understand what “they” sell as love. Is love not a personal experience? Even though Disney, for example, shows the glory of successful marriages and happy endings/ lives. We go through the effects of passionate love with the hope of finding compassionate even though we know what “happy endings” can be like because we have seen them. So instead of compassionate love being a form of social domestication, doesn’t social domestication come as an effect after the experience of passionate love?
Nonetheless, the prepackaged forms of love that are forced unto us by our systems do serve a great purpose. Agape and pragma loves are surely what we would like offered to us but if we get instead ludos then we feel hurt even if that is what we offer. So the selling of ideal love does show a standard of how love should be like so once again human kind does not aim towards calamity or chaos.
I believe the human mind is capable of making up the idea of love. I can not say wether i believe love does not actually exist. I believe love may be something that is produced by society and through evolution. I think certain kinds of love are absolutely real, however, like the type of love between a mother and a child. It is hard for me to say this because i have in my life, felt "in love". The cynic in me wants to think it is simply a biological process. The romantic in me, however, would like to believe that it is a real, long lasting, beautiful thing. I agree though that it is very hard to decifer what is real and what has been programmed into us by our culture.
-Francisco Sanchez
It is possible to love and respect one another. The respect stems from identifying the other person as their own individual with a unique personality, will, and purpose. By not projecting our own thoughts and ideals onto them, we are immediately on our way to respecting them.
I have several questions about the definitions of compassionate and passionate love. Compassionate love was defined as mutual respect, attachment, affection, and trust. Is it possible to love someone without trusting them? What is meant by “attachment” in this definition? Is it to be interpreted as desiring to have the person near to you? If so, is this truly “love” if it does not take into consideration the person’s own free will and desire for independence?
Passionate love was defined as intense emotions, sexual attraction, anxiety, and affection. If “passionate” love is assumed to be short term, are these “intense” emotions short-lived, as well, or do they linger after the experience?
Hatfield suggested that a balance of the security and stability of compassionate love combined with the intensity of passionate love is rare, even though most people desire it. Why is that? Are there deep, underlying psychological issues and cultural faults that lead to this “shortage” of balanced relationships?
The topic of love is interdisciplinary – it blends philosophy, psychology, and even the math of probability. I thoroughly enjoyed this post, as everyday I learn more about this interesting subject :)
I want to start off with one of my favorite quotes about love : "Love is just a word until someone comes along and gives it meaning." Love for me is very dangerous because it could really lead to manipulation, hatred, abuse, and even makes us kill. I understand that love is sometimes a good feeling but I have always rather choose to not fall in love with anybody. I do agree with that love is kind of a disease because when you get hurt by the person you "loved", which happened to me before, it makes you depressed, not wanting to eat or sleep, and much more. From that day, I choose not to fall in love anymore, but to be honest it isn't that easy. I do believe what Hatfield suggests that passionate love is transitory, usually lasting between 6 and 30 months. It don't last for life, there's always a point that it will be over soon or later. It is possible to love and respect one another because if you choose to love that person there is always respect. To end this, love is just a fantasy no matter what.
I like to think that one could be loved and respected at the same time. Although the saying is said, "To have respect, you must be feared", I don't think that's necessarily true. because if a person loved another person enough, she would definitely consider showing her loved one respect. Also to respond to the first question, yes I believe that we are taught to love. Just as we are taught morality, or how to ride a bike; we are taught to love. In most magazines one would see either thin women or men with perfect hair and teeth and these are the people a lot of people try so desperately to be because they could see themselves with that person from off the magazine page(passion). A child in an abusive household would probably take the role of his father and grow up to believe that to show love is to be aggressive with his loved one(intimacy). And finally, a daughter grown up with a single mother that has different boyfriends every other day might learn from her(mother) that love is only temporary, sort of say, and that when she gets tired of one man she moves on to the next(commitment). Now those are, or can be, bad ways to learn how to love(if one would call that love) but it shows that love is indeed learned.
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