Love is the gift of eternal forces; I believe that the human capacity for love is our greatest gift. Without love I would not even want to be alive in this world. Love is the property of the senses. I agreed with Hatfield that there are two types of love compassionate and passionate. I think is good to have both kinds of love to feel fulfilled. However, after being with the same partner for a long time passion can die therefore, it is important to value other characteristics of your relationship. Trust, kindness, respect, and peacefulness are important factors to succeed in love. Eventually we would all experienced the six types of love in life which I think is essential in order to choose the one that best fits your personal desires. Diana Hernandez
Since a young child I have always been nutured,loved and cared for by my family. In my opinion love is something we are born with and taught as children. Although love can come with many complications without love humans would not be people with emotions, feelings and goals we would just be mere salvages. As children we are taught to love, respect and care for others, especially at a time where some one needs it the most. I believe love is both how we want to show and how society tells us to, although society tells us to show love with materials things instead of what true love is really about emotion,passion and most important respect. It is understandable that with love comes a lot of frustration,doubts and anger however in order to love you must respect. I have been with my spouse for six years and I have gone through many different stages of love however our respect for eacthother and desire to make it work is what has kept us together through turbulent times. Love should not be selfish because there is no I in love like there is no I in team. Love is like remodoling a house the more inve$tments you put in your home, like love the more statistied you will be.
Love is such a beautiful thought and feeling that I don't believe that it can even be defined by mere words out of the dictionary. Love is what makes the world go around, and I believe if human being on this earth would practice love on this planet that it would produce harmony never seen before. Of course love isn't just that easy, some of the actions that come with love are kindness; fairness, respect, and selflessness just to name a few. In our western society it does promote that love can be shown by materialistic items which isn't true at all, like the old saying goes money can't buy love. People usually think they know the true meaning of love but are very clueless; love is not something that you can pick up in a book. It is something that is embedded within us from the time of birth; it just requires the proper nourishment and care.
When two people genuinely love each other it’s a very beautiful thing. For everyone love can mean different things but bring forth similar emotions. I agree with Elaine Hatfield, where in the article she differentiates compassionate love and passionate love. This generation falls in the passionate love category where they love who is “hot” for that moment. Especially in the entertainment industry, they the passion is there for the moment they marry quickly and divorce or separate even quicker. Although, I do feel that there is need for both compassionate and passionate love for a relationship. I feel that there have to be passion to keep the relationship interesting but passion should not be an only factor. You can even say love is a result of happiness and happiness is a cure for good health, little to no stress and depression. When one is in love, they are happy and full of life.
The taboo topic of love is very confusing while I do not think that love is prepackaged sometimes we do not pick who we love. The misconception of love is very intricate. Love should be based on romantisicm. Love has also been expressed in ways such as our love for money and fame. Love is such a tricky subject that can mean so many things that it leads to abuse and manipulation as said in the article. I agree in the statement in the article saying that there is two types of love (compassionate love and passionate love.) I believe many young people are based on passionate love that eventually turn into compassionate love if it was meant to be. Love a disease? I think not I want to believe that love can lead to feeling secure but what is wrong with that. Many of us want to find stability and security in their significant other so how is this a disease. As long as both partners are on the same page it is not a disease that needs to be cured.
Love is very mischief and is different from person to person. The whole thought of love comes from an evolutional understanding that if you love someone you will be able to procreate and be protected from one another. Even the thought that there is motherly instinct is very false. Yes there are times where the mother will protect their children wither their lives, but what about the others who throw them in the dumpsters? The effect of love is developed from our culture and from your parents. You see that chivalry is dying quickly in parts of the country, but in other parts it stands strong. Love is what the person perceives it as, some can stay loyal since high school with their partner and others will never marry. Monogamy only started after the development of agriculture and the thought of ownership came to us human beings, but it is denounced to practice polygamy when almost everyone desires it. There is no right answer to this idea of love, it is only what you perceive it as.
In the bliss of infancy, is it not true that Mother, God, nurturing and warmth are all the same thing? I think that lovers venerate and worship each other, arrive at ethereal bliss and sometimes get embarrassed when the passion dies down, when emotions change. That at some point in a man's life he detaches his emotions from his mother and seeks a lover. Likewise the relationships between daughter and father, or son and father or daughter and mother. As mammals, we constantly seek warmth, comfort, love and bliss. Tenderness and love are the things that are given, as a rule in any culture, to infants and children. I think that happiness is an overly rationalized conclusion drawn from these most basic and instinctual drives, and that humans seek in other people the happiness that is; God, the mother figure, and sexual gratification. Because of cultural and societal standards, the strives of humanity to distance itself from sexual drives and barbarism, people handle their drives towards warmth and love in ways that are deemed acceptable, yet most often mostly inadequate: marriage, faithfulness, devotion to person or religion (loving God).
EVEN posting on Facebook.com that you are in a relationship for that matter. (these days) ›Kian Seara
It is almost impossible not to read about love and not compare yourself to your idea of what it is or should be. When I read about love being mostly based on scientific explanation, it sort of saps the romance out of me. My generation was raised on the "Disney idea of love". True love and prince charming, ect. Of course real life isn't like that, but it had instilled, in me at least, a very fanciful and magical view on love. A lot of the times, people don't get those sort of happy ever afters, and it does hurt, but at least it has us aiming high.
Our society is projecting unrealistic ways of living and it seem that it want us to believe that the only way we can be really happy is by having a new car, big house, money , a social position, fame, etc,,. Even though this superficial materials can indeed bring some source of satisfaction, it can never give us real happiness. "Love is the elixir of life; love is life." — Living to Purpose, by Joseph Johnson, 1871. I must agree with Johnson, love is life and I think it is why we desperately search for it. However, love is being define by our society in books, novels, movies, magazines etc,, as an excuse to achieve a purpose, and it doesn’t matter what it is, as long as we satisfy ourselves it won’t matter if it’s ways have purely selfish intention and results. Moreover, it wants to makes us assumed that love is in our head and that we can get rid-off it. Nonetheless, love is an essential part for any type of relationship. Especially, for marriage where we see that lack of love is one of the causes for many divorces. It’s true that romantic love (in Greek e-ros) is essential for marriage and that couples that are successful are united by affection and deep friendship (in Greek phi•lí•a). But we can’t forget about the love that is altruistic interest of others to do what is proper and good, whether the recipient deserves it or not. And this is what St. Paul was talking about a-ga-pe. Love doesn’t have a color or race. Love speaks out loud with words and specially actions. And if each of us cultivates agape love the world would be a better place. But it seems that what we like to argue or believed is that we are pre-determine to do stuff. Well, I am free and so are all us and we can learn and cultivate love not only for our sakes but for the entire humanity and earth.
I agree with Hatfield on the compassionate and passionate definitions of love. I have always referred to them as simply love and being in-love, respectively. Passionate love can last longer than the proposed I believe. Although you really have to work hard at keeping the flame alive. One would think passionate would be the strongest emotion wise, but I have experienced the compassionate on a whole different level. Those that are “good-loving” parents may know how I feel. I have been with my wife for about 19 years, and out of those years I have been married 9. Love definitely changes, maybe it’s different for all of us, but for me it went passionate to compassionate. You can definitely have passion in such a long relationship, but it takes work. Maybe nurtured is a better word than work, in either case you have to take care of it or it may face extinction. Now as for the the love for my daughter, I can’t even begin to put into words. For me, her birth was a life changer. And the love only gets stronger each day. The love you have for your spouse is very strong indeed, but the love for a child is beyond words. When you can see your life in your child's eyes, it’s like you can continue to live long after you have died.
I do not believe love is prepackaged. Love is not something you gain from out of the blue, love is more complex. Just like how you learn to love money, nature, etc. it depends on your personality and ambition that you love people and things the way you do. You can’t just fall in love with someone you met an hour ago, that’s not love. On top of that, I don’t believe in “Love at first sight”. In my opinion, “Love at first sight” is like falling in love with the person’s image, not for who they really are. I do agree with Hatfield and her colleagues, that there are two types of love: compassionate love and passionate love. In all honesty, I believe you need both types for a relationship to work.
We love not in the way we want, but in the capacity that we are able to love. This capacity comes from our innate animal attraction to our mates and from the environmental factors that have shaped our perception of how we should love. We may want to love a certain way, as depicted in story books or through religious standards, but as is evident by divorce rates in the US that type of love doesn't last for everyone. Love is commercialized and certain types of love are without respect or consideration for the other mate and that goes back to our capabilities to love others and their capabilities to be loved by others. What determines how we are loved and able to love, matters little however. Love is like most everything else a byproduct of evolution. Love bonds that help us come together with our mates and procreate increase our chances of propogating our species and our genetic material. Love and respect can go hand in hand, but isn't necessary as we see evident in society everyday. We are capable of it if we so choose, but is entirely up to our capacity to experience or recognize love in certain actions and behaviors. When it comes down to it love exists because the emotion stirred up inside of us by physical contact and the psychological sense of security and belonging it brings has led to the most effective way to procreate and to ensure the survival of our offspring. No animal in the animal world nurtures their offspring longer than humans and we do it for so long because of love. So love with respect can exist, but is not necessary to achieve the purpose of love.
I do agree with Hatfield because I do think there are two types of love the one you feel for your family and friends(compassionate)and the love you feel for you parter (passionate). I don't completely agree that love is some sort of brain wash to keep maintain the economy; I think we just take advantage like we do with everything and portrait an image for love.
Love is sharing believe me when I say that this is one of the most important ingredients of love. It is important to open ones heart and share – pain, joy, success and failure; it really does not matter, as long as the heart is clear. Love is being honest and knowing that the other person feels the same way too, it is sharing and losing one’s inhibitions and knowing that the person on the other side will never be judgmental. Love is talking; it is about speaking, telling and sharing. Sometimes people restrict their conversations to discussing bills, children and pets. This is a sure indicator of things going downhill. Bring the spark back by starting a conversation. Love is Spending Time Together a few minutes spent together every day keeps the boredom away. I just made this up right now, but it is because I feel there is nothing like time invested in a relationship…believe me, it pays! Heavy work schedules take up much time and effort, so it is important to get things into perspective. Love is the flower of life, and blossoms unexpectedly and without law, and must be plucked where it is found, and enjoyed for the brief hour of its duration.
Love is a wonderful thing. I believe that Love can be described in many different ways as indicated on the post. In my opinion, love is a combination of Respect, Trust, & Compassion. I believe that different people demonstrate love in different ways. As a child, my mother was always very “touchy-feely” and she would always tell my siblings and I that we were loved. I am now a mother myself to a four year old and I find myself showing my love for her in very similar ways. For example, I always tell her “I love yous” throughout my day. I find myself giving her kisses, hugs and rewards when she does good things. On the other hand, I know some people that were raised in a “very cold-like” way and now they are either different with their children or they are very affectionate. I believe that a key part of Love is Respect. I do not believe that anyone is capable of loving someone and be disrespectful. Once you lose respect for someone the love will fade (if it’s not already gone). Furthermore, Trust is a key component of Love. In order to Love someone I believe that you need to have trust to some extent in this person. Moreover, Compassion is another aspect of Love. I agree with Elaine Hatfield when she states that “compassionate love develops from feelings of mutual understanding and shares respect for each other”. I am in love with the man of my dreams. He has all the qualities that I’ve always prayed for. He is compassionate, loving, caring. Most importantly, he respects me and trusts me. Our love grew from a friendship to this passionate love and we are now best friends. There are times in which the relationship may have its issues, but I am a firmly believe that the Love remains because of the Respect, Trust and Compassion that we have for each other.
In my opinion, human beings and animals and everything that has life needs love because we are born with this characteristic. Without love there would not be life in this planet because love is a necessary and sufficient condition for life. Love is the most complicate word in the dictionary because is very, very intense. There is a quote that came to my mind that says. “There are three words that last forever. They are love, faith and hope, but the greatest of them is love” .Also, because human beings are in constant development, love is more something for our convenience than the real deep sentiment in our heart.
I am a lover. I love people, animals, insects, pachamama and everything she provides. Even if I dislike you I still love you. It's sounds cheesy, but it is true. I cannot even explain it. Maybe is the years of practicing yoga and reading about buddhism and Hinduism. I don't believe I see love how most people here see it. Love is supposed to be unselfish and in this society is the opposite: It restricts people. I agree with Hatfield about the two different types of love, but I believe one cannot exist without the other. Real love has to have passion at all times. I've been in a relationship for thirteen years and even when we go through bad times, we do it with passion and loving each other. Love is not perfect and that is what makes it beautiful, passion is what makes you fight for what you love until the end. If you LOVE your partner, you let him/her be. If you LOVE animals you don't eat them on wear them. If you LOVE the land, you protect it (I am making the changes necessary to reduce my carbon footprint as much as possible) All of these efforts take a lot of passion. I understand a lot of people don't share my views on love. I will continue to be a lover. :)
Dinah said, To me love isn't something that you feel, its something that you live by. Some people believe in love at first sight, but once you get to know the person you know how you truly feel about them. Love is not only something hard to achieve its hard to manage. I agree with Hatfield's proposition that there are two types of love: Compassionate and Passionate. I believe a healthy relationship can only last with compassionate love because it isn't based on what you think is love at the moment but what love will be till the end. Passionate love, on the other hand would probably be found in short relationships that don't last too long. True love should also be felt by both partners, not one, once that's achieved then you can say you have true love.
The definition of love in Buddhism is: wanting others to be happy. To me love means giving yourself to others. Love is compassionate and passionate is conditional and unconditional is right and wrong is good and bad; it tries to find its meaning through experiences or people. I learnt that love specilizes in making others happy and that includes yourself because when you do an action with love or your action includes love you feel that you have more love to give. At least that's the way I feel, and that's the way I love feeling :) I love myself, like I love you, like I love my pets, the animals, the universe and all in it because to me part of love is caring and respecting others. I know some people don't agree with me, but I understand them 'cause I respect them. Hinduism and Buddhism have helped me and thaught me to see life and love in a different way.... "You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection." Buddah =) MILUSKA DELGADO
I believe that everyone goes through different stages in life and every stage has a good or bad story behind. Love is a strong feeling and may lead a person to the path of virtue or to the opposite path. One may experience virtue or maybe not but when we experience the unexpected and become proactive we will realize why we are there and acknowledge what has been the caused ones direction. I believe that as we grow we learn and mature in many different ways including in the way we love. Unfortunately not everyone matures and this may be the cause for an obsessive love that can hurt in many ways, damage and destroy the aspect that one carries and experience from the day we are born. Most children may have had the pleasure to experience the eros style of love, towards their parents. I remember how much I loved and admired my mother for so many countless reasons. I, up to this moment still experience this love towards my mother because to me she is an ideal person and will always be. As teenagers I believe we experience the eros and ludos because we feel physically attracted to the opposite sex and might see that individual as the ideal person and once we have become as they say “an item” we feel that we have won a victory and have defeated the rest and have proved to ourselves that we got what we wanted, which now that makes us an egoist and the affections that we believe to be love, has become the mania style of love= OBSESSIVE LOVE. I believe that we don’t love the way we want to love because one can never be 100% sincere because we say we love unconditionally but really we don’t. We don’t love with sincerity and we surely don’t love unconditionally because there will always be something that bothers from our significant other even if is a simple genuflection. No one is perfect, but we wish we had the perfect and ideal person next to us. Sadly, we will never enjoy love and love the way we wish because we tent to focus on the impossible and on what we want. This behavior demonstrates that we can be hypocrites because although we feel this way about others we may not say anything just to keep the peace and harmony and in many cases for personal convenience. In many situations especially now with the economical circumstances marriages are keeping unity for their own peace in mind. As time passes we experience drastic changes in love and in many cases children are the ones who are suffering the consequences by experiencing lack of love and affection, that causes a great deal of pain and resentment which can later lead to violence, imprudent behavior and unkind emotions. It is sad to have seen and experienced the absent of my father during my entire life and like my personal experience many experienced the same situation. Now irritably I see couples with kid’s that stay together for personal convenience and financial comfort than to experience love.
For me, love is the aftermath...what you feel for that person when the lust, physical responses, and other mixed feelings are over is what real love is. Of course, there is the rare exception to my rule when someone meets their soulmate and doesnt have to go through a series of mixes to realize that its love. When I first met my husband, I had no idea he was my soulmate. We started dating when I was fifteen and it was a while before I finally realized that there was one feeling I had for him and vice versa, love. There are so many things that come into play when you first meet someone but the best thing to do is NOT to go with your gut feelings unless you are absolutely sure you're in the aftermath.
Face it. Love is vague. Some people define love as being spiritual, others see it as a release of chemicals in the body, and many do not know how to describe it. It is true that modern western society uses love as a selling point- just as sex is used as a selling point- but in reality, it is the idea of love being equivalent to happiness that is sold to us. Love, when taken as an emotional bond, passionate or compassionate, comes along with respect (also a vague term many times left to ones interpretation). What I am trying to say is that love and respect are emotions, feelings, chemicals, theories even, that do not have definite meanings. They cannot be confined to one interpretation because every individual forms his/her own idea about respect and love respectively.
Love is an emotion; we are born with this ability to express our self to those we hold dare to our hearts. The reality is that although many of us express our differently, many people abuse the power of this emotion. Many try to manipulate others and others have no realization that they are not actually feeling love and mistake it for something it is not. Robert Sternberg’s theory of love is my personal favorite. Basically, love has many faces. I won’t express the love I have for my son the way I will with a friend or a sibling. He has separated these different types of emotion into threes where a relationship can be missing one of the three points, for example Romantic love is made up of both intimacy and passion lacking commitment, companionate love is made up of both intimacy and commitment and lacks passion and the complete form of love consummate love has all three being the absolute perfect choice. Everyone is in search for love and will go to great lengths to find it even if it is fatuous love. In my opinion the most important details in any love relationship is respect. Respect holds great leverage and will hold its weight. A relationship with two partners who thrive to respect, honor and trust the other will equal consummate love.
Love is definitely a complicated subject and one that people must learn to understand with experience. So, that being said, my experience with love is little since I feel that I have a whole lifetime ahead of me. I do agree with Hatfield in the sense that there are two different ideas of love. My take is that these two types of love make for great relationships but do not necessarily have to be present at the same time, all the time. Everyone experiences problems in relationships from time to time and these moments of bliss (with both compassionate and passionate love) come is short spurts throughout the relationship. As far as how the media and society market love, I think that this plays a large role in a lot of young and inexperienced couples. I’d like to believe that experienced lovers can look past these material displays of what we believe to be love because they have moved past the “puppy love” or “honeymoon stage.” Last, but definitely not the least, respect. Respect is the most important aspect of love, for without it you cannot possibly say that you genuinely care and love someone. Even though my experience is little, I know that once respect has been compromised, the relationship begins to deteriorate. As much as we’d like to think and claim that the “little things” don’t bother you or that you can ignore the disrespectful things your spouse or significant other has said in the past, it is a sort of human condition to be able to forgive but not forget. Like I said, Love is a complicated subject but I embrace it in any way I can. Even if it sounds crazy, I choose to fall in love with strangers, love regardless of whether the feeling is mutual and do it simply for the feeling of comfort and self-fulfillment.
LOVE....... I LOVE hearing that word “LOVE” because it's holds so much substance and content for many so things we understand to mean something of value to us. The problem is that often times we don't value the essence of love or have had a misguided or dysfunctional understanding of what LOVE really looks like. I once heard that the opposite of LOVE is not hate…. Rather it’s the inability to give of oneself to another. The two types of LOVE mentioned; Compassionate & Passionate sum up how we in our western culture interpret and determine who and what we will give ourselves too.
I believe that LOVE is rooted not only in the words of the apostle Paul but also in the heartbeat of God since the creation of the world. The greatest act of LOVE recorded was the Father sending His beloved son Jesus to die on the cross for the sins of humanity because of His LOVE for us (John 3:16). How many of us have interpreted LOVE is far from the idea God had in mind.
Men are often guilty in this area of loving someone in order to gain something in return, that's because for many of us we love how we want to be loved. It’s no longer a sacrificial, selfless approach but instead this idea that it’s all about my needs, wants, desires and pleasures. LOVE is not an easy place to understand when your in it, especially when our culture and society view LOVE from a superficial foundation.
Love is essential to life. It is the gate to all the other emotions and if achieved can be the key to a life of happiness. The media corrupts love by persuading us to believe that is something so perfect that it would be something almost unattainable. The media And the society usually forget the consequences that an unsuccessful love can bring such as: hate, jealousy, vengeance, depression, and etc. In order to find the balance to a healthy love, a lot of sacrifices are needed. Romanticism is essential; however, the main issue people have is because a lot of us cannot condition ourselves to be selfless. Love is not only about sex or having the ideal match, it is also knowing how to give ourselves to the others and caring about them without expectations or judgments. We always tend to expect things they might not be able to give us or judge who loves more that each other. If you love someone, you have to try to find ways to achieve success rather than take actions that will lead to failure.
I think love is like any drug or flower. If it is grown right and with proper instructions it can mature into a beautiful thing. Just like plants are fertilized and planted with seeds a person needs the same for the love to come out beautiful and not ugly and abusive. Love also must be used properly and not abused. Some people fall in love all the time and this can be really bad (how many times can a person have their heart broken?). LOving someone must have good intentions and not have any abuse or crazy obssesions. Love can mean many things but can never be underestimated of its powers because one day you may find yourself trapped in it's grasp. Jessica PErez
29 comments:
Love is the gift of eternal forces; I believe that the human capacity for love is our greatest gift. Without love I would not even want to be alive in this world. Love is the property of the senses. I agreed with Hatfield that there are two types of love compassionate and passionate. I think is good to have both kinds of love to feel fulfilled. However, after being with the same partner for a long time passion can die therefore, it is important to value other characteristics of your relationship. Trust, kindness, respect, and peacefulness are important factors to succeed in love. Eventually we would all experienced the six types of love in life which I think is essential in order to choose the one that best fits your personal desires.
Diana Hernandez
Since a young child I have always been nutured,loved and cared for by my family. In my opinion love is something we are born with and taught as children. Although love can come with many complications without love humans would not be people with emotions, feelings and goals we would just be mere salvages. As children we are taught to love, respect and care for others, especially at a time where some one needs it the most. I believe love is both how we want to show and how society tells us to, although society tells us to show love with materials things instead of what true love is really about emotion,passion and most important respect. It is understandable that with love comes a lot of frustration,doubts and anger however in order to love you must respect. I have been with my spouse for six years and I have gone through many different stages of love however our respect for eacthother and desire to make it work is what has kept us together through turbulent times. Love should not be selfish because there is no I in love like there is no I in team. Love is like remodoling a house the more inve$tments you put in your home, like love the more statistied you will be.
-Estela Diaz
Love is such a beautiful thought and feeling that I don't believe that it can even be defined by mere words out of the dictionary. Love is what makes the world go around, and I believe if human being on this earth would practice love on this planet that it would produce harmony never seen before. Of course love isn't just that easy, some of the actions that come with love are kindness; fairness, respect, and selflessness just to name a few. In our western society it does promote that love can be shown by materialistic items which isn't true at all, like the old saying goes money can't buy love. People usually think they know the true meaning of love but are very clueless; love is not something that you can pick up in a book. It is something that is embedded within us from the time of birth; it just requires the proper nourishment and care.
When two people genuinely love each other it’s a very beautiful thing. For everyone love can mean different things but bring forth similar emotions. I agree with Elaine Hatfield, where in the article she differentiates compassionate love and passionate love. This generation falls in the passionate love category where they love who is “hot” for that moment. Especially in the entertainment industry, they the passion is there for the moment they marry quickly and divorce or separate even quicker. Although, I do feel that there is need for both compassionate and passionate love for a relationship. I feel that there have to be passion to keep the relationship interesting but passion should not be an only factor. You can even say love is a result of happiness and happiness is a cure for good health, little to no stress and depression. When one is in love, they are happy and full of life.
The taboo topic of love is very confusing while I do not think that love is prepackaged sometimes we do not pick who we love. The misconception of love is very intricate. Love should be based on romantisicm. Love has also been expressed in ways such as our love for money and fame. Love is such a tricky subject that can mean so many things that it leads to abuse and manipulation as said in the article. I agree in the statement in the article saying that there is two types of love (compassionate love and passionate love.) I believe many young people are based on passionate love that eventually turn into compassionate love if it was meant to be. Love a disease? I think not I want to believe that love can lead to feeling secure but what is wrong with that. Many of us want to find stability and security in their significant other so how is this a disease. As long as both partners are on the same page it is not a disease that needs to be cured.
Michelle Mazoleny
Love is very mischief and is different from person to person. The whole thought of love comes from an evolutional understanding that if you love someone you will be able to procreate and be protected from one another. Even the thought that there is motherly instinct is very false. Yes there are times where the mother will protect their children wither their lives, but what about the others who throw them in the dumpsters? The effect of love is developed from our culture and from your parents. You see that chivalry is dying quickly in parts of the country, but in other parts it stands strong. Love is what the person perceives it as, some can stay loyal since high school with their partner and others will never marry. Monogamy only started after the development of agriculture and the thought of ownership came to us human beings, but it is denounced to practice polygamy when almost everyone desires it. There is no right answer to this idea of love, it is only what you perceive it as.
In the bliss of infancy, is it not true that Mother, God, nurturing and warmth are all the same thing? I think that lovers venerate and worship each other, arrive at ethereal bliss and sometimes get embarrassed when the passion dies down, when emotions change. That at some point in a man's life he detaches his emotions from his mother and seeks a lover. Likewise the relationships between daughter and father, or son and father or daughter and mother. As mammals, we constantly seek warmth, comfort, love and bliss. Tenderness and love are the things that are given, as a rule in any culture, to infants and children. I think that happiness is an overly rationalized conclusion drawn from these most basic and instinctual drives, and that humans seek in other people the happiness that is; God, the mother figure, and sexual gratification. Because of cultural and societal standards, the strives of humanity to distance itself from sexual drives and barbarism, people handle their drives towards warmth and love in ways that are deemed acceptable, yet most often mostly inadequate: marriage, faithfulness, devotion to person or religion (loving God).
EVEN posting on Facebook.com that you are in a relationship for that matter. (these days)
›Kian Seara
It is almost impossible not to read about love and not compare yourself to your idea of what it is or should be. When I read about love being mostly based on scientific explanation, it sort of saps the romance out of me. My generation was raised on the "Disney idea of love". True love and prince charming, ect. Of course real life isn't like that, but it had instilled, in me at least, a very fanciful and magical view on love. A lot of the times, people don't get those sort of happy ever afters, and it does hurt, but at least it has us aiming high.
-Adrian Garcia
Our society is projecting unrealistic ways of living and it seem that it want us to believe that the only way we can be really happy is by having a new car, big house, money , a social position, fame, etc,,. Even though this superficial materials can indeed bring some source of satisfaction, it can never give us real happiness. "Love is the elixir of life; love is life."
— Living to Purpose, by Joseph Johnson, 1871.
I must agree with Johnson, love is life and I think it is why we desperately search for it. However, love is being define by our society in books, novels, movies, magazines etc,, as an excuse to achieve a purpose, and it doesn’t matter what it is, as long as we satisfy ourselves it won’t matter if it’s ways have purely selfish intention and results. Moreover, it wants to makes us assumed that love is in our head and that we can get rid-off it. Nonetheless, love is an essential part for any type of relationship. Especially, for marriage where we see that lack of love is one of the causes for many divorces.
It’s true that romantic love (in Greek e-ros) is essential for marriage and that couples that are successful are united by affection and deep friendship (in Greek phi•lí•a).
But we can’t forget about the love that is altruistic interest of others to do what is proper and good, whether the recipient deserves it or not. And this is what St. Paul was talking about a-ga-pe. Love doesn’t have a color or race. Love speaks out loud with words and specially actions. And if each of us cultivates agape love the world would be a better place. But it seems that what we like to argue or believed is that we are pre-determine to do stuff. Well, I am free and so are all us and we can learn and cultivate love not only for our sakes but for the entire humanity and earth.
I agree with Hatfield on the compassionate and passionate definitions of love. I have always referred to them as simply love and being in-love, respectively. Passionate love can last longer than the proposed I believe. Although you really have to work hard at keeping the flame alive. One would think passionate would be the strongest emotion wise, but I have experienced the compassionate on a whole different level. Those that are “good-loving” parents may know how I feel. I have been with my wife for about 19 years, and out of those years I have been married 9. Love definitely changes, maybe it’s different for all of us, but for me it went passionate to compassionate. You can definitely have passion in such a long relationship, but it takes work. Maybe nurtured is a better word than work, in either case you have to take care of it or it may face extinction. Now as for the the love for my daughter, I can’t even begin to put into words. For me, her birth was a life changer. And the love only gets stronger each day. The love you have for your spouse is very strong indeed, but the love for a child is beyond words. When you can see your life in your child's eyes, it’s like you can continue to live long after you have died.
I do not believe love is prepackaged. Love is not something you gain from out of the blue, love is more complex. Just like how you learn to love money, nature, etc. it depends on your personality and ambition that you love people and things the way you do. You can’t just fall in love with someone you met an hour ago, that’s not love. On top of that, I don’t believe in “Love at first sight”. In my opinion, “Love at first sight” is like falling in love with the person’s image, not for who they really are. I do agree with Hatfield and her colleagues, that there are two types of love: compassionate love and passionate love. In all honesty, I believe you need both types for a relationship to work.
~Norma Zeron~
We love not in the way we want, but in the capacity that we are able to love. This capacity comes from our innate animal attraction to our mates and from the environmental factors that have shaped our perception of how we should love. We may want to love a certain way, as depicted in story books or through religious standards, but as is evident by divorce rates in the US that type of love doesn't last for everyone. Love is commercialized and certain types of love are without respect or consideration for the other mate and that goes back to our capabilities to love others and their capabilities to be loved by others. What determines how we are loved and able to love, matters little however. Love is like most everything else a byproduct of evolution. Love bonds that help us come together with our mates and procreate increase our chances of propogating our species and our genetic material. Love and respect can go hand in hand, but isn't necessary as we see evident in society everyday. We are capable of it if we so choose, but is entirely up to our capacity to experience or recognize love in certain actions and behaviors. When it comes down to it love exists because the emotion stirred up inside of us by physical contact and the psychological sense of security and belonging it brings has led to the most effective way to procreate and to ensure the survival of our offspring. No animal in the animal world nurtures their offspring longer than humans and we do it for so long because of love. So love with respect can exist, but is not necessary to achieve the purpose of love.
I do agree with Hatfield because I do think there are two types of love the one you feel for your family and friends(compassionate)and the love you feel for you parter (passionate). I don't completely agree that love is some sort of brain wash to keep maintain the economy; I think we just take advantage like we do with everything and portrait an image for love.
Love is sharing believe me when I say that this is one of the most important ingredients of love. It is important to open ones heart and share – pain, joy, success and failure; it really does not matter, as long as the heart is clear. Love is being honest and knowing that the other person feels the same way too, it is sharing and losing one’s inhibitions and knowing that the person on the other side will never be judgmental. Love is talking; it is about speaking, telling and sharing. Sometimes people restrict their conversations to discussing bills, children and pets. This is a sure indicator of things going downhill. Bring the spark back by starting a conversation. Love is Spending Time Together a few minutes spent together every day keeps the boredom away. I just made this up right now, but it is because I feel there is nothing like time invested in a relationship…believe me, it pays! Heavy work schedules take up much time and effort, so it is important to get things into perspective. Love is the flower of life, and blossoms unexpectedly and without law, and must be plucked where it is found, and enjoyed for the brief hour of its duration.
Love is a wonderful thing. I believe that Love can be described in many different ways as indicated on the post. In my opinion, love is a combination of Respect, Trust, & Compassion. I believe that different people demonstrate love in different ways. As a child, my mother was always very “touchy-feely” and she would always tell my siblings and I that we were loved. I am now a mother myself to a four year old and I find myself showing my love for her in very similar ways. For example, I always tell her “I love yous” throughout my day. I find myself giving her kisses, hugs and rewards when she does good things. On the other hand, I know some people that were raised in a “very cold-like” way and now they are either different with their children or they are very affectionate.
I believe that a key part of Love is Respect. I do not believe that anyone is capable of loving someone and be disrespectful. Once you lose respect for someone the love will fade (if it’s not already gone). Furthermore, Trust is a key component of Love. In order to Love someone I believe that you need to have trust to some extent in this person. Moreover, Compassion is another aspect of Love. I agree with Elaine Hatfield when she states that “compassionate love develops from feelings of mutual understanding and shares respect for each other”.
I am in love with the man of my dreams. He has all the qualities that I’ve always prayed for. He is compassionate, loving, caring. Most importantly, he respects me and trusts me. Our love grew from a friendship to this passionate love and we are now best friends. There are times in which the relationship may have its issues, but I am a firmly believe that the Love remains because of the Respect, Trust and Compassion that we have for each other.
Aurora Tijerino
In my opinion, human beings and animals and everything that has life needs love because we are born with this characteristic. Without love there would not be life in this planet because love is a necessary and sufficient condition for life. Love is the most complicate word in the dictionary because is very, very intense. There is a quote that came to my mind that says. “There are three words that last forever. They are love, faith and hope, but the greatest of them is love” .Also, because human beings are in constant development, love is more something for our convenience than the real deep sentiment in our heart.
I am a lover. I love people, animals, insects, pachamama and everything she provides. Even if I dislike you I still love you. It's sounds cheesy, but it is true. I cannot even explain it. Maybe is the years of practicing yoga and reading about buddhism and Hinduism. I don't believe I see love how most people here see it. Love is supposed to be unselfish and in this society is the opposite: It restricts people. I agree with Hatfield about the two different types of love, but I believe one cannot exist without the other. Real love has to have passion at all times. I've been in a relationship for thirteen years and even when we go through bad times, we do it with passion and loving each other. Love is not perfect and that is what makes it beautiful, passion is what makes you fight for what you love until the end. If you LOVE your partner, you let him/her be. If you LOVE animals you don't eat them on wear them. If you LOVE the land, you protect it (I am making the changes necessary to reduce my carbon footprint as much as possible) All of these efforts take a lot of passion. I understand a lot of people don't share my views on love. I will continue to be a lover. :)
Dinah said,
To me love isn't something that you feel, its something that you live by. Some people believe in love at first sight, but once you get to know the person you know how you truly feel about them. Love is not only something hard to achieve its hard to manage. I agree with Hatfield's proposition that there are two types of love: Compassionate and Passionate. I believe a healthy relationship can only last with compassionate love because it isn't based on what you think is love at the moment but what love will be till the end. Passionate love, on the other hand would probably be found in short relationships that don't last too long. True love should also be felt by both partners, not one, once that's achieved then you can say you have true love.
The definition of love in Buddhism is: wanting others to be happy. To me love means giving yourself to others. Love is compassionate and passionate is conditional and unconditional is right and wrong is good and bad; it tries to find its meaning through experiences or people. I learnt that love specilizes in making others happy and that includes yourself because when you do an action with love or your action includes love you feel that you have more love to give. At least that's the way I feel, and that's the way I love feeling :) I love myself, like I love you, like I love my pets, the animals, the universe and all in it because to me part of love is caring and respecting others. I know some people don't agree with me, but I understand them 'cause I respect them. Hinduism and Buddhism have helped me and thaught me to see life and love in a different way....
"You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection." Buddah =)
MILUSKA DELGADO
I believe that everyone goes through different stages in life and every stage has a good or bad story behind. Love is a strong feeling and may lead a person to the path of virtue or to the opposite path. One may experience virtue or maybe not but when we experience the unexpected and become proactive we will realize why we are there and acknowledge what has been the caused ones direction. I believe that as we grow we learn and mature in many different ways including in the way we love. Unfortunately not everyone matures and this may be the cause for an obsessive love that can hurt in many ways, damage and destroy the aspect that one carries and experience from the day we are born. Most children may have had the pleasure to experience the eros style of love, towards their parents. I remember how much I loved and admired my mother for so many countless reasons. I, up to this moment still experience this love towards my mother because to me she is an ideal person and will always be. As teenagers I believe we experience the eros and ludos because we feel physically attracted to the opposite sex and might see that individual as the ideal person and once we have become as they say “an item” we feel that we have won a victory and have defeated the rest and have proved to ourselves that we got what we wanted, which now that makes us an egoist and the affections that we believe to be love, has become the mania style of love= OBSESSIVE LOVE. I believe that we don’t love the way we want to love because one can never be 100% sincere because we say we love unconditionally but really we don’t. We don’t love with sincerity and we surely don’t love unconditionally because there will always be something that bothers from our significant other even if is a simple genuflection. No one is perfect, but we wish we had the perfect and ideal person next to us. Sadly, we will never enjoy love and love the way we wish because we tent to focus on the impossible and on what we want. This behavior demonstrates that we can be hypocrites because although we feel this way about others we may not say anything just to keep the peace and harmony and in many cases for personal convenience. In many situations especially now with the economical circumstances marriages are keeping unity for their own peace in mind. As time passes we experience drastic changes in love and in many cases children are the ones who are suffering the consequences by experiencing lack of love and affection, that causes a great deal of pain and resentment which can later lead to violence, imprudent behavior and unkind emotions. It is sad to have seen and experienced the absent of my father during my entire life and like my personal experience many experienced the same situation. Now irritably I see couples with kid’s that stay together for personal convenience and financial comfort than to experience love.
For me, love is the aftermath...what you feel for that person when the lust, physical responses, and other mixed feelings are over is what real love is. Of course, there is the rare exception to my rule when someone meets their soulmate and doesnt have to go through a series of mixes to realize that its love. When I first met my husband, I had no idea he was my soulmate. We started dating when I was fifteen and it was a while before I finally realized that there was one feeling I had for him and vice versa, love. There are so many things that come into play when you first meet someone but the best thing to do is NOT to go with your gut feelings unless you are absolutely sure you're in the aftermath.
Stephanie
Face it. Love is vague. Some people define love as being spiritual, others see it as a release of chemicals in the body, and many do not know how to describe it. It is true that modern western society uses love as a selling point- just as sex is used as a selling point- but in reality, it is the idea of love being equivalent to happiness that is sold to us. Love, when taken as an emotional bond, passionate or compassionate, comes along with respect (also a vague term many times left to ones interpretation). What I am trying to say is that love and respect are emotions, feelings, chemicals, theories even, that do not have definite meanings. They cannot be confined to one interpretation because every individual forms his/her own idea about respect and love respectively.
Love is an emotion; we are born with this ability to express our self to those we hold dare to our hearts. The reality is that although many of us express our differently, many people abuse the power of this emotion. Many try to manipulate others and others have no realization that they are not actually feeling love and mistake it for something it is not.
Robert Sternberg’s theory of love is my personal favorite. Basically, love has many faces. I won’t express the love I have for my son the way I will with a friend or a sibling. He has separated these different types of emotion into threes where a relationship can be missing one of the three points, for example Romantic love is made up of both intimacy and passion lacking commitment, companionate love is made up of both intimacy and commitment and lacks passion and the complete form of love consummate love has all three being the absolute perfect choice.
Everyone is in search for love and will go to great lengths to find it even if it is fatuous love. In my opinion the most important details in any love relationship is respect. Respect holds great leverage and will hold its weight. A relationship with two partners who thrive to respect, honor and trust the other will equal consummate love.
Love is definitely a complicated subject and one that people must learn to understand with experience. So, that being said, my experience with love is little since I feel that I have a whole lifetime ahead of me. I do agree with Hatfield in the sense that there are two different ideas of love. My take is that these two types of love make for great relationships but do not necessarily have to be present at the same time, all the time. Everyone experiences problems in relationships from time to time and these moments of bliss (with both compassionate and passionate love) come is short spurts throughout the relationship. As far as how the media and society market love, I think that this plays a large role in a lot of young and inexperienced couples. I’d like to believe that experienced lovers can look past these material displays of what we believe to be love because they have moved past the “puppy love” or “honeymoon stage.” Last, but definitely not the least, respect. Respect is the most important aspect of love, for without it you cannot possibly say that you genuinely care and love someone. Even though my experience is little, I know that once respect has been compromised, the relationship begins to deteriorate. As much as we’d like to think and claim that the “little things” don’t bother you or that you can ignore the disrespectful things your spouse or significant other has said in the past, it is a sort of human condition to be able to forgive but not forget. Like I said, Love is a complicated subject but I embrace it in any way I can. Even if it sounds crazy, I choose to fall in love with strangers, love regardless of whether the feeling is mutual and do it simply for the feeling of comfort and self-fulfillment.
LOVE....... I LOVE hearing that word “LOVE” because it's holds so much substance and content for many so things we understand to mean something of value to us. The problem is that often times we don't value the essence of love or have had a misguided or dysfunctional understanding of what LOVE really looks like. I once heard that the opposite of LOVE is not hate…. Rather it’s the inability to give of oneself to another. The two types of LOVE mentioned; Compassionate & Passionate sum up how we in our western culture interpret and determine who and what we will give ourselves too.
I believe that LOVE is rooted not only in the words of the apostle Paul but also in the heartbeat of God since the creation of the world. The greatest act of LOVE recorded was the Father sending His beloved son Jesus to die on the cross for the sins of humanity because of His LOVE for us (John 3:16). How many of us have interpreted LOVE is far from the idea God had in mind.
Men are often guilty in this area of loving someone in order to gain something in return, that's because for many of us we love how we want to be loved. It’s no longer a sacrificial, selfless approach but instead this idea that it’s all about my needs, wants, desires and pleasures. LOVE is not an easy place to understand when your in it, especially when our culture and society view LOVE from a superficial foundation.
Sounds a lot like what I wrote...
Love is essential to life. It is the gate to all the other emotions and if achieved can be the key to a life of happiness. The media corrupts love by persuading us to believe that is something so perfect that it would be something almost unattainable. The media And the society usually forget the consequences that an unsuccessful love can bring such as: hate, jealousy, vengeance, depression, and etc. In order to find the balance to a healthy love, a lot of sacrifices are needed. Romanticism is essential; however, the main issue people have is because a lot of us cannot condition ourselves to be selfless. Love is not only about sex or having the ideal match, it is also knowing how to give ourselves to the others and caring about them without expectations or judgments. We always tend to expect things they might not be able to give us or judge who loves more that each other. If you love someone, you have to try to find ways to achieve success rather than take actions that will lead to failure.
Henrique Rodrigues
I think love is like any drug or flower. If it is grown right and with proper instructions it can mature into a beautiful thing. Just like plants are fertilized and planted with seeds a person needs the same for the love to come out beautiful and not ugly and abusive. Love also must be used properly and not abused. Some people fall in love all the time and this can be really bad (how many times can a person have their heart broken?). LOving someone must have good intentions and not have any abuse or crazy obssesions. Love can mean many things but can never be underestimated of its powers because one day you may find yourself trapped in it's grasp.
Jessica PErez
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