Okay, we know your religion, but how do you feel about love?

[Jill2282]

Do you know what it feels like? Can you put it in words, or is that simply impossible? Have you ever felt it, or do you only feel lust? And is it for real, or just your hormones?

Any answers?  

[Large Inmate]

I've never felt in and nor do I want to.
From what I gather it makes you feel like utter crap and then supposedly like the highest high of your life.
It's possible.

I also don't think it's definable. It's an abstract word that no one can put a definate definition too. After all one persons definition and feeling is different from another.  

[Kalstolyn]

Kals is questing again!

Love is actually a verb, an action word. It is a choice, and a series of choices made over time. It sometimes starts out as infatuation or lust, but there always comes that inevitable point when one must choose to keep loving a person despite the fact that the initial feeling has faded or fled. Loving someone is hard work. It involves sacrifice and tolerance and giving and a willingness to forgive.

Kals' Collaborative Crossword Puzzle!

Check sig for details!

 

[Thaliat Everwood]

I agree with Kal's definition, though it is not quite complete for me. I shall extend my definition of love a bit further.

--------

Love is very real, though not all may attain much beyond the level of lust, but even lust is love. Love is indeed a verb (and on many levels), and a noun, and a metaphor.

Basically, love is the act of willingly placing one's self in a vulnerable position to express one's endearment to another person or object through a combination of verbal and physical communication and activity while not knowing how our feelings will be returned, if they are to be reciprocated at all. In this way, love is a leap of faith.

Often times who we love is not really a conscious decision, though how we select to act upon it is our choice. Love does not always begin with infatuation or lust, though romantic love does. Love includes compassion and sacrifice (to be love it must), even when others may not agree it is deserved. This is why love is blind in the eyes of so many.

There is romantic love (which is usually the first to people's minds), but there is also the non romantic love such as the love for a child or a pet. There are also degrees of love, some healthy and some not. Examples of unhealthy love include ***** and the intense love that leads to stalking and beyond. Yes, love does have the potential to be very bad. Love is dangerous.

When most people are asked to define love, they try to define what is known as unconditional love. That is the only type of love that I do not accept as reality. There is always a limit, a condition in which a person simply cannot tolerate anymore and love can be lost. For some the level of tolerance is higher than others, but I have yet to find a person who, after hearing or experiencing enough scenarios, can continue to willingly love a person who continually abuses/ignores/works to destroy the person who offers them love. Granted, some people can last remarkably long periods of time under even the most extreme of those situations and continue to love the one who harms them, but eventually they have a breaking point. However, most people do not have to face such dire scenarios and so they can accept a concept like unconditional love as a reality because love allows them to be more open and accepting of others' faults. Love is a lie, yet love is honest.

It is possible to love more than one person at the same time, on different levels as well as the same. Though society claims people should only be romantically in love with one person at a time, it is very possible to romantically love more than one person, just as it is possible to love multiple pets or your many children on a non romantic level. Love does not take a number and wait its turn, love is a player.

Love is both concrete and abstract at the same time. Love is concrete as it is a result of chemical reactions in our brain that trigger an emotional and/or hormonal reaction based on a set of stimuli. However the stimuli that triggers each individual's reaction is different, as each reaction is different. Love is abstract in that it is different for everyone and yet so much the same. To feel love is to be able to feel pain and yet to feel euphoria. Love is complex and yet simple. Love is a paradox.

Love is known by many names. Love is good and love is bad. Love is easy for some and hard for others. Love is universal and yet so difficult to grasp. Love is rational and irrational, it can be explained scientifically and yet it cannot be fully explained. Love is a mystery available to everyone. Love is a value touted by many that is understood by few.

Love just is.

--------

Have I ever felt love? Yes. I have felt love many times to many people and on many levels, both romantically and not. I've been hurt by it and also healed by it. I am currently in love, romantically, and it feels great the majority of the time.  

[t0pey]

it's an action and it's because of hormones...  

[GnosticGoddess]

Oh yes I know what it feels like. It's a wonderful feeling but it can also feel not so wonderful at times too LOL. You give the one you love an lot of power over you and at times that can suck. I don't think that anyone can really put it into words. But I love love and I would not want to live in a loveless world.  

[Niada]

Love is a many splendored thing ... love lifts us up where we belong ..! All you need it love!

Ok, yeah, for serious.

Love is giving someone enough of You to destroy you, but trusting that they never, ever will.

People say love can make you feel bad, but to me that's just people realizing that they've made themselves utterly vulnerable to some other being.

To me, love feels like a blanket you've always got wrapped tight around you. If you're alone, or scared, or worried, or even just happy or not feeling anything in particular at all, you can feel it around you and know that out there somewhere is someone who would die for you just as well as you would die for them.

Love is giving all of yourself for all of someone else.  

[TheHellDevil]

Love is the full acceptance of communication. I say this because there are times when we don't really accept what a person is saying. Maybe we disagree with them and wish they could take our advice instead, or maybe we feel that what they are saying is nonsense so we zone them out. When we fully accept what another person is saying or doing, even if we disagree with them, we love them. We accept who they are, what they do, what beliefs they hold.  

[inuyasha_fans_1989]

well actually, as you probably already know, there is a difference between love and lust. Your religion can be a big issue on how you determine what it is, but there is a difference. I've felt lust, but never wanted a woman just for her body, thats not how it works with me.  

[RamuNemu the Curry Pan]

I don't understand love, and I don't think I ever will. I've been infatuated, but it's not love. I have a friend who swears she's been in love five times and had heartbreak five times. I don't believe her. I mean, where is the "true love" "love at first sight" "happily ever after" kind of love in fiction? People swear that they've had love at first sight. Maybe that's true. My friend's friend who's not a friend of mine swears by true love and love at first sight. If that's so, then why are her affections now straying?
It doesn't exist. It's something that the media/credulous public expands on based on hormones and the basic human purpose to reproduce.  

[AlcoholicPancake]

Love for friends or family, I can understand, but I don't understand love towards another person relationship wise. Then again, in this day and age, I feel that love like that no longer exists. Generally all people care about now is sex or money, and you don't actually see the caring or togetherness that is supposed to be intertwined with love.

Basically, I feel that love is nothing more than a marketing strategy masterminded by Hallmark and other card companies and chocolate companies to increase sales while preying on the stupid and gullible.  

[RamuNemu the Curry Pan]

AlcoholicPancake

Love for friends or family, I can understand, but I don't understand love towards another person relationship wise. Then again, in this day and age, I feel that love like that no longer exists. Generally all people care about now is sex or money, and you don't actually see the caring or togetherness that is supposed to be intertwined with love.

Basically, I feel that love is nothing more than a marketing strategy masterminded by Hallmark and other card companies and chocolate companies to increase sales while preying on the stupid and gullible.

Exactly what I was trying to say, but couldn't quite!  

[AlcoholicPancake]

Sakurai Nemu

AlcoholicPancake

Love for friends or family, I can understand, but I don't understand love towards another person relationship wise. Then again, in this day and age, I feel that love like that no longer exists. Generally all people care about now is sex or money, and you don't actually see the caring or togetherness that is supposed to be intertwined with love.

Basically, I feel that love is nothing more than a marketing strategy masterminded by Hallmark and other card companies and chocolate companies to increase sales while preying on the stupid and gullible.

Exactly what I was trying to say, but couldn't quite!

Well, I'm glad to help 3nodding  

[Auroraphobia]

Fair Venus, speared by Diomed,
Restrained the raging chief and said:

I've loved a lot of people... Most being friends though. Love is real, and its not just because of hormones. If it was because of hormones the human race probably wouldn't be monogamous.

"Behold, rash mortal, whom you've bled --
Your soul's stained white with ichorshed!"

 

[The Grandiloquence]

To the OP,

My initial answer to your questions are as follows...

1) Yes, I do believe that I know what love feels like. I know that I was under the false impression that I had fallen in love in past relationships. The feelings I had at the time, when they are compared to my feelings for my current love, however, are like a drop of water in the ocean. Though this similie seems exagerated, my feelings do truely reflect this comparison as being accurate in proportion.

2) My feelings could be put into words. I, however, am not literate enough to express them properly that other's might glean the same feeling, even if for a fleeting moment, that I feel everytime I see my love smile.

3) As I stated above, I have felt it, but I do also have lust along side my love. I believe the two to be, for the most part, mutually exclusive. I know that as deep as my love feels now, it does not enhance my sexual feelings for my love. I feel love for her, but am also sexually attracted to her.

4) The question of, "...is it (love) for real, or just your hormones," is, in my opinion, flawed. I believe that all we feel is able to be explained by science. I am of the opinion that control of human emotions and such is possible and understandable to the magnitude that the movie The Matrix presented. Robots were able to study human minds enough to create stimuli which caused them to react in the full gamut of emotions within their fictional environment, though not control them.

Likewise, I believe that even love is merely your body's natural reaction to outward stimuli, but like anything, outward stimuli is not responsible for an individual's response to it. So, I believe the emotion "love" is real, but is also a natural occurance based in nature, in a scientific sense.

That's my opinion.

Obviously, the feeling is real to the individual, so who is to say that it isn't real?