what is "love"

[captcha45]

A friend recently told me something interesting: "I like being in love because it makes me feel good about myself. I like to make my partner happy because looking at myself through their loving eyes makes me feel beautiful". I have always thought love was more about making the other person happy, but after thinking about it, what my friend said makes a lot of sense.

 

what do you think? What do you feel like when you are in love?

 

Is it more about making the other person happy, making yourself happy or seeing yourself through their eyes? Or a little bit of all?

[Bunney]

I dont believe there is such thing as complete selflessness. Almost everything we do and say has something to do with ourselves; as in, when we're mean and condescending, it is to make us feel better about ourselves, and when we want to be with someone or do something for someone, it's also for ourselves in a way, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. So of course, when you enter a relationship, their attention and affection makes you feel good about yourself, and that's one reason why we crave to be with somebody; when you make someone happy, you automatically get happy yourself, plus we like to feel needed, admired etc. Yes, being with someone has a lot to do with making OURSELVES feel better, which you can see as a selfish thing but is rather normal.

[alldaisies]

Sorry for English grammar and sentences structures. I will try my best to explain my idea of what is love.

 

I will base my answer on my own experience and what I have read.

 

Many times in my life I asked myself the same, what is love?. I was married, and I was not happy, I looked to my cousin, aunts, uncles, sibling, parent and they were happily married, I was not.

 

I married a man who loved me and respected me, a man who took care of me when I needed it. But there was something missing, it was not the love I read on books or watched on romance movies, there was peace and harmony at the beginning but no love. The beautify from the beginning of the relation dissipated through the years or very soon. Our communication was really bad. Even for the most stupid reason, he was yelling at me, he was yelling at my children. Part of me, care for him a lot, I told myself many times to find release "he is good, he is hard worker, he has supported me in my hard times", "there are always up and down, we must work on our relation, I am not a quitter". On the other side my husband was always telling me, that he wants what is best for me. He must love me. We want the best for the people we love.

 

Why I am not feeling in "love"?, why, well, it is because it is impossible feel in love with a person that cannot take care of me when I am ill without yelling. He has said sorry many times, and I have pardoned him many times. I have focus most of the times in the good part. Nobody is perfect, right? We have certain connection after all, but for sure no love.

 

Then one day, my husband got involved with a coworker, and he made my life even more miserable, you do not have idea how. I was totally devastated. And in that bottom whole were I was, a new man helped me, he give a hand, he give me music, poems, long conversations, he listened to me in away my husband did not do it in our whole life together. It was like the prince charming, rescuing the princess from the bad evil villain. The characters from the books came alive. Wow, this is love, I have never felt so in love in my whole live, no-one never listened to me like that before. At the end, he did not move earth and sky to be with me, and I did all I could to be with him. The time passed and that prince disappeared from my live, but the other, my disturbing husband stayed fighting for me, he was the one by my side when I was at the hospital for a week. Do I love my husband? No, he still is the same person, supportive, with many good values, but all the yelling do not allow me to love him (maybe my love for him died with his betrayal) and I will never love him the way I loved that comet man that stayed on my live for so brief.

 

Love is a wonderful feeling, it is feeling alive beside that person, it is to be happy, it is want to woke up every day beside that person, it is want to share all the good and bad times with a person, love make us to be better person, love bring the best of us. Love is magic. Love is all that you mentioned, he is happy, you are happy. You irradiate happiness, there are sparks in our eyes. But love is also very rare. Love is forever and ever present. When you find love, you do not want let it go, no one need to explain to you the meaning of love. When you love, even if is pain for you, you are able to let the other person go, and you are happy with his happiness. Love is a very complex feeling, emotion, state of mind. Love saved me when I was almost dying. I am thankful for that, it was a blessing in my live. I will always love the little comet, he will be forever part of my life. Love cannot be prosecuted, love is where you least expect it. Love most grow.

 

There is a famous poem of Lope Vega..about love..

 

To pass out, to dare, to be furious,

Hard, tender, generous, elusive,

Emboldened, mortal, dead, alive,

Loyal, treacherous, cowardly and undaunted:

 

To find neither meaning nor rest beyond the bounds of good,

To act now sanguine, now sad, now humble, now haughty,

Irate, courageous, fugitive,

Satiated, offended, suspicious:

 

To turn your back at blatant disappointment,

To drink of venom as though it were nectar,

To forgo gain, to love harm:

 

To believe there is heaven in hell,

To surrender your life and soul to disappointment,

That’s what love is; he who drank of it knows it.

[Batya33]

In the simplest of terms, loving =giving.

[boltnrun]

"Baby don't hurt me".

 

Sorry, couldn't resist.

[Dottieflanogon]

I believe love is when you unconditionally love someone. You feel like your life would be not complete without him/her

[SpottiOtti]

I believe love is a choice, after all of the happy chemicals have subsided and the day-to-day sets in. You choose continually to be with someone and then a deeper love develops, based more on shared compatibility and experiences which bond you. And I agree with your friend and with Bunney, that staying in a relationship which you get nothing out of, is unproductive and contrary to human nature. There must be benefits to balance the sacrifices.

[musicman777]

"Baby don't hurt me".

 

Sorry, couldn't resist.

 

Don't hurt me, no more!! DUH DUH DUH DUH, DU-duh duh duh duh, du-DUM duh duh duh duh, du-DUH DUH DUH DUH du unst aahst unst asaht...

 

I don't know OP. But I think you should look up a video on TED talks about "synthetic happiness", google it, it's also on Netflix, all of the TED programs are really good. In reality, people don't need someone else to make themselves better or be happy. Relationships are kind of pointless and a social norm. People think that synthetic happiness isn't as good as happiness you would find with finding "love" for example. If you didn't know, synthetic happiness is happiness you can make up yourself. For example, in that lecture the guy talked about a man that went to jail for some 30+ years or something on a crime he didn't commit, and when he came out of prison he said it was an "divine experience" or something. He was able to make himself happy despite being in prison for decades on something he didn't do.

[alldaisies]

I agree that we can be happy or be better person without the necessity to be in love or with a person by our side. Codependency is not a good thing. But for sure, when we are in love, we are happy.

[Lucia Amman]

Now, actually codepency has been proven by sceince to be actually very good and healthy in a healthy relationship and for your level of happiness through out your life. At least it is for men. This study shows it: /

 

Love for me has been many things. Sometimes it was selfless but very heartbreaking too, other times it was an act of self care and mostly self love. Sometimes it was egoistic because I knew for a fact that the man I loved would be much happier if I wasn't in his life. This time my love is easiness. I don't really try this time because it comes effortless. For the two years that I was single I wasn't really looking for a life partner at all but I was looking for 'falling in love'. And it happened few times and fast. And it didn't really matter if the outcome was a relationship or not. I was happy with myself and my kids and my life in general. I loved hanging out with new people and my friends and I loved hanging out with myself. Love was like the waves of the sea to me. I knew it was something that comes and goes. So even love sickness didn't bother me that much. And like the waves I crashed into this man that didn't try to let me love him or tried to bind me or ever looked like he tried to make me feel or do something he wanted. And that when I fell in love with this nature, steady and kind. I could feel we kinda loved in the same way. Nothing too hard, not too complex.

 

Love is not playing mind games. Love is forgiving and love is not want to change someone. Love is acceptance. I love not for myself, because I already love myself enormously. But it's nice to share and I actually think my life is a whole lot of easier since i met him. Because easiness is what we both crave. I don't expect to always be this steady, I'm not always steady in my heart or mind at all. In fact I'm very changeable like the tides of the sea (I think, like every human being ever is) but I learned how to swim and I think I can always swim back to him. That's the steadiness. Love is the shore I want to come home to even when my heart wanders.

[alldaisies]

Lucia,

 

Excellent article, thanks for sharing.

 

You have described beautifully what love is, very poetically. Love the last sentence, could be part of a good book.

 

Now, about co-dependency, maybe I did not understand the concept completely. And because of that I said it was a bad thing. My parents love each other a lot, I would say they have co-depent relation, but it is not exactly like that, it is a balance relation, each of them bring something positive to their union, something that bring happiness and make them strong on the hard time, they have what you described as love, they do need much or more of what they already have to be happy.

 

For me co-dependency is when the woman or the man lose their complete self identity, they lose so much into the relation that they cannot bring something good, think for themselves or being alone, and for me that is not good.

 

Nothing better that to have an harmonious relation, I am not co-dependant, I do not need anybody by my side to do what I have to do. But I crave for what you described without getting crazy to have it, because I strongly like to have a family, a healthy family. I know well how to have what my parents have.

[beanpot]

This was lovely. Thank you so much for sharing.