What Löve is (My thoughts)

[eddie500]

I wanted to touch up on this topic of what I think löve really is for some time now. OK, I hear a lot of people recently telling me that I don´t know what love is. They tell me that it takes time to really fall in love and all this different stuff which basically makes no sense. They always bring up the infacuation, saying that your not in love your just infacuated... They make it seem like infacuation is not a good thing! They make it seem you need years and years to be with someone to experience true love. This seems like a load of BULL Sh*t to me, especially consdiering the fact that a lot of these people don´t seem so happy.

 

 

 

Someone has recently made reference to the following article, which touches up on the topic somewhat.

 

 

 

OK, so my thoughts on what love really is. First there is no difference between infacuation and love. Or bascially there is only one type of love´, which is LOVE and with love comes different degrees of LOVE. Bascially infactuation is the best love your going to have (the highest degree of love), this would be the optimal love to have and keep it forever if it was possible. Read that article above where she talks about infacuation, this is where your body is producing all the chemicals that make you feel on top of the world. The feelings in this stage are just amazing! I could go on and on about this stage, but I´ll leave it at the feelings are just amazing.

 

OK, so a lot of people think that after the infactuation period is where you experience real love. This is totally not true, bascially infactuation period is the highest love you will have. Unfortanetly your body will not keep that high degree of love forever, for whatever evolutionary reasons, and then you simply fall out of the high love into lower degrees of love.

 

What would be optimal in life? Now I´m speaking from a mans point of view here, but I would say that optimally if a man wanted to live in the highest degree of love, he should change partners everytime he falls out of the infacuation period, or the highest degree of love stage. Honestly what better feelings are there then the infacuation period. This would be optimal but not pratical in most situations. Mostly not pratical becuase its hard to keep finding girls that you can fall in love with, better yet finding a new girl for most guys, not to even mention the economic reasons. If you also look at history, it was very normal for the kings and rulers to have multiple girls.. they had the power to do what they wanted and they choose multiple girls.

 

If you have read that article you will see that once the love is gone, its very hard to stay together. This is because our bodies were not designed to stay together like this for long periods of time. Some species if I´m not mistaken were designed to stay together forever. I have heard recently that love birds (I think) always have one parter for life and if the partner dies... I forget exactly but my point is that this is a species that has evovled to have one parter for life, but not us humans.

When also reading the article you will see that she offers nothing solid on getting the love back, she only mentions stuff to bascially fake love not bring true love back.

 

This is controversal stuff here, which I just love writing about. But I had to make sense of what love really is and how it works. I also have heard a lot of things that just didn´t make any sense, especially about people being negative about the infacuation period. But it makes sense why these people were negative about it because a lot of them were married for many years and are just trying to deny the truth. They are envious of the infacuation period because they have not experienced it for years, and deep down they know what they are missing.

 

But the truth is all around us, just look at the divorce rate and how many times we humans change partners.

 

Anyway ALL comments are welcomed, postive and negative!

[princessdi75]

First off, it's INFATUATION...not infacuation.

 

Sorry, but this post really ticks me off. Especially the part about people (although you referred solely to men) should be switching partners all the time...Infatuation is NOT love...it is a VERY good feeling, but it is NOT love. Infatuation and love are two different things. I do not believe in love at first sight. I believe in infatuation at first sight...and sometimes people do fall in love after being infatuated...and they simply claim it to be "love at first sight" because they thought their infatuation was love. My boyfriend and I exchanged "i love you's" after 3 1/2 weeks of dating (granted we knew eachother for 7 months previously, but you could hardly call us friends) So I do agree that love can happen fast and doesn't always take time (afterall, we're still together after 7 months), but that's not to say we haven't had our rough spots (i post on here about our problems). I definitly don't believe that true love takes years and years. I do believe that infatuation is false love...you may feel wonderful...but love is deeper, than that, and lasts longer.

[RayKay]

Infatuation is fun, it brings in intense feelings and it gives you a high.

 

But it is not real love.

 

I have experienced both, and I for one can say that the love that comes after infatuation is not "weaker" by any means...not all relationships succeed in reaching this deeper, long lasting, companionship love, but for those that do, it is more rewarding then any infatuation could be. While it is simplistic definition, infatuation is more about how "they make you feel" where love is about "how do you want to make each other feel together". I do not think it takes "years", that depends on the people involved, and the relationship itself, but I do believe time increases the bond when you put the effort into it. I believe love grows through shared experiences - both positive and negative ones, where you develop a true partnership with one another.

 

Know the famous speech about it not being what my country can do for me, but what I can do for my country? I believe the infatuation is the former, and true love the latter.

 

Infatuation is not a bad thing, it has its place and is part of the human experience. It is the part of the relationship that allows us to foster a bond with one another, that releases oxytocin and other feel-good chemicals that have us wanting to develop something with a person. But it is not something that is there forever. Love takes work, you can't just run away when you suddenly feel less intense, it takes commitment, respect, patience, understanding, faith and good old fashioned elbow grease at times.

 

Sorry honey, but you get out what you put into life. Some people may hate the "work" that comes after infatuation, but when you put the right stuff into it, what comes out of it is far more rewarding. For both partners involved. For me, nothing is better then sharing your life with a special someone, and building your lives together, chasing your dreams together, supporting one another through thick & thin.

 

If you are happy changing partners for the rest of your life, so be it. But it is also just an excuse to never create any deeper bonds. Your choice, but make sure you tell the women you are with that ahead of time so they know you have no intentions on being around long term, so they can make the right choices for themselves too.

[theantibarbie23]

Infatuation, is not optimal love. Having one tryst after another and never forming any strong emotional bond to another is just sad. I can't imagine wanting to spend my life that way. It sounds so unsatisfying to never have anyone to really share life with because you have to start over from scratch with someone new every couple of months.

 

Not to mention having to get to know the new person and go through all the same song and dance about getting to know one another. Same awkward moments, same questions and discussions about the same subjects (career, family, friends, ect), over and over and over and just when they scratched the surface of who you really are *DING* time to trade up! That really sounds good to you?!

 

You know you love someone if you'd stay by that person's side if they were horribly burned or lost their limbs in an accident, because you care about that person as much as you do yourself. Not just because you feel giddy and have a surge of hormones.

[eddie500]

Sorry, but this post really ticks me off. Especially the part about people (although you referred solely to men) should be switching partners all the time...

 

I did refer soley to men, but from my own personal experiences the girls move on shortly after to another partner.. My ex-girlfriend after only a few months had no problem switching over to another guy, or like she would put it "jumped from one hot bed to the other". Meanwhile I was still in the infatuation period.

SO I put the emphasis on men, but I think women move onto new partners just as easily or easier then men.

[ShySoul]

Eddie,

 

I seem to recall you having some bad experiences with relationships not so very long ago. I think what you are trying to do is justify staying out of something serious because you don't want to be hurt again. But in doing that, you will never get to experience all the true joys of love.

 

I also think that you are basing this of off an experience with a girl that was really not ready or serious about the relationship to begin with. It's not that she moved on quickly, its that she doesn't know what she wants to begin with. And the guy she moved on too, is being treated just as you were. That won't last either. It was never real love. And even if it was infatuation, you weren't happy in it.

 

Furthermore, when people jump quickly to another relationship, it can often be as a way of masking the hurt they are really feeling. It's not that they feel happier jumping between partners, its that they don't want to feel as alone and empty as they were feeling.

[ShySoul]

 

 

But its not so much the physcial attacks as much as the mental abuse that is bad. She tries to totally control me and in a sense does. Its so bad I bascially can't even say much without her (NOt yelling but talking to me like I'm a student or her child) at me, so I have to limit what I want to say. SHe is constantly nagging, blaming me for everything.

 

The Truth is, I'm scared of her. I have to admit that I'm afraid to go to the bathroom at night becuase she will get pissed at me if I wake her..

 

Given what you went through eddie, I can see why you would be against forming a serious relationship with someone. But that's not the way to go, just going from partner to partner. If you do so, you will always have an empty spot in you and you will not really be happy. You'll always want more. Don't let a psycho turn you off to all the joys and benefits of real love.

[eddie500]

ShySoul, Very good points, and your totally right. Thinking about it she did a lot of damage to me with my trust in girls. I guess Its been a while now and I've accepted these experiences as truths. Now I don't think of these bad experiences, but they are like accepted into my conscious.. just like any other hard facts.

 

I did tell her after that post you quoted and we broke up, "you really hurt my trust in girls".. I guess its evident in how i wrote this..

 

I guess the only way to really have a different outlook at this point is to have different experiences with girls, ones that build trust.. not kill it.

 

But again, very good insight.

[Cyberchick]

Hi everyone,

 

I disagree with alot of what Eddie said about love, except for the notion that love is love. What gets me is this distinction people are always making between being " in love " wth and loving someone. People in a relationship end things because they love the person, but are not " in love " with them. What the hell? I think that is kind of lame. If you love someone, you love someone. It sounds simple but I really do believe that. My theory is that the distinction has a lot to do with our need for perfectionism in everything, icluding relationships. I know what people mean when they say they are " in love " and what they are really talking about is lust, chemicals, the infatuation, the romance. That's not love, and I don't really see why we have the phrase " in love " if what it boils down to for the most part is chemicals.

 

I hate how it's decided if a couple are really friends or if they are romantic. Like if the sex isn't good, then you should be friends. Or a relationship without sex is just a friendship. Who says? Why loverlook the other intimacies in a relationship --- the way someone holds you close to them, how it feels to be hugged, the inside jokes, the laughter? Are they not just as valid? I know sex is very important to people --- I like it too. But I do wonder how much of this emphasis we put on sex in relationships is a product of popular culture. There are all these outside sources telling us that a relationship without sex or strong sexual chemistry is doomed to fall apart. What if most relationships are a lot healthier than people think, but we have too many outside sources telling us what our relationships should be like.

 

I know sex can be an expression of love and it makes you feel alive. But I do think that if all those pieces don't fall into place easily but there are so many other great qualities a partner has, try changing your perspective. Find the intimacy in other areas of your relationship. I think we do have alot of control over how we find love and happiness even when a relationship doesn't necessarily look the way we think it should look.

 

That's my two cents.