What is love?

[chesty]

There is the falling in love experience, which has been shown is not an emotion but more akin to the mating call of a couple of animals in the wild. People fall in love, it lasts about two years max, then they fall out of love. This aspect has nothing to do with feelings.

At the point you fall out of love you make a concious decision to either love this person (feelings) or not. Once that biophysical high has worn off you will start to see the other person for who they really are. A slob, abusive, cheater, liar, etc or as a truly wonderful person. And hopefully you will consider all of this before choosing to love this person any further.
'
The problem with society today is that they equate "falling" in love as a true emotion. Which any one with a few years of age knows to be fleeting and short lived. From a few months to 1 or 2 years. It is one reason that the divorce rate is so high! No one truly understands what true love is. They base it all on a false notion of being in love. You fall in, you fall out that simple.

True love is sacrificial. There will be plenty of times where 1 spouse will not feel like loving the other, but they make the choice to do it any way. Everyday we have to choose to love the other person. That is what true love is.

 

[Robert Jan]

Chesty you're only partly right. The feelings of longer term relationships have been connected to chemicals too.

 

[Deterass]

Love is wiping someones ass if they were in a terrible accident and couldn't do it themselves.

LMFAO!!

 

[Robert Jan]

Love is like the salad dressing of life. You don't need it, and it makes you fat.

 

[The Shadow]

Patience
Understanding
Work
Putting the other person's wants and nneds ahead of your oen, no matter how difficult or painfull


..and the ability to live with those little things about the other person that just irk the living shit out of you.

 

[PIGEON-RAT]

That idea is too reductionistic. You can't reduce love to neurochemistry any more than you can reduce chaos theory to 'numbers' or word processing to 'logic gates'. Love is partly neurochemistry but mostly a mutating social construction - social software running on human machines (including neurochemistry).

Love isn't a mutating social construction. It's always the same feeling. How people want to view it may mutate, but love is the result of physical matters in the brain. It's no coincidence that heartbreak feels incredibly similar to depression. They both depend on the action of serotonin in the brain. And anti-depressives will also reduce the capacity to love.

Viewing the chemistry behind much of our thoughts, actions, and feelings isn't overly reductionist. It doesn't devalue the importance of love whatsoever. But it surely can help the heartbroken realize what is gripping them.

 

[chesty]

But to love or not love is still a choice and it is chemical independent.

 

[TheProject]

Ya know, love is a happy time, all throughout the universe.

It's when the male part of the species goes to the female part of the species and says, "You wanna go on a date?" And then she says, "Well, yes, I'd like to go on a date." If you're lucky!

Then they go to a restraunt, and she orders something called a salad. And he gets a big piece of beef, that he eats.

And that, to me, ladies and gentlemen, is love. Kinda makes you cry.

 

[KillahBee]

Patience
Understanding
Work
Putting the other person's wants and nneds ahead of your oen, no matter how difficult or painfull


..and the ability to live with those little things about the other person that just irk the living shit out of you.

Do you realize how horrible that actually sounds? Who the fuck would ever want to live like that? Sounds like a good old time. (obviously I am too pessimistic to even think about marriage or true love at this moment in time )

 

[Razorguns]

love is the opposite of hate.

so why does love hurt more?

That and Andy Rooney, tonight at 9.