what is love anyway??
fairyprincess
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Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: South Jordan, UT
Posts: 25
what is love anyway??
I believe it to be sharing a life, watching reruns, sitting in rocking chairs when you are 80 talking about the glory days. It is warm, it is safe, and it is unconditional. You feel validated for who and what you really are. I don't think it is a flash in the pan, chemistry, can hardly think of nothing else, can't wait to see that person...well maybe in the beginning, but then it grows into something more meaningful than just chemistry and wanting to be with each other all of the time....any insights??
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Love is when you realize that the only person more important to you in the world is yourself. Love is when you realize that you must love yourself more than you love the other person, but that does not negate the other person's importance in your life.
fairyprincess
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Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: South Jordan, UT
Posts: 25
Really?? That seems somewhat selfish...or is it the acoa speaking for me...As a mom of four, my needs always come last, with a needy husband there doesn't seem to be enough time for my needs...is it a cop out to say I can't take care of everyone's needs, especially all of my husbands, because he is after all an adult right??
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Actually, I understand what Ginger is saying. But I have to add to it.
I also believe that love is loving yourself completely and unconditionally for the true greatness you really are. But as you do, you start to love others AS yourself. One then can learn to love everyone regardless, even those we would consider never having love for. But also recognizing that we are human beings with defects as human beings, but loving ALL human beings for the spirtual beings we truly are.
True love to me is unconditional. You love yourself completely, you love another person (possible your mate or children) unconditionally, and then you love all others unconditionally, because ultimately, we ALL are one great loving consciousness together.
Ken
I also believe that love is loving yourself completely and unconditionally for the true greatness you really are. But as you do, you start to love others AS yourself. One then can learn to love everyone regardless, even those we would consider never having love for. But also recognizing that we are human beings with defects as human beings, but loving ALL human beings for the spirtual beings we truly are.
True love to me is unconditional. You love yourself completely, you love another person (possible your mate or children) unconditionally, and then you love all others unconditionally, because ultimately, we ALL are one great loving consciousness together.
Ken
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Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Canada
Posts: 689
I have confusion about unconditional love.
I love my children unconditionally. No matter what they do, I will always love them, always have them in my life, always cherish them. Nothing can dislodge that love.
Between adults aren't there conditions? In other words, your love for another adult can be affected if they behave in hurtful, harmful or abusive ways.
I love my children unconditionally. No matter what they do, I will always love them, always have them in my life, always cherish them. Nothing can dislodge that love.
Between adults aren't there conditions? In other words, your love for another adult can be affected if they behave in hurtful, harmful or abusive ways.
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I think it is to see value, to see the value in others - that can be unconditional in adults and children. It's what makes killing wrong (IMO) and I think it comes from an understanding of the worth of life.
I reckon those close to us teach us that the most but I don't think our expectations and attachment is love, it can be there with love but isn't the same thing.
Loving myself is also about seeing the value and worth of life - my life, the care it deserves and the potential it holds. For all the wrong I may have done that life is still worth as much and still offers that same potential each new day.
I believe once we divide up who should be loved eventually we struggle to love ourselves as we keenly see our own faults.
I reckon those close to us teach us that the most but I don't think our expectations and attachment is love, it can be there with love but isn't the same thing.
Loving myself is also about seeing the value and worth of life - my life, the care it deserves and the potential it holds. For all the wrong I may have done that life is still worth as much and still offers that same potential each new day.
I believe once we divide up who should be loved eventually we struggle to love ourselves as we keenly see our own faults.
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That makes sense to me Equus. I do believe a kind of love is acceptance of all human beings. I can accept my ex's and see them as the outcome of their own childhoods -- but I do not love them.
I suppose when I hear the term unconditional love, I hear that i will love you no matter what, no matter what you do, or how you behave. I don't think that's realistic between adults. Love can be damaged. I may still accept someone who has harmed me as a human being and have compassion for them, but their behavior may be a deal-breaker to what feels in my heart as actively loving them.
I suppose when I hear the term unconditional love, I hear that i will love you no matter what, no matter what you do, or how you behave. I don't think that's realistic between adults. Love can be damaged. I may still accept someone who has harmed me as a human being and have compassion for them, but their behavior may be a deal-breaker to what feels in my heart as actively loving them.
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Love can be damaged.
Ok - This is hypothetical, although in some sense not entirely.
What if a child molestor is sent to jail and in jail begins doing charity work, what if the funds he raises pay for 100's of children in the world wide sex industry to find shelter? As far fetched as that sounds there are plenty of prisoners doing incredible things for charity - perhaps neither end of the scale so extreme but making it that way makes the point clearer. That's what I mean about the intrinsic worth of human life that isn't changed by behaviour because the potential remains.
I think we are creatures who percieve and remember the negatives of behaviour more strongly than the good. If we see a man push an old lady to get through a door we're apalled (rightly!!) and remember it, but we don't notice EVERY door that's opened, or every person who patiently waits - one is more common than the other. We read about a parent who has bruised and hurt their child and again are apalled but we haven't enough space in newspapers to record each loving parent.
I'm under no illusions about how sick and wrong behaviour can become, but I know more is gained by giving worth to others than by not seeing their worth. If I look at the extremes of kindness and of cruelty in history and ask whether those behaviours reflected a belief in human worth I know which to follow. It's seems clear understanding worth is valuable and the one I wish to encourage in myself. Even if I look at the worst and best of my own behaviour and ask myself how I saw the other's worth then I come to the same conclusion.
The reason I mentioned a child molestor is because it's the first thing that comes to mind while discussing unconditional human worth.
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What if you were married to that child molestor who had hidden his actions from you for years and then was caught? What if one of his victims was your child? Would you still have the love that had that brought you together in the first place? Would that love change? Would it be a different quality or kind of love?
Of course the nature of love changes throughout the duration of a long-term realtionship, so I'm not speaking to that, but to a fundamental shift. Or is just the attachment that changes ( you wouldn't stay with him).
I'm not making any arguments about an individual's value as a human being and their worth. I'm trying to get at the feeling we feel in our hearts in an intimate relationship, when you look at someone and feel an embracing and peaceful quality of love, affection, adoration and appreciation for someone.
Of course the nature of love changes throughout the duration of a long-term realtionship, so I'm not speaking to that, but to a fundamental shift. Or is just the attachment that changes ( you wouldn't stay with him).
I'm not making any arguments about an individual's value as a human being and their worth. I'm trying to get at the feeling we feel in our hearts in an intimate relationship, when you look at someone and feel an embracing and peaceful quality of love, affection, adoration and appreciation for someone.
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What if you were married to that child molestor who had hidden his actions from you for years and then was caught? What if one of his victims was your child? Would you still have the love that had that brought you together in the first place? Would that love change? Would it be a different quality or kind of love?
I think the love that brings with it a desire to spend a lifetime with someone isn't because they are objectively better than a stranger or worth more but instead it's out of my own pleasure of their company. That's why I feel attachment can exist with love but they're not the same thing. There's no REAL reason to love D (my hubby) more than a stranger or a child I know more than one I don't. But I am attached and I know that.
The attachment and closeness lets me see a worth other's more distant miss and that's what teaches me not to miss that worth in people I don't know so well.
I worked with a child once, 14 years old, living in a hotel because the council could find no other place for him - he was accused of molesting his 6 yr old sister. He was small for his age, he denied he'd ever done anything, he'd been abused, he said he didn't mind the hotel. I know if he wound up convicted that it would stay on his record and part of me thinks of him sometimes when I want life to be black and white. I have no idea what happened to him - it was a brief contact.
I've seen other things too that made me sick to my stomach, I've known children pimped by their own father - yet I still know those cruel actions DID NOT come from seeing their worth, nor did the actions of the customers who bought sex with them. I know what love leads to and I've seen what the lack of it leads to - the rest is a work in progress!!
As for who I spend time with, who I choose as a partner and much of that has to do with my own pleasures and values - it's MUCH more and different from simple love. That's also how I understand letting go too - I could let go of D with 100% love. And the pain of love? No - that pain is the thought of letting go or losing what I HAVE not love.
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Great thread everybody, if I may toss in my .02 worth.
I think the word "love" covers a _lot_ territory. Love for a pet is different than love for a child, and different from love of a good movie, yet we use the same word for all. What I _feel_ when I say love is completely separate from what I _do_ as a result of those feelings.
I dearly love my adorable ex-wife. I love all the good parts of her. At the same time I don't love her behavior, particularly her affairs with married men. I choose to no longer be her husband because I find that her objectionable behaviors are harmful to me and to other people. At the same time I choose to maintain a civil relationship with her in the event that she might some day seek recovery for her pill addiction. If I can be of use in her seeking recovery I would gladly assist.
To me love is both a feeling and an action. Love for me _and_ her creates these mutually exclusive feelings and behaviors. My own growth as a person over the years has also caused changes in the way I feel and express my love. When I was young and foolish my love was much more optimistic and indiscriminate. Now that I am old and foolish I am much more restrained. My love has grown over time, as I have.
Love doesn't come to me all by itself. It's mixed in with many other feelings. Some selfishness, some compassion, sometimes lust. I find that unraveling that "soup" of emotions was essential to my understanding the causes of my behavior in a relationship. In my case my marriage was beyond wonderful for nearly two decades until she became addicted to pain pills. The transition from a happy marriage to a miserable was very slow, and caused a great stirring of my "emotional soup", and of my understanding of "love".
I can't look at my feelings, any feeling not just love, in isolation. I have to examine my feelings in the context of the life I am living at the moment. Everything around me affects how I interpret my feelings, and in turn how I act on those feelings. When my wife was hospitalized for yet another desperate surgery my feelings of love were very different from when, years later, I had a heart-to-heart conversation with one of the wives of the men my wife became involved with.
Love is like kayaking down an unexplored moutain river. It will be water all the way to the sea, but it will change from tranquil pond to raging torrent as it passes thru the pleasures and hardships of life. Whether I survive the experience will depend on how well I have prepared myself thru education, recovery and fellowship.
Mike
I think the word "love" covers a _lot_ territory. Love for a pet is different than love for a child, and different from love of a good movie, yet we use the same word for all. What I _feel_ when I say love is completely separate from what I _do_ as a result of those feelings.
I dearly love my adorable ex-wife. I love all the good parts of her. At the same time I don't love her behavior, particularly her affairs with married men. I choose to no longer be her husband because I find that her objectionable behaviors are harmful to me and to other people. At the same time I choose to maintain a civil relationship with her in the event that she might some day seek recovery for her pill addiction. If I can be of use in her seeking recovery I would gladly assist.
To me love is both a feeling and an action. Love for me _and_ her creates these mutually exclusive feelings and behaviors. My own growth as a person over the years has also caused changes in the way I feel and express my love. When I was young and foolish my love was much more optimistic and indiscriminate. Now that I am old and foolish I am much more restrained. My love has grown over time, as I have.
Love doesn't come to me all by itself. It's mixed in with many other feelings. Some selfishness, some compassion, sometimes lust. I find that unraveling that "soup" of emotions was essential to my understanding the causes of my behavior in a relationship. In my case my marriage was beyond wonderful for nearly two decades until she became addicted to pain pills. The transition from a happy marriage to a miserable was very slow, and caused a great stirring of my "emotional soup", and of my understanding of "love".
I can't look at my feelings, any feeling not just love, in isolation. I have to examine my feelings in the context of the life I am living at the moment. Everything around me affects how I interpret my feelings, and in turn how I act on those feelings. When my wife was hospitalized for yet another desperate surgery my feelings of love were very different from when, years later, I had a heart-to-heart conversation with one of the wives of the men my wife became involved with.
Love is like kayaking down an unexplored moutain river. It will be water all the way to the sea, but it will change from tranquil pond to raging torrent as it passes thru the pleasures and hardships of life. Whether I survive the experience will depend on how well I have prepared myself thru education, recovery and fellowship.
Mike
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I'll see your .02 cents and raise your .01 cents Mike. What do you got?
I got another take on it that's all.
There is a difference between love and please. Pleasure is a feeling. A feeling of seeing someone, being attracted to someone, enjoymeny in what they do for you, etc..
But true love IS unconditional. WE are actually two people. We are human beings. Human beings make mistakes. We can love the human being yet not like the mistake or action.
But our true selves is that we are spritual beings. Call it god, christ, buddha, allah, whatever, but we are ALL spritual beings. The true part, the inherent part, the hatural part of us as God within us as God is perfect love. That is something we cannot hate. It is the true love that comes out for everyone, and everything as ourselves. The distinction I personally use is that we are NOT who we think we are. God is not seperate from us. So if God IS us, how can God be anything BUT love. True love goes beyond words and feelings of desire, attachment, hurt and so on. True love seeks only true love. No hurt or pain, just love in of itself, for itself.
Have a great weekend all.
Ken
I got another take on it that's all.
There is a difference between love and please. Pleasure is a feeling. A feeling of seeing someone, being attracted to someone, enjoymeny in what they do for you, etc..
But true love IS unconditional. WE are actually two people. We are human beings. Human beings make mistakes. We can love the human being yet not like the mistake or action.
But our true selves is that we are spritual beings. Call it god, christ, buddha, allah, whatever, but we are ALL spritual beings. The true part, the inherent part, the hatural part of us as God within us as God is perfect love. That is something we cannot hate. It is the true love that comes out for everyone, and everything as ourselves. The distinction I personally use is that we are NOT who we think we are. God is not seperate from us. So if God IS us, how can God be anything BUT love. True love goes beyond words and feelings of desire, attachment, hurt and so on. True love seeks only true love. No hurt or pain, just love in of itself, for itself.
Have a great weekend all.
Ken
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Location: Starting over all over again
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Originally Posted by kennethhoff
I'll see your .02 cents and raise your .01 cents Mike. What do you got?
I got another take on it that's all....
I got another take on it that's all....
I appreciate your perspective on all the stuff we discuss here, I find it fresh and insightful. Having spent half my life in "12 step" recovery groups it is a great help to me to hear all the different perspectives that you and other folk share in this forum.Mike
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I believe in unconditional love.
For instance, I can love someone, but chuck their booty to the streets if they repeatedly steal from me and lie to me.
Why?
Because if I put up with it for very long, I will hate them, and I will hate myself for letting them do that to me.
So, I actually end up being able to love them because I took care of myself and my own needs. I love them because I didn't allow both of us to go down together, fighting and hating. I love them because I saved that image of us as two whole, separate people, with faults that can be fixed-- except that their's can't be fixed by me.
A martyr is the last person to ever be able to truly love, I think. Maybe that's just me ....
For instance, I can love someone, but chuck their booty to the streets if they repeatedly steal from me and lie to me.
Why?
Because if I put up with it for very long, I will hate them, and I will hate myself for letting them do that to me.
So, I actually end up being able to love them because I took care of myself and my own needs. I love them because I didn't allow both of us to go down together, fighting and hating. I love them because I saved that image of us as two whole, separate people, with faults that can be fixed-- except that their's can't be fixed by me.
A martyr is the last person to ever be able to truly love, I think. Maybe that's just me ....
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Short-term, I believe love is passion. Mid-term I believe it's tolerance. Long-term I think it's familiarity. After that I believe (hope) love can bridge unfathomable constructs of existence.
However, I have little practical experience to back up these claims.
However, I have little practical experience to back up these claims.
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i really felt something deep connect with your statements eqqus.
i love my father. he raped and beat me and my family when i was a child, he allowed other men to rape me and my sister. i hated him for many years.
i love my father. when i say that i mean it in the sense that i see he is a child of the universe. of god. he has value because he is a human being. the love is of him a a human, not as my father. more of valuing and respecting him even if he violated my worth as a human being. not easy to get to that point but i believe it. it's where forgiveness really came home to me. seeing what love is about. the word is used so much in culture and media that it's easy to become confused and misguided. i agree i am not attached at all to my father, i am detached but we are never completely separate, all life came from on source and is always connected, not necessarily the same. i agree people confuse love and expectations, its easy to say you love someone when they do all the socially acceptable and "normal" things. while i say a lot of the stuff in my childhood like the neglect and such was not done for lack of love, but lack of understanding, lack of awareness i was not seen as being of value so theres a paradox right there. ahh paradoxes, the joys of recovery.
but like any of the big ones there is no defining as i think love like god and truth will always be one of those personal and changing contexts as we grow in consciousness.
i love my father. he raped and beat me and my family when i was a child, he allowed other men to rape me and my sister. i hated him for many years.
i love my father. when i say that i mean it in the sense that i see he is a child of the universe. of god. he has value because he is a human being. the love is of him a a human, not as my father. more of valuing and respecting him even if he violated my worth as a human being. not easy to get to that point but i believe it. it's where forgiveness really came home to me. seeing what love is about. the word is used so much in culture and media that it's easy to become confused and misguided. i agree i am not attached at all to my father, i am detached but we are never completely separate, all life came from on source and is always connected, not necessarily the same. i agree people confuse love and expectations, its easy to say you love someone when they do all the socially acceptable and "normal" things. while i say a lot of the stuff in my childhood like the neglect and such was not done for lack of love, but lack of understanding, lack of awareness i was not seen as being of value so theres a paradox right there. ahh paradoxes, the joys of recovery.
but like any of the big ones there is no defining as i think love like god and truth will always be one of those personal and changing contexts as we grow in consciousness.
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Originally Posted by GhostInTheRuins
Short-term, I believe love is passion. Mid-term I believe it's tolerance. Long-term I think it's familiarity. After that I believe (hope) love can bridge unfathomable constructs of existence.
However, I have little practical experience to back up these claims.
However, I have little practical experience to back up these claims.
As far as romantic type love goes, I believe true love is not loving someone despite their faults, but loving someone becuase of their faults. As in, my husband has poor taste in movies. But I love him for it.
Naive? Maybe. But oh well.
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Join Date: Dec 2005
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Here's an interesting thought. I watched the movie "What the Bleep", and the comment was made about love, "It's all a chemical process".
So I started wondering about this. All of our feelings and emotions seem to come from the way our brain chemicals play out. It seems we may all just be addicted to the feeling of "being in love", but once that person falls out of favor, where does that love go?
I know personally, that I can picture the smile of a beautiful little baby and get some of those same "feelings" of love as I would when I was in-love with someone. So how can I feel it when that someone, in this case like that baby, is NOT there? I wonder if we all can't have those feelings of love we so desperatley want, simply by our own mind creating them by thoughts and feelings of love for oneself and all others? Not to say that being with someone and sharing intimacy isn't wonderful, but where does this 'love" come from?
It's almost like any feeling, no? Take anger. I can be angry at a jerk on the road, or a really bad boss, or someone who took advantage of me, etc.. But the feeling of anger is still the same anger in each situation, only the object is different!
Just a few thoughts to maybe think about!
Hope all today are peaceful.
Ken
So I started wondering about this. All of our feelings and emotions seem to come from the way our brain chemicals play out. It seems we may all just be addicted to the feeling of "being in love", but once that person falls out of favor, where does that love go?
I know personally, that I can picture the smile of a beautiful little baby and get some of those same "feelings" of love as I would when I was in-love with someone. So how can I feel it when that someone, in this case like that baby, is NOT there? I wonder if we all can't have those feelings of love we so desperatley want, simply by our own mind creating them by thoughts and feelings of love for oneself and all others? Not to say that being with someone and sharing intimacy isn't wonderful, but where does this 'love" come from?
It's almost like any feeling, no? Take anger. I can be angry at a jerk on the road, or a really bad boss, or someone who took advantage of me, etc.. But the feeling of anger is still the same anger in each situation, only the object is different!
Just a few thoughts to maybe think about!
Hope all today are peaceful.
Ken
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Hi Ken,
I saw that movie too and loved it, and have since thought I need to watch it again.
Definitely, you've raised some important ideas about love and where it comes from. If anything, I think it gives some real understanding of how love addiction is developed, and how we can get addicted to a person.
I'm wrestling this myself as I am mourning the loss of a relationship. And this helps by objectifying the process a bit.
best
gf
I saw that movie too and loved it, and have since thought I need to watch it again.
Definitely, you've raised some important ideas about love and where it comes from. If anything, I think it gives some real understanding of how love addiction is developed, and how we can get addicted to a person.
I'm wrestling this myself as I am mourning the loss of a relationship. And this helps by objectifying the process a bit.
best
gf
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