I personally believe "love" is something man-made and is built rather than found. It all starts with meeting someone that you have much in common with, and then giving each other your complete trust, and devoting yourself to each other. My best friend for instance. I love him. I would do anything for him, and he would do the same for me. I would give him the shirt off my back, and he would give me his. I can tell him anything, and he can do the same. We never lie to each other, and we never violate each other's trust. We also have a lot in common and can usually agree on any subject. He has always been there for me, and never abandoned me, and he actually puts forth effort towards the friendship. I never have to ask him to hang out or worry if he'll ever call me if I don't call him, because I know I'll get a call from him at some point. Love is a mutual thing, I feel it comes with time. To me, love is about appreciating another person as a flawed human being, respecting them and their weaknesses, recognizing their strengths, and being there for them, and also at the same time, having a lot in common and sharing your life with them, whether it be through marriage, or a long lasting friendship that endures the test of time.

This post was last modified: 12-03-2007 09:34 AM by Brodie.

Brodie...how old are you? That's some deep insight.. And are you ever blessed..

That's a very rare thing... you are lucky to have a true friend.

I am 20 years old. I'll be 21 on March 6th, 2008.

I think love is an entirely subjective feeling. It isn't the same for everyone, but there are definately some common factors. There is a certain rose coloured glasses aspect to it, whereby the night doesn't seem so dark anymore. It is a feeling of comfort and can also become addictive.

For me it was putting the milk in the cupboard and the cereal in the fridge because I couldn't stop thinking about him.

Losing love is a death.

Feeling love die is a long, drawn out illness. Some people fight harder than others to keep it alive, but once it's gone it's gone.

Having it torn away from you is a non-fatal gunshot wound to the chest. Quick, fast and incredibly painful. You feel physically sick in your chest and gut. It takes a long time to recover and even when/if you do you still have the scar. Some people never seem to recover.

I've always thought that love meant, in the words of a great poet, "...not focusing on what makes you happy, but what makes someone else happy." As such, true love is a combination of adoration, selflessness, and caring for the sake of someone else. It is entirely and completely possible to love without it being requited, and I'll be very miffed if anyone disagrees, because I know what I felt was real

In that sense, I've been fortunate in knowing people who've found true, idealized love. A friend's grandparents who married in their teens and died together in their seventies; a couple of a younger girl and an older man who met online and built together in the best example of domestic happiness that I've yet seen; and a girl in her sixties who still pined for a man she fell for when she was 14. And of course, I'll never forget my first and painful experience with love.

I wonder, though. Pure, idealized love seems to fade for the most part once individuals ages. It might be a kind of self-fulfilling prophesy - as we grow more bitter and doubtful, we offer less love, and receive less of the same. In the end, relationships become some sort of compromise and the passionate idealization of youth isn't there anymore. Or maybe its just hormones.

For me, I think the difference between my more passionate younger affairs and what I have now, even nonsexual, are best illustrated by the following conversations I had, nearly verbatim.

PAST:
Me: "You know everything that I've achieved, I've done to be worthy of you."
Her: "I would have loved you even if you were a hobo."
Me: "I could have never done that to you. Why do you love me?"
Her: "You took it upon yourself to tame someone as unruly as me."
Me: "I would have known all the women in the world, and still chosen you."
Her: "You don't know all of girls. Heh."
Me: "You are so beautiful. That I can hold you for another hour - I am the luckiest man in the world."
[mutual happiness]

NOW:
Me: "No other woman could have been half a muse as you are to me."(I avoid saying that I love her)
Her: "Awh."
Me: "You possess that rare quality - talent, perhaps, of grace."
Her: "Muses lead sad lives."
Me: "Why?"
Her: "They spend their lives fulfilling the dreams of others."
[mutual silence and discomfort]

Either way, I'm still going to decide and choose the path of hopeless romantic. I'm a writer, what do you expect?

This post was last modified: 01-05-2008 11:28 AM by IgnoredOne.

I think love evolves over time, and manifests itself in different ways. Love is also multifaceted, in that after the honeymoon phase is over, it becomes less passionate. Then, it becomes more functional, as couples work together to accomplish common goals. Eventually, it is an issue of loyalty and completeness.

My grandparents were married 51 years before my grandmother died, and they were very much in love. We never witnessed them do much cuddling, and they each had seperate chairs and beds. However, you could just feel the love. It was more like they were a single entity than two individuals. When she died, he was never the same, as part of him was gone forever. It's like that biblical reference to how the two become one flesh. Obviously in a metaphysical sense, unless you're counting consumation

I think love evolves over time, and manifests itself in different ways. Love is also multifaceted, in that after the honeymoon phase is over, it becomes less passionate. Then, it becomes more functional, as couples work together to accomplish common goals. Eventually, it is an issue of loyalty and completeness.

My grandparents were married 51 years before my grandmother died, and they were very much in love. We never witnessed them do much cuddling, and they each had seperate chairs and beds. However, you could just feel the love. It was more like they were a single entity than two individuals. When she died, he was never the same, as part of him was gone forever. It's like that biblical reference to how the two become one flesh. Obviously in a metaphysical sense, unless you're counting consumation

And this is very true. The grandparent couple which I mentioned died within a year of each other - they had come to rely on each other so totally, that one could have survived the other for long. There is something beautiful about it, I feel. It was a very functional co-dependency that our society tends to destroy these days, much to our loss, I feel.

I think the true tragedy that as these examples become increasingly lost to history, more and more people are cosigning them to their fate as myth.

This post was last modified: 01-05-2008 11:10 AM by IgnoredOne.

I know that I have alot of love in me, and I think that it's a good thing. I have also experieinced all different types of love throughout my life, from unconditional love from my mother, to being in love with a women, to loving a pet. Or when someone really hurts you, but your love for them isn't broken. It's when the love is only coming from one side, or having your heart broken, or someone you love dies , well thats the hard part, very hard. I just wish that love was more prominant between people and countries today, it would make this world such a better place to live in.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzJ2NKp23WU

This post was last modified: 01-06-2008 04:45 AM by Blue Sky.

Well spoken. Being told that its "not real" because its not requited is just rubbing salts into it.

This post was last modified: 01-06-2008 04:45 AM by IgnoredOne.