im not bashing it. im trying to understand it.

Well... if you've read the founding post in my thread about types of love, you know I'm seeking sort of the same thing you are.

The problem is that -- Hiraku notwithstanding -- love is just a word.  Not that it doesn't exist -- I know it does! -- but ultimately, the word is just another lexical item: it means what we say it means.  The way we typically use the word covers a staggering panoply of emotions -- sexual love, platonic love, fraternal love, parental love, narcissistic love, altruistic love, romantic love, friendly love, and God knows how many more.  What do all these kinds of love have in common?  Do they have anything in common?  Or is the willy-nilly way we're using the word "love" fooling us into expecting relationships where none may exist?

I may rarely or never experience deep friendly love for a girl that isn't accompanied by sexual love, but even I can separate the two emotions.  They're nothing like each other.  Friendly love means I care about you and want your life to be amazing; sexual love means I want your bod pressed against mine right now.  There's some superficial similarity in that both kinds of love make me want you near me, but for very different reasons.  And not all love even includes that idea of proximity; you can hold altruistic love for a smelly panhandler on the street who you don't want within fifty feet of you.

But if the forms of love have nothing in common with each other, then how did the word "love" get to be associated with all of them?  They must have something in common.  They all deal with human beings, of course; on the other hand, we talk about "the love of money," too, and I don't get the impression that money is being personified when we do it.  The only common thread I can tentatively grasp at is that they all have to do with desire.  Who or what is being desired, and how, varies radically among the forms of love -- from "desiring the best for you" to "desiring to suck your nipples" to "desiring to be filthy rich" -- but anything called love incorporates desire.

On the other hand -- there is always another hand -- you can have desire that is not love.  Just because I happen to desire some KFC right now, say, doesn't mean I love KFC.  So if there are kinds of desire that aren't love, which kinds of desire are love?  At a first pass, I'd say "the enduring kinds."  If I want KFC now, and I want some tomorrow, and the next day, then at some point it becomes fair to generalize "I love KFC."  Similarly, if I find I want to spend time with you a lot -- not just once in a while, but most of the time -- then I probably love you in one of those multifarious senses.

So I guess that's my best offhand effort at a definition of love in general: "consistent desire."  Defining a specific kind of love would probably be even more complicated

Last edited by satyreyes (09-06-2007 10:51:19 AM)

Such gratitude you show for his attempt to help, KTK.

satyreyes makes a good point, though I think it's fair to add "consistant caring" to the description, as well.  It could be called "the desire to care for," but that shifts the love to the act itself, not the person, which usually just ends up complicating things.

dlaire wrote:

What is love? Tenderness and care at the first place. Lust is more egoistic because we put our needs in the first place, in love it's clear that we want to make someone happy. Tenderness without desire and trust is incomplete.

This is a really good observation.  There's love that incorporates desire for someone else's well-being, and love that only incorporates desire for our own.

To a first approximation, I'd say that sexual love (lust), narcissistic love, and love of money/KFC are the kinds of love I've mentioned so far that are exclusively self-directed.  The others contain components of self-love and components of other-love, except for altruistic love, which by definition is other-directed only.  (Though I can imagine that even "altruistic" love might be selfish in some circumstances; how about the Jesus wannabe who cultivates love for everyone because it makes him feel virtuous?)

I think other-directed love is what Archambeau means by "caring," too.

satyreyes wrote:

(Though I can imagine that even "altruistic" love might be selfish in some circumstances; how about the Jesus wannabe who cultivates love for everyone because it makes him feel virtuous?)

Given that he does it in order to get himself a pleasant feeling, that would mean there's some self-love, definitely. I do think altruism does not exist.

I once read somewhere a definition of love which involved three terms: passion, intimacy and compromise. Obviously, it rather describes the feeling the expression "falling in love" refers to [it could be called 'romantic' love], more than fraternal or filial, to mention a couple. If we were to look for a definition for all of them, I actually like the "consistent desire" satyreyes proposes. "Consistent caring" (I imagine it in close proximity to the tenderness dlaire mentions) is something I would understand as love, and even could ask for, but it's certainly not in everyone's definition. What I mean is that KTK love for KFC is "consistent desire", but not "consistent caring", so that second concept appears to be of a more reduced area. [Now I see that satyreyes has also pointed out that it probably refers to the 'other-directed' love]

Both Archambeau and Maarika mention the shift of the object: from the person to the act of caring/loving. I do perceive that as dangerous and a sure bet to end in an emotional mess. And, about saying "I love you", I do have mixed feelings about it. Sure someone doesn't love you only because he/she says it, and if the caring is shown and demonstrated, there's no real need to verbalize it. And, being as broad as the concept 'love' is, I rather hear (and I'm closer to understand the meaning of) a "I think of you" or "I care about you", too. But, and now I'm shifting to a psychological/anthropologic point of view, these three words are strongly fixed in our imagination images, so it's quite usual we expect or even hope to hear them, and they cause an important reaction on our minds, because of how they are associated to different feelings.

Edit: spelling.

Last edited by Asfalolh (09-06-2007 12:25:37 PM)

so many educated and well thought out ideas here. if only i could be as intellectual to have thought of that, but then i wouldn't have to ask. One thing i'm also noticing more of is people who feel that NOTHING good comes out of a loving relationship with someone. how can someone who hasn't been in a relationship say that?

what is up with them EMO kids and their "love is pain" attitude? sure love can bring pain, so can happiness and anger and jealousy and etc, etc, etc...

its inhuman, to think that one can live without love. some day when they are older, their feelings may very well change. i pitty those who say they will never love. they are missing out on quite an experience.

KissingT.Kiryuu wrote:

It makes me sick to my stomach to hear middle schoolers in "relationships" tell each other they love each other.

I was that middle schooler once. At the time, I figured that it was just what I was supposed to say in a relationship. It wasn't until he started telling me just how much he loved me, and even saying that he wanted to marry me that we were way too young to understand things like that really started to click. Perhaps the reason why I never take him seriously when he says that he cares about me is because I still see it as the same as it was back in middle school. Of course, this does bring up the question of whether or not age has to do with whether or not a person can really be in love...

I've never been in love. There are people that I love, but not in the way that could be qualified as "true" love. Someone I know is convinced that love is evil, because you can't control who you fall in love with, and because people sometimes do horrible things because of it. As for me, I just see love as something that is dangerous. When I was listening to my aunt talk about how much she was in love with this one guy, I became worried that she would get hurt. Sure enough, the two of them broke up recently.

I fear I may have little to contribute to this thread, as much as I enjoy reading it.

When I hear others try to describe love, although not necessarily you guys, there's often one thing the definitions given will have in common. Love is viewed entirely as a positive. This isn't to say people don't think love can hurt, but that there is nothing negative or 'wrong' with feeling love, and that in and of itself, love is an absolute good.

I can't say I agree with this, since I do agree that love is always related to some form of desire, and desire is not always an absolute good. (In fact it's rarely so.) So instead of trying to define love on its own, perhaps another useful approach would be to question situations where love may or may not be present. For example, you hear many children say of their parents that they love them, but don't like them. You can love someone without liking who they are as a person. Why? Because you're related? Does it require they did something as binding as raise you? Is a man that beats his wife in jealous rages capable of loving her? Why not? His love and caring for her may be pure, but he desires her and fears losing her to such a degree that the rest of him must lash out to keep what he loves with him. People can love objects. A person may love their house, or the city they live in. It doesn't have a personality of its own, and it doesn't love them back, but is this love less genuine? It's probably motivated by the same thing love for other people is. The happiness and satisfaction you feel being there.

Ultimately, I think all love is somewhat self-directed. As much as we'd like to say otherwise, while we may love the hobo on the side of the road, we don't love them nearly as much as we love the person we curl up against at night. It's the kind of loves that serve us in some way that we tend to feel the most strongly, though I agree there is some thick line dividing completely self-directed love from the others. After all, Akio is clearly capable of plenty of self-love, but we see no evidence at all that he can love another. Touga spends a large chunk of the series with these two kinds of love battling it out in his head, but it does raise an important point. Can self-love ever really agree with love directed at others? Sure there are occasional circumstances where they're not in complete conflict, but most of the time, they just don't agree, do they? Pure love for another carries with it the heavy burden of another's happiness being more important to you than your own. We all like to strive for that, and present love we feel as being that kind, but when push comes to shove, how often to people break up and go 'I just want what makes you happy.'

In that regard, perhaps self-love is the closest thing to true love that we can get. If you want to be cynical about it, you could go so far as to say maybe we only love others in the hopes that some of it will be given back to us. We all want to be loved, even when we can't define it.

Archambeau wrote:

middle schoolers more mature than you

OUCH! that stung.

Ya but, in all due respect its still gonna hurt hearing that middle schoolers could be more mature then adults.

(if they exist, they don't exsit in my town. i know one on my street who is a prostitute...)

Though I easily see how in an ideal case of a true friend the only difference with romantic love is the sexual attraction involved in the later, that reminded me of another (almost opposite) situation: when a friendship is only (or almost only) based on the sexual unilateral interest one of the partners/friends has on the other. I believe that's something that happens more usually than we realize.

Oh, and I can tell of middle schoolers whose take on love is way more mature than some adults'.

Giovanna wrote:

For example, you hear many children say of their parents that they love them, but don't like them. You can love someone without liking who they are as a person. Why? Because you're related? Does it require they did something as binding as raise you? Is a man that beats his wife in jealous rages capable of loving her? Why not? His love and caring for her may be pure, but he desires her and fears losing her to such a degree that the rest of him must lash out to keep what he loves with him. People can love objects. A person may love their house, or the city they live in. It doesn't have a personality of its own, and it doesn't love them back, but is this love less genuine? It's probably motivated by the same thing love for other people is. The happiness and satisfaction you feel being there.

Love in family is strange issue, because it's "forced" by culture and blood-lines. Is that real love? Mother has to love her kids no matter what they do. Love toward city/country is similiar to parental love, because we didn't choose our nationality. Maybe patriotism is the most noble type of love? It includes sacrifice and passion.

I love my family and Poland but I wouldn't if I was born in different place. This unconditional love is shallow in some way. I don't like to think that my feelings are my fate/destiny, because I think that we should love because of something. Don't get me wrong: Not because of money or something like that. We should love people who deserves it. It sounds pragmatic, but I'm sure that we fell in love with personality which is positive in our eyes.

Giovanna wrote:

Ultimately, I think all love is somewhat self-directed.

Maybe we fell in love with pieces of ourselves in different people? "Oh, how sensitive she/he is!" or "He's so mature". Usually we love people with similiar preferences, aims, statements. It's like admiring mirror.

Oh, and another thing - love in movies. Music in sountrack, no one is burping or pissing, everything is perfect and even arguing isn't as bad as in life. My friend was disappointed that she didn't feel fireworks and euphoria when she fell in love - we suspect that love is something magical but life is more prosaic. That's strange that we find love in books or movies more "real" than love which is real close to us. Some people cry with The Lady of the Camellias but they don't melt because of friend's crush. It's ridiculous that something real is less important than "too glaring" fiction.