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Originally Posted by acousticrock87
See I don't agree there. I think you did love her. Love just isn't always enough. I think a huge part of it depends on where both of you are at in life, what directions you're going, and how willing both of you are to compromise for what the other person needs you to compromise on. Love is absolutely necessary, of course, but if you spend all your time thinking about that one word you're going to overlook a lot of other words that will smack you in the face later.
Like "happiness." They don't always come together.
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Well I had a certain degree of love for my first girlfriend. But there are different degrees of love. There is unconditional love for your fellow humans (which I have, I know not everyone has it), maternal, paternal, platonic, fraternal, romantic, etc.
I don't think under any conditions it could have worked with my first girlfriend. We are just very different people. The main reason I was attracted to my first girlfriend was because she liked me, and I sort of realized that later.
There are probably different degrees of romantic love though. And it might not simply be that "love isn't enough" but you "don't love someone enough." Although with alcoholics and drug addicts, you can "love someone too much."
But when people say "I love you" there is no quantifier for it. I think it is assumed that it is the ideal love.
Perhaps though, quanitifying it is wrong. Maybe there are different kinds romantic love, but an ice-cream analogy would be best. Chocolate chip cookie dough isn't superior to cookies 'n cream or mint chocolate chip, just a different sensation.
Perhaps there is the insane love: David and Bathsheba, Dmitri and Grushenka, etc. The song "Hey" by the Pixies would describe this perfectly. It could be argued that this would be infatuation.
Then there would be the "Peter and Lois" or "Homer and Marge" sort of love. Much more tame, and a lot of understanding and patience due to lack of communication.
And I'm too fucking tired to think of any more examples for this sort of analogy. I think "sweet love" would be one.
Maybe it is worthless and impossible to quantize, dichotomize, what have you.
The real question I guess isn't "What is love?" but how do you know when you are with the one? Or is there no such thing? Is it really just a matter of being comfortable enough in life to not try to improve your placement in llife?
Anyways, I'm pretty sure I'm in love with philosophy. It gives me a big hard on. Well, not really.
I keep bringing this up in conversations on this board about love, but I really like this Jim Reid quote and I'll bring it up again. "When it comes to a boy meets girl situation, I'm not in the least bit romantic. Romantic to me means that you build up an idea of something and nothing touches it. I tend to get romantic about things like Hell's Angels, you know, motorbikers that wear dirty black leather. People are too complex to get romantic about. I'm romantic about Rock N Roll music; to me Rock N Roll is a very romantic idea."
I am not sure if I agree with that 100%, but I think I can see what he means. I'd really like to have a relationship with a girl that is as beautiful as my relationship to music and art. But I feel that is impossible, which is sort of sad. It highlights the brokeness of romantic love to me, although the brokeness is part of the allure. Art is so close to God in my mind. But in that way, I could choose to believe that a woman was chosen for me by God (which I think would be a very egotistical proposal) and have a divine appreciation for the relationship.
Perhaps that is the key. Bringing in an outside love to really make a relationship work. That is probably why children save some relationships. The shared parental love can really ignite people's love I think. Although parenting isn't the cure all. People wouldn't get divorced if it was.
Anyways, I'm going to bed.