What is love?

[polkop]

Love is a strong feeling that you will never find he words to explain it, even after a life of research, you will never be able to decribe it.

 

[Sydian]

Do you love your mom? I hope somebody said yes.

Are you attracted to, or do you desire your mom? I hope somebody said no. Think on it.

That's the point where I say there is a difference to loving someone and being in love with someone.

 

[BareBones]

Funny question you have there. A feeling of strong attraction doesn't really seem to cover it. And I'm not one to go into a rant about what love is because hell, I don't even know myself. And I'm not one to give a damn either. But I know a question that needs a deep answer when I see one.

Sadly, I don't have a deep answer. All I can say is this: You'll know what love is when you've lost it.

 

[Yuoaman]

The love to which most of you are referring is a word that we use as the place of 'lust' most of the time. Which is of course the desire to mash your private parts against their private parts.

 

[UltimaSilva]

I believe that it's when you feel so deeply for a person, you can't bear to be without them. It can hurt you when it goes wrong and the person you love doesn't care about you. (In my personal experience I really loved a girl and she found out. Then the next day she came up to me and said she didn't give a damn about me or my life.) So don't get too in over your head in love.

 

[インフェルノの津波]

Chocolate does not make you love something, or does chicken soup. They're aphrodisiacs, meaning they give you erotic pleasure, or they make you want to have sex more. In fact, chocolate could be considered a drug in that way, Yellow.

Anyway, I guess I should contribute too.

My idea of love is simply the emotional way of you liking something a lot. Love has a lot of levels, from giving a valentine to taking a bullet to killing them for their own good. Actually, love is not an emotion, and it's not an action, an adjective, or a thing, so love is truly a mystery. Love's very mysterious, like I've said it can make you take a freaking bullet for someone, and not your girlfriend. It could be your friend.

So, what is love? I'll say this: Love is not a thing, action, or anything. It's a word that was made for the crazy things people do, simply because they like that person/thing. So love is the word that has a lot of meaning, but what it really "is" is nothing. Love does'nt exist. Love was invented by us. Love is just another way of saying: I LIKE DOING THINGS FOR THIS PERSON OR THING, WHETHER IT'S GOOD OR BAD. The emotional part is not love either. It's when you feel literal pain from not being with that person or thing, so love is kind of something your brain made up so that it doesn't blow up from not knowing exactly what i was. Actually, love is not really anything. It's blamed for actions people do, so that's love.

 

[Dawn]

Chocolate does not make you love something, or does chicken soup.

Chocolate makes me love my ice-cream. *Yellow is shot*




@Love being different for a Mom than it is for a boyfriend/girlfriend

Sexuality/sex itself can be done without love. Love can be done without sexuality/sex itself.
It's not the love that's different. It's just sexuality or the lack thereof. It's that simple.

 

[Richard Lynch]

What I was thinking about was how sad it is when a kid prefers to have a stronger relationship with somebody he met at school than with his own parents. I understand the implications of having abusive parents/foster parents/etc. Those are exceptions to the rule. Note, I did not say law.

But, in keeping with your black-and-white idea below, aren't these "exceptions" just multiple levels of gray? A strong theory like that doesn't really work if there are "exceptions", unless you can explain them well enough (such as water being one of the only substances that actually expands when it's frozen). You're actually showing my point here, that love is a multi-layered thing that is not absolute and quite relative to the person and situation.

People talk about how black-and-white morality is the wrong way to look at things...
If you have a black rope and a white rope it's easy to see what colors they are. If you split the ropes into their individual fibers and tie them back up as one rope, it's hard to pick out the color of one fiber from the "gray" rope. That's just sort of how I see the world. If there are only gray options available to you, you- or someone else- must have missed the opportunity to choose the white option. Children are products of their environment, and if their environment is unnatural or confused, how can a person expect the kid and their life to not be?

Oooo, now we're talkin'. This is actually a topic I'm quite passionate about, that being moral relativity as opposed to almost Kantian absolutism. However, it doesn't belong here, so if you wish, Azure, I'd love to talk about it in VM or something.

So true. I keep hearing about the awful repercussions of that kind of thing, but I don't think I've ever participated in one that ended badly here. o.O

I agree... at least, the last religious debate ended quite nicely.

@Love being different for a Mom than it is for a boyfriend/girlfriend

Sexuality/sex itself can be done without love. Love can be done without sexuality/sex itself.
It's not the love that's different. It's just sexuality or the lack thereof. It's that simple.

No, not quite, I believe. I agree that sex can be done without love, but I disagree with love being done without sex. Sex is truly an integral part of a relationship, in my opinion. Again, Freud would have a field day with this topic, but I'm saying that love for a parent derives from the same place as love for a friend, and it's all relative to degree. You're right in that it isn't a sexual love, but wrong about it being the same love. If it has different derivatives, or causes, then it's not the same. Cause and effect. You alter the cause, you alter the effect.

 

[Dawn]

No, not quite, I believe. I agree that sex can be done without love, but I disagree with love being done without sex. Sex is truly an integral part of a relationship, in my opinion. Again, Freud would have a field day with this topic, but I'm saying that love for a parent derives from the same place as love for a friend, and it's all relative to degree. You're right in that it isn't a sexual love, but wrong about it being the same love. If it has different derivatives, or causes, then it's not the same. Cause and effect. You alter the cause, you alter the effect.

But Richard, why does changing the sexuality of something make the love different? When making an apple pie, let's say you change the apples into blueberries but leave the crust the same. The pie is different yes, but the crust is essentially same. In relativity, wouldn't the sexuality be the apples that may or may not be changed into blueberries, love be the crust, and the result be the pie itself? I mean, sure the experience is going to taste a bit different seeing as it was exposed to a different fruit, but that's really the fruit's doing.

 

[Yuoaman]

Chocolate does not make you love something, or does chicken soup. They're aphrodisiacs, meaning they give you erotic pleasure, or they make you want to have sex more. In fact, chocolate could be considered a drug in that way, Yellow.

No one ever said chocolate made you love something, it was simply noted that eating chocolate made the body react similarly to 'love'.

 

[Åzurε]

But, in keeping with your black-and-white idea below, aren't these "exceptions" just multiple levels of gray? A strong theory like that doesn't really work if there are "exceptions", unless you can explain them well enough (such as water being one of the only substances that actually expands when it's frozen). You're actually showing my point here, that love is a multi-layered thing that is not absolute and quite relative to the person and situation.

They are exceptions, and we are to handle them as such. I don't see gray here. Only black, and how it impacts the white. Abusive parents are abusive, and as such the child thinks badly of them and so goes elsewhere to find love. The parent has refused to love the child, and so there's no reason for an average child to love the parent. There's nothing to build on, excluding something inspired by outside influence.

Oooo, now we're talkin'. This is actually a topic I'm quite passionate about, that being moral relativity as opposed to almost Kantian absolutism. However, it doesn't belong here, so if you wish, Azure, I'd love to talk about it in VM or something.

Sure thing. I don't know how far we'll get, but I'd be happy to try.

 

[Numbers]

What is love? Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more.

I'm not sure love can be explained, it should be felt first hand.

Though what really annoys me is people who have been with someone for maybe a day or a week or a couple of months and say they are "in love"
What utter crap. That is LUST not love.
I say you have to live with someone for a few years, waking up to the same face every day for a couple of years to really know if you love someone.
Just my opinion.

 

[Richard Lynch]

They are exceptions, and we are to handle them as such. I don't see gray here. Only black, and how it impacts the white. Abusive parents are abusive, and as such the child thinks badly of them and so goes elsewhere to find love. The parent has refused to love the child, and so there's no reason for an average child to love the parent. There's nothing to build on, excluding something inspired by outside influence.

Okay, then, how do you explain Stockholm Syndrome, where someone who is abducted falls in love with their abductor? Doesn't that say that love is relative to the individual and not based on definitive reason? Or is that one of those exceptions? Surely there's nothing to build on here, and its not necessarily inspired by outside influence. It's more internal here, I'd think. Psychology mixed with sexuality, since Stockholm Syndrome is normally sexually-based. Does that fall in the black, or the white, or... (dun dun dunnnn) somewhere in between?

 

[Kaminari]

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres."
<3

 

[twocows]

Untrue! Love can be explained quite simply through biochemistry.

That is, it derives from the hypothalamus, in the brain (lower region, I think) which interacts quite heavily with the nervous system (which explains some symptoms of "love", such as heavy breathing and sweating). The hypothalamus communicates with the pituitary gland of your brain, which releases a slew of chemicals (hormones) into your body which in turn create a kind of a high (such as the release of serotonin, the body's natural "feel good" chemical). In other words, it's a perfectly natural drug.

This follows through with the fact that when your "heart is broken", as they say, this release of chemicals is halted and you go through a kind of withdrawal, among other physiological symptoms that probably derive from the psychology of the situation (which is, of course, related directly to the psychology of the person!).

As to what causes this, we don't really know. Most researchers believe it derives singularly from the sex drive, but others think it has higher meaning than being purely instinctual. I'm inclined to believe in the first option (since the pituitary gland doesn't release the chemicals itself, but instead interacts with the sex organs, and they cause the release of the chemicals), but there's lots of other details that are quite beyond me as a scientist.

I will say one thing, though (and I point this out every chance I get), but chocolate does many of the same things to your biochemistry as "love". ;)

If someone insults me and someone else asks why I'm irritated, I'm going to say it's because someone insulted me. While it may be true that there are chemical reactions going on, and that may explain why I reacted as I did, it's not really a helpful response given the context. Likewise, I don't think anybody doubts that there are biological processes occurring during "love," but I don't think it's something that people are going to find useful in a discussion about what love is (unless the question is asked at a biology conference).

A similar example would be if I was in a game of chess and I made my move to checkmate my opponent. Someone watching may ask "why did you move that way?" I don't think they'd be expecting me to give a response involving the function of the brain; they probably want to know something related to chess, not the human mind.

 

[Rich Boy Rob]

If someone insults me and someone else asks why I'm irritated, I'm going to say it's because someone insulted me. While it may be true that there are chemical reactions going on, and that may explain why I reacted as I did, it's not really a helpful response given the context. Likewise, I don't think anybody doubts that there are biological processes occurring during "love," but I don't think it's something that people are going to find useful in a discussion about what love is (unless the question is asked at a biology conference).

A similar example would be if I was in a game of chess and I made my move to checkmate my opponent. Someone watching may ask "why did you move that way?" I don't think they'd be expecting me to give a response involving the function of the brain; they probably want to know something related to chess, not the human mind.

I can see where you are coming from, but I think that comparison you made was quite a bit different what he was doing. He was simply showing that love is a natural high. And wasn't that the question?

 

[twocows]

I can see where you are coming from, but I think that comparison you made was quite a bit different what he was doing. He was simply showing that love is a natural high. And wasn't that the question?

Oh, perhaps I misread it. My eyes tend to glaze over when someone starts talking about biology, aheh.

 

[LadySurreal]

Someone please explain this concept to me.

For some reason, "love" escapes me. I mean, I like people, but love...?

I don't know, can't seem to feel it...any explanations?

Love is either of the following:
1. Strongly feel affection for the other
2. Simply fixated by the person
3. Your own selfish desire (We all know what I mean)

 

[Fluorii]

It's one of those abstract concepts that we made a word for. Get into a committed relationship and you'll figure it out.

 

[Megaera]

Love is patient, love is kind, love rejoices in the truth.
It bears all things, believes all things
It hopes all things, endures all things
Love never fail.