What is love capable of?
I'm curious to hear anyone's experience or ideas of how love does or should happen.
To someone without romantic experience, what can you tell me about romantic relationships? Are they always expected to be sexual? What makes some relationships draining and tense, while others bring joy and self-worth? How does love happen? Is it really possible for individuals to make each other better?
@littleWater7718
Lots of questions! :) Hello!
I'd say love is truly capable of both good and bad things. It isn't actually what love does but what people do for their own idea of what love means. Love is subjective and so experienced in infinite ways by so many people on earth.
"Are they always expected to be sexual?" - No. You can love a friend, a parent, an animal, a child, an idea, etc. It doesn't have to be sexual to be complete.
"What makes some relationships draining and tense, while others bring joy and self-worth?" - As mentioned before, everyone experience it differently depending on their own idea of what love means. Also, depending on each and every individual history, patterns, past relationships, interior and exterior conflicts, etc. As you grow older your bag of hopes, dreams, frustrations and disappointments grows and so love becomes more and more complicated because we as humans make it harder. Love is just a concept after all. If we stopped thinking about it so much we would experience it better probably. But life is more than what love can give us.
That's my point of view at least. What's yours?
@imaginativeMelon7014
Hi! Thanks for your input!
I think that love, in a broad sense, is why we're alive. I love the world around me, my family, my books, hobbies and ideas. I love the idea of existence. I think that is the greatest feeling that we can be in touch with and, in my experience, it makes living well more attainable.
I'm more curious about love between people, since they are much less predictable than ideas and can potentially cause more harm. Plus, I'm interested in the romantic love that is portrayed in fiction, but don't know much about it. I think that people change each other, but I also think it's impossible to intentionally change someone. I don't think we should expect others to fix us, but part of me thinks that they can.
As for an earlier question, I know that many types of platonic love are complete, but I want to know if non-platonic romantic couples are usually expected to be sexually involved. For example, can couples who aren't sexually active stay in love potentially for life?
Thanks again for you response! :)
@littleWater7718
I'm rather partial to Robert Sternbergs formulation of "Love" which perceives of Love as having 3 separate dimensions:
1) Passion
2) Intimacy
3) Commitment
Passion - Has to do with intensity. It is largely a measure of "strength of emotion". It tends to gauge how much emotional intensity or physical desire. As to your question about whether love is necessarily sexual, Sternberg would argue that it doesn't necessarily need to be, because you can be intensely passionate about someone without requiring any sexual contact at all; even if it's uncommon.
Intimacy - Has to do with "connectedness". It is a measure of how "close" you are. It may again be emotional intimacy or physical intimacy.
Commitment - Is the desire to maintain relations. It is not just a measure of time, but is best gauged by actions that prove loyalty.
Sternberg saw the interaction of these 3 dimensions as producing various different kinds of love, ranging from more superficial kinds of Love (such as "infatuation" and "companionate" love, in which only 1-2 dimensions are present); to consummate love (in which ALL 3 dimensions are present).
So for Sternberg that all-consuming, passionate, transformational, worldchanging LOVE is a combination of ALL the 3 dimensions - Passion + Intimacy + Commitment.
It occurs to me from many dozens of conversations about Love, that very often people will assert that they have been in "LOVE", but in reality they have merely discovered what love was not, or experienced one of the lesser forms of more superficial love that they confused with consummate love. Almost invariably on more detailed probing they will admit the relationship was lacking one of those 3 dimensions in some degree, and their conclusions about love are misguided because they limit their understanding of Love to the framework that "Love is a feeling". So long as they are dictated by how they feel, they will often stagger blindly through the perils of their relationships, not understanding that relationships at their essence need to be functional things; things that we DO rather than things that we FEEL.
Sorry. I kind of wrote more than I intended on the topic there didn't I ~ ?
Kaspar x
Nuavive Derma : Presently the circumstances are different individuals are not those much apprehensive of getting old but rather yes they are terrified of looking old. You are by all account not the only one who gets disappointed or bothered on little things it's the age above all else the individual is experiencing such a variety of changes in the body and afterward those progressions are unmistakable to the world.
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