What is Love to YOU?

[KOMega]

Ah, you beat everyone to the punch.

OT:
Well to be honest I've never gave it any thought and figured there would be no reason to until I felt something similar to how everyone stereotypically tries to explain it. Figured if it happened, great! If it didn't, well I didn't spend too much time on it anyways.

Maybe love is a mixture of things and not just this one magic thing. Because it seems silly to me to have this one thing that everyone is supposed to have to make them happy, yet there are so many types of relationships out there that, supposedly, exhibit love.

I kinda want to try and see if I could dissect it into enough categories where we could have an empirical checklist that says "If you got these" or "X number of these" then you are in love/ have love.
Of course that might ruin the magic and I think part of not knowing exactly what it is( but having enough of a rough idea of it so it's not completely alien) gives that word its magical/mystical appeal.

Well, until I "feel the magic" all it means to me is a haddaway song.

 

[DANEgerous]

I'm a bit of a romantic, so this is the best thing to summarize love for me:


That sort of mutual dedication and comfort with each other, that just gets better and settles in more with time...that's love to me.

OH MY GOD (who i do not believe in)! That is the sweetest most depressing (in a good way) thing I have ever seen. If one day I find that yeah I found true romantic love worth marriage. Other than that no, and I (not at all sadly) find that more likely.

 

[PeterMerkin69]

Love is a biochemical effect of which various side effects are often mistaken for Something Moar. It's emotional delirium and ignorance that accounts for the warm and fuzzy feelings of romanticism. Having said that, it's not an absolute state, being that it's something that grew into mammals as mammals grew into people, and anything that grows can grow differently. If you've ever seen turnips growing in a garden you know that some grow big, some small, some crooked, some straight. This is the unpolluted definition of the human condition and, ultimately, the love that they experience subjectively. As always, there's an ongoing debate over the relevance of nature and nurture, but that is, in itself, merely an artifact of separating man from the environment in which he sprouted.

Regardless, the resultant delirium of emotion, any emotion, is comparable to that of illicit substances for someone whose puppet strings aren't so easily pulled. If someone sees things a little too clearly for their own good they're branded mentally ill. Mental illness, to me, is the obfuscation of material reality. A dope waxing poetically about love or justice isn't much better than a stoned teenager rambling incoherently about his latest epiphany, only one will eventually reach sobriety and the other will continue down this path until death.

My girlfriend, on the other hand, likes it when I surprise her with iced coffee at work. Also sometimes cupcakes.

 

[rednose1]

"Love is something so divine, description would make it less; 'Tis what I feel, but can't define, 'Tis what I know but can't express." - Beilby Porteus.

That poem always resonated with me. Basically, no matter what I say or do, it can't completely convey what love is. That just seems so true when you're in it.