Definition of true love

[PEE1]

I have often struggled to define love. For example sometimes I do not know why I do certain things that most people would consider an act of love (I'm sure many people are also find it difficult to define love).

 

This morning whilst driving to work I got a new revelation of what love is. I know that it is a feeling/emotion, but it has never been revealed to me this way: love is a very deeply entrenched, powerful and long lasting mostly desired emotion / feeling which outlasts all other emotions/feelings and overpowers any reasoning. Hatred has the same force as love, but it is mostly undesirable.

 

Most feelings / emotions are well capable of overpowering reasoning, e.g. the thurst for drugs or alcohol can make you indulge even if your reasoning warns against it; last and sexual emotions can make you engage in risky behaviour even if your reasoning warns you against it; feelings of pity can make you give your lunch money to someone needy even if your reasoning tells you that you will go hungry.

 

Love feelings/emotions outlast all other emotions/feelings:

 

 

 

LET ME GET BACK TO WORK. I SHALL CONTINUE EXPLAINING MY REVELATION WHEN I FIND TIME

[CaptainPanic]

Ok, maybe I am a grumpy old man, but next time, please finish your post before pressing the "post" button.

[HGrimston]

In my cognitive psychology course, we are currently talking about conceptual knowledge. For any concept, especially an abstract concept like love, there are going to be fuzzy boundaries around its definition. That being said, are you trying to find the consistent element of love and use it as your definition? In all cases, love is going to be context dependent - love between parent and child, love between pet and owner, love between romantic partners, love of a really great painting or song, etc. Rollo May did a pretty good job outlining some different kinds of love [ http://www.nickroy.com/2008/09/mays-forms-of-love/ ]. The only consistent factor I can see within all types of love, even in tough love which involves forcing another person to do something they don't want to do for their own good, is a strong positive regard. When someone uses the word love, that is the only part not dependent on context that they are communicating. Try not to think about it spiritually - that will get you nowhere. All emotions come from chemical/biological processes, and there is nothing special about true love. It might be particularly strong positive regard, even when compared to other loves, but that can be all it really is.

[Joatmon]

I wait for the great revelation. I would like to know if I got it right over half a century ago. This song illustrates how things happened for my wife and I.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_9jTjsowwc

[Auto Engineer]

Love is something very misunderstood by nations of people around the world. Love is understood as long suffering and being kind, love has no jealous intentions and does not brag, nor does love become puffed up. Love does not behave indecently and does not look for its own interests, and does not become provoked. Love never keeps account of injury and does not rejoice over unrighteousness, but rejoices in truth. Love bears all things and hopes in all things, and endures all things. Love never fails, but whether there are gifts of prophesying they will be done away with, whether there are tongues they will cease, and whether there is knowledge, it will be done away with. For we have partial knowledge and we prophesy partially, but when that which is complete arrives, that which is partial will be done away with.

 

When I was a babe I used to speak as a babe and to think as a babe, and to reason as a babe, but now that I think I have become a man , I have done away with the traits of the babe. For the present we see a hazy outline by means of a metal mirror, but then it will be face to face. At the present time I know partially, but then I shall know accurately even as I am accurately known. Now there remains faith, hope, love, these three but the greatest is love.

[HGrimston]

Love is something very misunderstood by nations of people around the world. Love is understood as long suffering and being kind, love has no jealous intentions and does not brag, nor does love become puffed up. Love does not behave indecently and does not look for its own interests, and does not become provoked. Love never keeps account of injury and does not rejoice over unrighteousness, but rejoices in truth. Love bears all things and hopes in all things, and endures all things. Love never fails, but whether there are gifts of prophesying they will be done away with, whether there are tongues they will cease, and whether there is knowledge, it will be done away with. For we have partial knowledge and we prophesy partially, but when that which is complete arrives, that which is partial will be done away with.

 

When I was a babe I used to speak as a babe and to think as a babe, and to reason as a babe, but now that I think I have become a man , I have done away with the traits of the babe. For the present we see a hazy outline by means of a metal mirror, but then it will be face to face. At the present time I know partially, but then I shall know accurately even as I am accurately known. Now there remains faith, hope, love, these three but the greatest is love.

 

So you like to quote the bible? I imagine your definition for love is, "God is love," am I right?

 

I wait for the great revelation. I would like to know if I got it right over half a century ago. This song illustrates how things happened for my wife and I.

 

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=l_9jTjsowwc

 

That's a great way to describe it. Infatuation is definitely not love, and a lot of people could learn something from this song.

[Ben Banana]

Definitely something that Jesus doesn't have. That's just illogical... well, if you want to think about it... but I hope I'm not discriminating (thinking is sometimes sacrilegious, you know).

- Cheers (grape soda!)

 

Edit:

A few might be going nuts over my previous words, but I have an honest point. Although I love everyone; I could put it in a better way, but the rudeness fantastically encapsulates my implicit point in swaddling irony... so I kind of like it. (don't argue. I love you because I said so)

Edited June 8, 2012 by Ben Bowen

[immortal]

 

 

http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/116.html

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come:

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

 

- William Shakespeare

Sonnet 116

 

 

This sounds like a good definition of true love.

 

 

[HGrimston]

I'm not so sure I can believe in a love "that looks on tempests and is never shaken." What is the difference between that kind of love that "bears it out even to the edge of doom" and an obsession? Is that psychologically healthy?

[Joatmon]

I'm not so sure I can believe in a love "that looks on tempests and is never shaken." What is the difference between that kind of love that "bears it out even to the edge of doom" and an obsession? Is that psychologically healthy?

I think Shakespeare was considering the kind of love that lasts a lifetime.

In a long term relationship such as marriage there will be rough times of difficulty which a poet might describe as tempests.

Perhaps "to the edge of doom" is a poetic way of saying "unto death".

 

Looked at that way I find the sonnet very touching.

Edited June 8, 2012 by Joatmon