What is love?

redsirenn

New member
Ok. I have just admitted to myself that I am not being productive today. Got to pack for a trip and so I am dawdling (since I hate packing).

Anyhow,
I have a question that I think about frequently:

How would you describe romantic love? How is it different than deep friendship, if at all?
 
For me the difference is in physical intimacy...sex. For me, there is an astronimical difference between romantic love and a deep friendship...massive.
 
How would you describe romantic love? How is it different than deep friendship, if at all?

Romantic love gives you those wonderful butterflies in your stomach...constant giggles, goo goo eyes, all that corny wonderful stuff... makes goodbyes physically painfull...

Deep friendship gives you a wonderful connection, a platonic love, but doesn't give you the physical reation romantic love does.

lol ok, that sounds kinda lame, but its true
 
Actually AL, that sounds about right... except that after the NRE wears off of the romantic love, the butterflies, giggles and corny stuff kinda gets a little less until it basically becomes the same feelings as a deep friendship...imho.

This is actually one of the questions that I have asked "Elric" to help me understand what happened between us, his definition of romantic love and what it entails.
 
Love is different for everyone. It never feels like a deep friendship for me. If it does, I'm in trouble. Deep friendship is a step for me.
 
Actually AL, that sounds about right... except that after the NRE wears off of the romantic love, the butterflies, giggles and corny stuff kinda gets a little less until it basically becomes the same feelings as a deep friendship...imho.

Agreed, but in friendship, you don't have the lust and desire for the other person. Even after NRE wears off, that usually stays to one degree or another.
 
Agreed, but in friendship, you don't have the lust and desire for the other person. Even after NRE wears off, that usually stays to one degree or another.

Got a point there. :)
 
Romantic love gives you those wonderful butterflies in your stomach...constant giggles, goo goo eyes, all that corny wonderful stuff... makes goodbyes physically painfull...

Deep friendship gives you a wonderful connection, a platonic love, but doesn't give you the physical reation romantic love does.

lol ok, that sounds kinda lame, but its true

and Makes Hello's amazing.
 
Romantic love for me has all the feelings of a deep friendship plus the butterflies, lust, goo goo eyes and everything else everyone here has described.
In the longer run though, I've never had a deep friend I could look at and say "I want to spend the rest of my life with you, share every aspect of myself with you, compromise my wants and personality to suit yours and for you to do the same until a happy medium is reached, raise children with you, grow old with you, and sleep in your arms whenever I can". To me, that is what remains in romantic love after the butterflies are gone or faded. Physical desire is part of the longer lasting aspect as well, but I think I'll still be in love with N when we're 85 and no longer interested in sex. ;)
 
These are all good points...

I questioned this during and after my marriage. I definitely had the "in love" feeling, but did not "love" him... and that was a disaster! And now I feel I have the "love" feeling for Ouroboros, and it is more than platonic, for sure. I loooooovvve sex with him and seem to never get enough!

I wonder if I have simply matured a bit, or am fearful of translating limerence, lust, or infatuation into love. So, I have been super conscious of when I feel like this and try to not make decisions based on these intense emotions.

In my mind right now, love and relationships involve choice and action. Love involves decisions one makes consciously with regards to the relationship. I want Ouroboros to be happy and so I treat my love for him as a source of freedom. It allows me to let go. I want to know that he is actively making the choice to be with me.

I am attracted to some friends, but that does not mean I have romantic love for them. The interesting thing about polyamory though, is that romantic love is not defined by the lack of desire to be with someone else in the same way (as many, but not all, strictly monogamous-minded people state).

Man - Once I start thinking about this is gets really confusing!!! :eek:

Sometimes, you just need to go with the flow and not think so much!!!

I am loving this mind-warp of a discussion though... thanks!
 
Romantic love for me has all the feelings of a deep friendship plus the butterflies, lust, goo goo eyes and everything else everyone here has described.
In the longer run though, I've never had a deep friend I could look at and say "I want to spend the rest of my life with you, share every aspect of myself with you, compromise my wants and personality to suit yours and for you to do the same until a happy medium is reached, raise children with you, grow old with you, and sleep in your arms whenever I can". To me, that is what remains in romantic love after the butterflies are gone or faded. Physical desire is part of the longer lasting aspect as well, but I think I'll still be in love with N when we're 85 and no longer interested in sex. ;)

I agree with this also. The need and desire to never even be without this person in your life. Feeling like you Could not continue to live without them there. You would if you HAD too...But it would be existing..not living.
 
I usually put "romantic" in quotes in here, as I think a large part of what "romantic love" is... is a sort of socially popular fantasy-myth. That's not ALL it is, but it's a large part of it. And the fantasy-myth does rub off, after a while, and exposes our partners as the somewhat more ordinary (though also fantastic) real people they actually ARE, flaws and warts included.

Apparently, too, nature conspired to drug us when we "fall in love," and that drug can have us feeling like we're walking on air! The drug is manufactured in our own bodies! http://people.howstuffworks.com/love6.htm But, eventually, the drug period winds down and now we see that the prince we settled in with has froggy feet, just like we do. Hopefully, we still like him or her a lot, anyway. I'm thirteen years in with my froggy feet man. We like each other a lot, spots and all.
 
Mono and Aussie have hit the nail squarely on the head....I couldn't have given a better description.

Love gets down in your gut so deep in your soul, nothing else exists there.

Friendship/platonic love exists on an entirely different plane, not superficially like in a totally casual relationship, deeper under the surface for sure, just not in those deepest recesses of your soul.
 
Maybe I'm just being a pessimist but I'm going to have to agree with JRiver here. "Romantic" love does usually fade but it does leave us (hopefully) with that deep love that resides down in our guts and soul. It's those NRE endorphins that make "Romantic" love so important and notable. Movies and novels wouldn't be as exciting or interesting if the protagonists didn't experience that "romantic" love for our voyeuristic pleasures.

Now after we've settled into the deep love, things can happen that make those endorphins fire off again, that's the nature of endorphins after all. Then we get that wonderful feeling again.

So what is that deep gut/soul love that we feel after the butterflies start coming intermittently? Is that the Love that we always hear about and strive for or does it have another name?

I would love to have a friendship of the kind that XYZ mentions, "I want to spend the rest of my life with you, share every aspect of myself with you, compromise my wants and personality to suit yours and for you to do the same until a happy medium is reached, raise children with you, grow old with you, and sleep in your arms whenever I can"...although sleeping in their arms might be a bit of a stretch for me. ;) This just seems like the best and most fulfilling kind of friendship you can have. When we are little and we find that first "best friend", this is what we talk about (well I don't know what guys talk about but I think some of the other ladies might recall this), growing up together, getting married to the boy(s) we like at about the same time, living next door to each other, having our kids at the same time and going through life always there for each other...at least that's what I did and what I wanted.

Redsiren: You are right, conscious choices and actions are paramount in relationships and especially love of any kind. When we act only on our endorphins and carnal desires we can end up hurting others as well as ourselves.
 
Deep friendship is that, if you lost it you would cry.

Deep love is that, if you lost it you would die.

I don't know. I really think that the best thing about love is that you cannot define it. You can only describe its experience.

Love is what you make it, for yourself, and those you share it with.
 
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