Love -- finite or infinite?

[redpepper]

I like the thoughts here too LR

I can love infinitely but chose to focus that love on a hand full. I think that infuriates some as I used to have all kinds of time to actively love many, although not intimately.

My dance card is full at three plus. Yet I am filled more than ever!

[Ariakas]

I believe I can love infinite people. That said, I also have limited time in my days. I need to be cognizant of that. Pengrah has specific needs due to health which take up time. Anyone coming in has to recognize that as well.

I have also discovered I enjoy focus. If I am entering into a new romantic relationship I can't bring in anyone else. I have a stable loving relationship with my wife, however need to ensure anything new is being focussed on one. I believe, in my case, it would be unfair to all parties involved if I tried to stretch that too thin.

[SchrodingersCat]

Originally Posted by LovingRadiance

I do know that there is a limit to how many people I can be intimately involved with because MY expectations for how much I put into the relationships is high and I can't uphold my expectations if there are more than 2-3.

I hear that! My husband and I both seem to expect more from ourselves than we do from each other.

[Shades]

The way I experience it is that the amount of love (and the type of love) I can feel for each person I know varies depending on the individual, and is subject to change over time.

I experience a large gray area between platonic love and romantic love. Actually, every romance feels like it's also a friendship (so it's like two kinds of love blended together) and some of my friendships become a bit romantic. Not "head over heels in love" romantic, but something more intensely affectionate than the type of love I usually feel for friends. And of course sometimes things get more or less romantic over time. But it seems that the closer I feel to someone the more I love them, until my love for them feels infinite.

And how many people do I have the capacity to feel love for? I think it's impossible to say, but I guess the limit would be based on the number of people I have time to get to know well enough to genuinely love.

[angel]

Hi

I believe that my love has no limit, its just different sorts of love for different people but i would say that on a romantic level i couldn't handle more than 2 men and myself because of the time that relationships take up. I want to be fair and share my love, friendship etc and i feel that i can deeply love somebody through friendship and have some romantic feelings on top that are managed to a comfortable level while maintaing other romances.

I believe that love is infinite as a whole

[DharmaBum23]

Originally Posted by SchrodingersCat

I often hear from polies that they have an infinite capacity for love.

I don't buy it.

I'm not saying they're lying, I think they just haven't reached their limit yet.

I mean, there are a LOT of numbers between 1 and infinity, and only 24 hours in the day, 16 of which are usually spent working and sleeping, during which time you're not doing a lot of lovin'!

It's not even possible to KNOW infinitely many people, never mind love them!

Thoughts?

Well, I question the relevance of the idea(at least from an outside point of view).

Now matter how you love an infinite amount of people(romantic, platonic, whatever) you can only express that love in any sense towards a finite amount of people.

So no matter how you feel about an infinite amount of people, you can only act on those feelings with a very finite amount of people.

Therefore the idea that you can or do love an infinite amount of people is not relevant from an outside point of view.

However, for spiritual/internal work, I recommend the idea highly as it can become extremely relevant and quite helpful!

[Jade]

Infinite ability to love; finite ability to dole out resources. Therein lies the heart of negotiating poly...

[redpepper]

Originally Posted by Jade

Infinite ability to love; finite ability to dole out resources. Therein lies the heart of negotiating poly...

Oh I like that. And its so true!

[idealist]

I equate Love with God. For me, these have several things in common.

It is eternally existing.
It is infinite in nature.
It seems illusive at times.
You can't possess it.
You may or may not be able to experience it.
Our ability to experience it is limited by our human limitations.
Our ability to express it is limited to our human capacities.
Sometimes is seems to make sense and other times not.
A description or understanding of it that everyone would embrace might be too much to ask for.
We nevertheless continue to try to describe and understand it.
To be able to experience it is something to strive for and that striving makes life meaningful.