BS: why does love last so long

Subject: BS: why does love last so long
From: Davetnova
Date: 21 Oct 05 - 08:17 AM

even when she's gone so long.

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: jacqui.c
Date: 21 Oct 05 - 08:20 AM

Because a real love will take over a part of your brain and stay there.

That doesn't mean that there isn't any room for a new love, if it happens, just that you've more practice in loving.

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: Liz S
Date: 21 Oct 05 - 08:45 AM

I think this is an interesting topic. I have just split up from my long term partner. Almost instantly he seemed to feel nothing for me. On the other hand I maintain that I still love him and always will. I still love my first boyfriend, and we split up 20 years ago. My parents still love each other after divorcing many many years ago.

I feel that love is such a difficult thing to find that, ok , maybe the sexual attraction has gone, or whatever, but I am not giving up on someone who has meant so much to me. There is a connection that will always be there for me.

I am a woman. Might that have something to do with it ?

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 21 Oct 05 - 09:00 AM

You call 20 minutes long ?

eric

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: GUEST,Marí
Date: 21 Oct 05 - 09:18 AM

Let's take it we are talking about being "in" love. I have heard that humans, like some animals, are "programmed" to be "in" love for 2 to 3 years... just long enough to meet, fall in love, feel secure, have kids and give security to the family. Then it all goes downhill.

I have to say I think this is probably true. By then ,. however, we are so far in that it's difficult to get out ( joint home, bank account, friends etc.. )

I personally would like to go through life with a series of realtionships that last only while that strong passion lasts. The problem is once that has gone you are so deeply entwined in other ways it hurts like hell. I have recently had two break ups.... one was a relationship that had lost all it's passion, but had lasted years and years. The next one was still passionate, but we were incompatible. I tell you what, the long term one hurt like hell when it came to the break up cos we were so entwined in our lives.... families, friends, business, home. Horrible.

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: mack/misophist
Date: 21 Oct 05 - 09:57 AM

LizS said: I still love my first boyfriend, and we split up 20 years ago. My parents still love each other after divorcing many many years ago.

My parents were like that too. Standing between them I could easily see that neither was talking about any one I had ever met. There must be many relationships held together by wishful thinking abd selective blindness.

My wife and I have been together well over 30 years. Being a curmudgeon about words, I hesitate to call it love. Whatever it really is, it may be better. Faith, perhaps.

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Oct 05 - 10:30 AM

maybe like pigeons mating for life..

its biochemically imprinted on our brains..

some internal switches must get turned 'on' or 'off'

whether we like it or not..


.. why else has one of my oldest friends just split up his family,
ruined himself financially,
made a complete fool of himself..

because of his abject love for a much younger woman..????????????

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 21 Oct 05 - 10:30 AM

When my parents divorced they rarely spoke again and the times they had to be in the same place were agonizing to everyone else in the room.

When I divorced I was determined not to waste what had been a long-term friendship, even if it didn't work out as a marriage. Marriage almost ruined the friendship.

It set a useful example, and a recent teen-aged-breakup in the family was relatively smooth and they are able to stay friends. That's good--you can never have too many friends and you sure don't want to cultivate enemies if you can avoid it.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: John Hardly
Date: 21 Oct 05 - 10:44 AM

In the heat of summer it is nearly impossible to remember how cold winter really is. In the sub-zero of winter, sweating through summer humidity actually sounds good.

Maybe because when a person leaves (by death or break-up) all that is left is the romantic hopeful notions of what could have been -- not what actually was or is. Selective memory. Irrational hope.

If, on the other hand, a person stayed around long enough, we might be more inclined to remember the bad with the good -- the reality along with the hope.

I have a relative who died a few years ago. This person was the water to my oil. In the game of life, she was a chess player, while I saw it as parchesi. Since she's been gone I wonder sometimes (as I did every time she was elsewhere for an extended period of time) "couldn't I just (have) try(ied) a little harder to get along? It can't be that bad, can it?"

...but every time we were together again it was a slap of reality --- we were just that different. She and I never fought, never let on to those around us that we didn't get along -- it's just that we could not, no matter how hard we tried, communicate effectively.

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: mack/misophist
Date: 21 Oct 05 - 10:55 AM

LizS said: I still love my first boyfriend, and we split up 20 years ago. My parents still love each other after divorcing many many years ago.

My parents were like that too. Standing between them I could easily see that neither was talking about any one I had ever met. There must be many relationships held together by wishful thinking abd selective blindness.

My wife and I have been together well over 30 years. Being a curmudgeon about words, I hesitate to call it love. Whatever it really is, it may be better. Faith, perhaps.

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Oct 05 - 11:22 AM

Well, I'll give a short answer.

Love lasts so long because it's the only thing that's actually real. It's the foundation and source of all existence.

(However, I am not speaking specifically or only of what is termed "romantic love" when I say that. By no means. Romantic love may be real love...or it may not be...you have to figure that out for yourself, I guess.)

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: Amos
Date: 21 Oct 05 - 11:23 AM

Genetically or not, I submit that there are some kinds of love that go beyond the miles and span the years--and sometimes whole lifetimes-- because they are the unclothed, unencumbered energetic postulates of the soul in action.

'Course, if you don't believe in souls and such, why you'll have to find some other explanation.

There's a lot of short-timer love that is anchored in and perhaps due to the hunger of protoplasm for continuity and procreation (and all the physical delights that make that look so much fun from the outside!), but that's a different class of lovebug altogether.

It is my sense that at a much deeper level than that, we tie gold threads to those who share our longest, deepest goals for beauty or betterment in the world, and no matter what age or cloak they may wear, the recognition seeps in; and when it does, it sinks in at a level so deep and pure it can make your teeth fall out.

Or mebbe that's just me! :D

A

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: Davetnova
Date: 21 Oct 05 - 12:36 PM

ok this could turn into a what is love? I still feel a deep "love" for my ex, although I could never trust her or be with her again. But the way I feel I can't change. We were together a long time, I thought forever. Is it love? or as Liz said above is it just that we had so much intwined? Is it golden glow nostalgia? I don't know. But the feeligs still there. But I still feel that "love".

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: Ebbie
Date: 21 Oct 05 - 01:36 PM

Past relationships are a puzzle to me. However, my ex-husband and I made a better job of being divorced than we did of the marriage- neither of us ever bad-mouthed each other to our daughter in the ensuing years, and we are 'friendly' today. Of course that was made easier because for many years he lived in California with his new wife while my daughter and I lived in Oregon. Except for visits my daughter never lived with him.

I once wrote a song called 'The First Time' where the first verse goes:

Our lives together were clashes of will
And we finally shook ourselves free
But I remember - and treasure it still-
The first time you smiled on me.

The people one has loved will always be bound to one in some strange kind of way, I think.

There was an odd development later. My exhusband is brother to my brother's wife so after his wife of 30 years died, he moved back into his sister's (and my family's) neighborhood in Oregon. This means he is back in the family but I'm a thousand miles away in Alaska!

Ya can't win.

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: bobad
Date: 21 Oct 05 - 01:53 PM

According to Frank Tallis in his book "Love Sick: Love as a Mental Illness" love is a form of mental illness.

Here's a brief review:

Obsessive thoughts, erratic mood swings, insomnia, loss of appetite, recurrent and persistent images and impulses, superstitious or ritualistic compulsions, delusion, the inability to concentrate-exhibiting just five or six of these symptoms is enough to merit a diagnosis of a major depressive episode. Yet we all subconsciously welcome these symptoms when we allow ourselves to fall in love. In Love Sick, Dr. Frank Tallis, a leading authority on obsessive disorders, considers our experiences and expressions of love, and why the combinations of pleasure and pain, ecstasy and despair, rapture and grief have come to characterize what we mean when we speak of falling in love. Tallis examines why the agony associated with romantic love continues to be such a popular subject for poets, philosophers, songwriters, and scientists, and questions just how healthy our attitudes are and whether there may in fact be more sane, less tortured ways to love. A highly informative exploration of how, throughout time, principally in the West, the symptoms of mental illness have been used to describe the state of being in love, this book offers an eloquent, thought-provoking, and endlessly illuminating look at one of the most important aspects of human behavior.

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: Pseudolus
Date: 21 Oct 05 - 02:39 PM

When my ex-wife and I divorced, we had some difficult times but because there were kids we stayed civil, it became friendly and now we're the best of friends. she and her new husband are invited to all family events even when they are not for our daughters. She baby-sits my boys and when she re-married, my duo played her wedding reception. People are generally amazed that we even get along because I guess we're not supposed to according to some. But we do. My daughter asked me a few years back if I "still loved Mommy". Without hesitation I said yes. It's different, but it's love. My wife and ex-wife invite each other to Candle parties, cooking parties etc., and they both get a kick out of introducing each other. They get some strange looks.

Frank

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: Ebbie
Date: 21 Oct 05 - 05:22 PM

Good for you, Frank. Life is too short for anything else.

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 21 Oct 05 - 06:13 PM

Does it?

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 21 Oct 05 - 06:56 PM

Well, each day is pretty special, and a year of being with her is simply the best thing I have ever know. I run out of words beyond that point.

Maybe I'll have some kind of an answer in a decade or two, or at least more words....

james

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: Elmer Fudd
Date: 21 Oct 05 - 07:57 PM

Why would it not?

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Oct 05 - 08:29 PM

Romantic love, as it is experienced by most people most of the time in western society IS a state of mental illness. I can definitely attest to that from plenty of direct experience.

Actual love is a way of being, not a feeling. It engenders powerful feelings, but it's a way of being. It does not play favorites nor make demands on others. It applies to all, not just to one or a few "special" people that one has picked out, because they appear tailormade to meet one's imagined needs.

The fact is, no one can meet your imagined needs, nor should they be expected to.

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 21 Oct 05 - 08:31 PM

Sometimes it does, but more often it doesn't. The love in my first marriage didn't last because it was based more on what each of us received than what we gave. My wife and I will soon celebrate our 8th Anniversary, and we never tire of trying to bring happiness to the other person. Ain't always easy. We're all selfish at heart.
But love is giving.

I am reminded of a song that was popular in the 50's by a German singer, Hamish Menzies. The key line was "How much do I love you? More than yesterday, less than tomorrow." Neither of us can imagine being more in love, and yet I know we will be. It's not always the "romantic" love, but the romance is still there. It's more a joining of heart and soul.

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: bobad
Date: 21 Oct 05 - 09:21 PM

I agree with the distinction you make between romantic and actual love Little Hawk except I like to call it universal love. I try (with varying degrees of success) to live my life in accordance with the precept that the only true religion is the love of all living things.

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Oct 05 - 12:17 AM

Being with the same mate for 33 years all I can say is that the both of us deeply believe in the True Religion that Bobert mentioned above and that is the love of all living things ... or if we are both mentally ill, what a lovely illness.

sIx

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: number 6
Date: 22 Oct 05 - 12:20 AM

Me again up above (GUEST 12:17) falling out in in.

sIx

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: Dead Horse
Date: 22 Oct 05 - 05:48 AM

It depends how intense the feeling was in the first place.
Any intense feeling is liable to last for a long time unless it is replaced by another of equal intensity.
I have a burning love for one person, and an equally burning hatred of another.
Both these feelings have and will continue to stand the test of time.

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: Stephen L. Rich
Date: 22 Oct 05 - 05:56 AM

I've got good news and bad news,
The good news is that love will find you.
The bad news is that love will find you. :)

Stephen Lee

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: Mooh
Date: 22 Oct 05 - 07:38 AM

I am certain that my love for my children is absolute and unconditional. It feels as natural as breathing. However, it is not universally true that all parents will feel that way. My mother-in-law certainly doesn't love her daughter in the same way, if at all. My explanation is that some kind of undiagnosed (except by me) and untreated mental illness causes this and prevents her from loving.

Romantic love depends so much on the individuals as to whether it is lasting. Capacity to forgive, tolerate, express, and understand figure into it. Somehow or another my wife came away from her relationship with her mother with these positive attributes as that "equal and opposite force" that exists in physics, and applied them to all her loving relationships.

Love lasts so long if it is needed to last so long. Sometimes dictated by security, safety, compatibility, comfort, passion, intellect, mutual support, or some ineffable quality that only a lifetime together can define. Love might not be complete for some without a whole life invested together. For others, maybe the brain and heart gets what it needs in small installments.

I do know this: what I invest I get back in spades.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 22 Oct 05 - 11:14 AM

After forty-one years (or is it three weeks?) of marriage, my Beautiful Wife and I are holding our breath. Are we going to suddenly fall out of love? Oh, oh! Watch out!

I'll let you know if it happens.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 22 Oct 05 - 11:58 AM

I doubt it, Dave.

"Love" is probably the most elastic word in the dictionary. It can mean anything from "I love Pizza" to "God is love." Lust is often confused with love, and "love" is professed to fill lustful desires.
Charles Shcultz even said that "love is a warm puppy." How long love lasts depends on what kind of love it is. Love lust wears off with familiarity, and the desire for conquest kicks in the minute someone new walks by. Pizza love wears off after the third or fourth slice (depending on how deep the love is.)   God's love is eternal.

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Oct 05 - 12:13 PM

Sounds like you have found God's love in your relationship with your wife, Jerry. Good for you!

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 22 Oct 05 - 01:04 PM

Yes I have, Little Hawk... thanks.. it defies description..

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: KT
Date: 22 Oct 05 - 03:29 PM

More good news......I believe very strongly that one's capacity for loving is in no way diminished by another's inability to receive it. We're called to that kind of loving. It's what we're here for.
KT

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 22 Oct 05 - 03:48 PM

Very true, KT: But, to quote the Nature Boy: "The greatest thing you'll ever learn is to love, and be loved in return."

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: KT
Date: 22 Oct 05 - 03:56 PM

Yes, indeed, Jerry. 'Tis true.

KT

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: Scoville
Date: 22 Oct 05 - 06:44 PM

I still love my last ex on some level, even though I haven't seen him in four years. I don't want him back, but I forgive him for the ways he made the relationship hard for me and myself for the ways I dealt with it poorly (nothing horrendous, but it could have ended less badly than it did if I had reacted differently). I thought the girl he married was beneath him but I think I can see what they saw in each other and I hope they're happy (after all, he was a good guy--if she married him she must have something going for her, right?).

I also still "love" the guy I was secretly in love with when I was in college, even though he has issues and is no longer speaking to any of his former female friends (myself included--we wrote back and forth for awhile until a lot of awkward things came out and we had to stop communicating). I would never be in love with him again but I hope, for his own sake, that he comes to terms with himself and if he ever thought he could be friendly to me again, I wouldn't blow him off.

Love hasn't found me in a very long time. I guess that makes me exceptionally sane[?]. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not.

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: hesperis
Date: 22 Oct 05 - 07:57 PM

Sometimes you can love people for who they are. You might not want to marry them or even live with them, or even have sex with them, but you still love them. You still wish them well and would try to do anything within your power to help them if they needed it.

Sometimes you're lucky enough to marry someone you love in that way, and can actually live with them even through some parts of reality being annoying.

It's very true that long-term love is different from what is normally termed romantic love. But romantic love is not comprised of infatuation... it can be closer to God's love sometimes.

If infatuation is all you're looking for in a relationship, then you'll be gone as soon as the fiery first stage (which happens in any love relationship) is over. If you're looking for more, and bring more, and have a deep understanding and tolerance for daily muck and te ability to have a discussion without argument or to clean up after a real argument... well, the relationship just might last.

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 22 Oct 05 - 08:42 PM

Scoville and Hesperis... lovely, wise posts... There is a lasting love that isn't dependent upon a physical relationship, or any romantic emotions. Sometimes it's a person who is a kindred Spirit.
Sometimes a lasting love is built on compassion, or admiration which never diminish. I have loved women I never felt any desire to be involved with (and who had no desire to be involved with me.) I loved them for who they were, not for who they could be with me.

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: dianavan
Date: 23 Oct 05 - 12:31 AM

I can attest to the strength of a lasting love.

I met somebody long ago but was only with him for 3 days and nights.

It was an unconsummated love.

I remember every detail and every word spoken in those three days.

I have tried to forget because my heart aches sometimes.

I have learned that sometimes love is forever.

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: jonm
Date: 23 Oct 05 - 04:51 AM

I always had deep-rooted reservations - my parents had a very antagonistic marriage and an acrimonious divorce. I had always gone into relationships with a part of me standing outside looking in, vetting what I think and say from a very selfish viewpoint of self-preservation and leaving myself an exit route. I managed a series of "relationships" without them ever ending in acrimony.

Then I met my now wife.... I can truly believe that that first flush of love is a form of mental illness. We were engaged in a month and married within the year. The part of me which gave itself up to the illness was totally obsessed. The part of me outside looking in knew it was right. Even when I was looking at her, we were both looking in the same direction.

Does love last? No, it's like a garden. You tend it regularly and the effort you put in is rewarded in ways you couldn't expect. Work at the love and it will last many lifetimes, because your kids will learn what maintaining a relationship is all about.

Married over 11 years in complete happiness and trust, holding each other through externally-imposed grief, pain and joy and the internal joys of two wonderful kids. We don't row - we understand each other's viewpoint and discuss matters. The part of me on the outside looking in has grown ever smaller, but it's still there and it likes what it sees.

How lucky am I?

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: MuddleC
Date: 23 Oct 05 - 07:16 AM

An interesting thread, one which I cannot answer yet until the straggley ends of my heart strings heal, I'm at the irrational hope point, loving someone who can't return it, do I take all what was said and done as lies??
When I sing Grey Funnel Line, I remember my desolation at being parted from my (then) wife in the Antartic seas as part of that line.
When I sing Waltzing Matilda or Flowers of the Forest I think of my time at war
The love songs that I sang at the 'infatuation' period and 'mutual affection' period will hep me to express them better, when I feel strong enough to do so
When I sing 'Raglan Road'(a.k.a Dark-haired Miriam)in future, I will understand and feel every line that much more.
If you have that long love, and it is returned , you are truly rich.
strive to be happy

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 23 Oct 05 - 07:44 AM

Luck has nothing to do with it, jon: You are blessed. Love requires sacrifice, if it is to grow. Someone gave me a very wise definition of sacrifice, many years ago: "Sacrifice is giving up something good for a greater good." You need that understanding to nurture love.

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: number 6
Date: 23 Oct 05 - 08:55 AM

""Sacrifice is giving up something good for a greater good."

... very good Jerry! So true in it's meaning.

sIx

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: Rapparee
Date: 23 Oct 05 - 10:22 AM

I don't think that you ever fall out of love. That once you have loved someone that love -- and that person -- is part of you forever.

Since you can neither really love nor hate unless you know someone, love and hate are nearly identical. The problem is that hate destroys the hater. (I'm talking REAL hate here, not some degree of dislike.)

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: Little Hawk
Date: 23 Oct 05 - 11:10 AM

Ah, well, Dianavan...a love that is never had (consummated or whatever one would call it)...that can haunt a person for a lifetime. Maybe even for several lifetimes. I've had a couple of cases of that in my life, and they are with me to this day.

As for infatuation, that is based firmly upon the belief in separation...a belief that most of us are totally mired in from birth till death. It leads to all manner of strange behaviour and deprivation. It also leads to wars, grudges, vengeance, recrimination, accusation, emotional blackmail, and so on.

On the other hand, it makes for great movies, novels, and entertainment, so it can't be ALL bad, right? ;-) Really, where would Shakespeare have been if not for infatuation?

As Rapaire may have been suggesting above, "love" (romantic love) can easily morph into hatred in the blink of an eye...when it doesn't get what it wants. And that too has driven the plot of any number of dramatic romantic tales.

Maybe souls incarnate here because they just can't resist the drama? It's a possibility. But what about those souls who pick the tragic parts...and forget after they get here? Ouch. Imagine playing Quasimodo, for instance...

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: Amos
Date: 23 Oct 05 - 11:21 AM

Souls do what they have to do, based on a strange mix of their own magnificent beliefs and the bizarre montage of counterforces they encounter. It's a veritable Waring blender of force and significance. But it bears mentioning that a lot of sheer horsepower gets locked intothe highest and purest of those forces, and the powerful affinities of chosen connections is surely one of the most powerful.

At the bottom it has to do with elected meaning -- the personal semantics of experience, wherein one decides what the world means and what events mean to oneself.

When you decide that something is "out there" and infinitely desireable, as LH indicated, you then set up a powerful bridge of energy, pushing and pulling at the same time. You keep putting that "awayness" there and pulling it to make it come closer.

It is easier to simply "be close" but the physical continuum looks down on such spiritual antics and tries to discourage such abilities.

A

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: dianavan
Date: 23 Oct 05 - 02:30 PM

Thanks, LH

I think you are right that love and infatuation are different.

I am not sure that infatuation, "is based firmly upon the belief in separation."

In other words, my long ago 'love' did not know that we would be separated forever. It was a twist of fate. I realize that because it was short-lived and unconsummated, it was never given a chance to become a lasting love. However, because the love was mutual, I am not sure if it was infatuation. I always thought that infatuation was one-sided and unreal.

I agree with Amos when he says, "But it bears mentioning that a lot of sheer horsepower gets locked intothe highest and purest of those forces, and the powerful affinities of chosen connections is surely one of the most powerful."

I am not sure if the connection was chosen or fated.

I would like to add that such an experience does no preclude other forms of love, ie: love of children, love of self, love of friends, love of a faithful companion and so on...

I would also like to add that such a love can truly inspire and motivate a person throughout their life. I wonder if it is in fact, pure and untainted love, a love with no conditions or expectations simply because it didn't enter a world of mundane existence.

So I am one of those that believe that love never dies. Some may have experienced a love that can turn to hate and I agree to a point but I think that hate is temporary and is just a form of intense anger. Once its over, the love returns. If the hatred replaces love, then it probably wasn't love in the first place.

So, yes, there are many forms of love and love lasts forever (something I didn't know when I was younger).

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: Peace
Date: 23 Oct 05 - 02:32 PM

The opposite of love is not hatred. It is indifference.

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: UncleToad
Date: 23 Oct 05 - 06:07 PM

Love Is

I know what love
is now...
green ivy clinging
to the raw bark
on an ancient tree,
and old trees
clawing the tender skin
of earth
with naked feet
until their toes
dig deep
into where
the water sleeps
cool and dark.
Love is
the heart
we carve
when we are starving.

Uncle(LoveIsAllThereIs)Toad

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: Peter T.
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 05:49 PM

One problem in our culture is that romantic love has taken over the place that was once filled by religion, so the ecstatic part is the solution to everything, which is too easily transferred to the partner, who is now to be the solution to everything, which no human being can live up to.   

(It may however be that the beloved is a good reason to decide that life with all its ups and downs, is worth living, but that is a somewhat lesser burden, and fun too).

So when they leave, life goes dark.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: MuddleC
Date: 31 Oct 05 - 02:39 PM

I'm sorry, I don't mind if you have 'faith ' in some deity, but being 'ecstatic' about religion is exactly what caused 911 and any number of atrocities stretching back as far as the crusades. Life is by nature dark,(even the 'cuddly' panda is a dangerous animal)
For love to work there must be a degree of reciprocity, 'faith' is a one-way street with arc-lamps, 'love' is someone walking towards you with a torch, to take and share

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: hesperis
Date: 31 Oct 05 - 05:59 PM

Some love is love without reciprocity... but I feel that love is much more rich when life is shared. Also, constant love is difficult for humans to maintain.

The interesting thing to me about Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, is that she demanded constant love from him rather than inconstant love. It's a small passage, often overlooked... but from that one tiny interchange is a clue that their love was not actually infatuation even though it really looked like it. I mean, Romeo's previous history of love was to be infatuated with a new girl every hour almost... lol. But maybe they didn't insist on constant love?

Human love feels inconstant but is really always there, just not always expressed. Divine love is constant but much more impersonal. It would be interesting to experience both with the same person.

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: Peace
Date: 31 Oct 05 - 06:01 PM

"why does love last so long"

The premise is false.

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: Grab
Date: 31 Oct 05 - 06:05 PM

Why does it last? Cos it's worth it. If it doesn't last, it wasn't love to start with... :-/

Also, we need to differentiate between romantic love for a partner; the mutual respect between close non-romantic friends; the mutual respect of a child to parents or between siblings; and the nurturing impulse of parents to children (or people to pets, which frankly I think are both expressions of the same impulse, to look after those weaker than yourself). I presume here we're only on romantic love? Friendship as love is another issue altogether, and generally requires less stringent conditions on it (not least that you can have more than one friend at a time! :-). And nurturing love is obviously not based on the other person's personality (it's based on a built-in biological drive instead).

FWIW, I don't see that religion has any place in this either. Love for a partner has been around much longer than religion (since many animals apparently share the ability to love their partners), and if the concept of religion is ever abandoned (which seems unlikely) then love for a partner will still exist in the human race.

Graham.

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: Beer
Date: 31 Oct 05 - 10:01 PM

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: Beer
Date: 31 Oct 05 - 10:05 PM

In reading these wonderful threads I was reminded of a note book I have had in storage for awhile. A quote that I wrote by someone?? I would like to share with you.

"A friend is two souls touching but never meeting. Love is two of everything becoming one".
Beer

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 01 Nov 05 - 12:32 AM

I tell ya, Hesperis. To experience human love and divine love with the same person is far, far more than interesting. It is beautiful beyond description. And the two loves are so interwoven that they are inseparable.

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: why does love last so long
From: MuddleC
Date: 01 Nov 05 - 09:04 AM

Beer, that's a great saying