Love vs. Love

[DowntownAmber]

I hate to interrupt such a beautifully ruptured thread, but I fell I should stop giggling for a few minutes to do so.

damyanti: I am curious as to your strong reaction to my post seeing I was agreeing with you up to the point where you opposed the reality of your own description of love. I agree much of what makes up love is indeed, as you stated, "instinct and social calculation." Most emotions are. My point was, simply, that the source does not make an emotion or state of being any less "real." As thinking people, we have developed a language to discuss these complex forms of our own thought patterns and actions and, yes, these descriptions have been over-romanticized and simplified and turned into a plethora of gum drop nonsense. Oh well. *shrugs* Not my problem, I don't play my games on that particular field. I guess it's just a more appropriate option for me to say I am in love with J than to say, "this is my boyfriend J. We're in an advanced state of evolutionary bonding brought on by my need to communicate and have my desires understood and met in an intellectual, material, and hormone fueled female reproductive way." But, I digress just to humor myself - simply, I am not sure how my post makes my position out to be an "argument" or a "hormone pumped" counter to yours?

If you feel my post was indeed gibberish of the "Love as Love" variety (not even sure what that means, what else do you want love to be other than itself?), please point out to me where and I will happily clarify where you misunderstood. Perhaps just the use of the word "love" alters your perspective into a fairytale definition of the term, but I assure you, the Objectivist Amber gave up that connotation a very very long time ago, if I ever held it to begin with. I'm not sure where you read into my post that I think love is selfless and never falters and blah blah, but if it says that then someone altered it after I wrote it...lol! You and I, damyanti, exist in a very similar reality; we are just using different words and a different attitude of delivery to describe it and that seems to be causing some, frankly, laughable frustration. You seem to be reacting to being "patronized over not being a believer" and I haven't actually seen anyone, including myself, do that to you. The defensiveness is truly not needed in this conversation, as it visibly permeates the thread with the tiresome reek of teenage cynicism (i.e. the way to be cool is to think nothing is cool). Why be caustic when there really are positive ways to both discuss and express love?

Negativity is so overrated unless you're my cat and even that only gets her tossed outside.

And thus ends my interruption of your regularly scheduled thread.

[damyanti]

If you feel my post was indeed gibberish of the "Love as Love" variety...

To me, love is a response to the the strongest values we hold...

We each have emotional eyes that can discern the particular colors of the other, and hands that can feel the texture of the other with heightened sensitivity.

This was just to answer your question, but I really have no interest in explanation. I already heard all the flowery descriptions I can stomach.


In fact everyone can have the word, people misuse it so much so often it no longer holds any meaning.

To get back OT, I think Cadence gave the best answer.

[DowntownAmber]

This was just to answer your question, but I really have no interest in explanation. I already heard all the flowery descriptions I can stomach.

Hon, it's not "flowery" just because you don't understand the post. There's nothing even remotely "romantic" in either one of those statements, they simply express that our values set up what we respond to in other people which in turn triggers the love emotion or doesn't. Hell, we can even substitute the word "like" in here for more surface level interaction if you still want to proclaim love as non-existent for all of humankind. Let's say one of your core values is a sense of honesty. If you meet a dishonest person, do you respond to them with a desire to bond? Prolly not. Unless, of course, they offer you financial security and that is more valuable to you than your affinity for the truth. Security is a higher value, you respond to it with a greater sense of urgency and devotion. If you value wealth, you may react to that by being drawn to a person of means, or perhaps just the opposite so you yourself can feel wealthy by comparison. All still a response to your own personal sense of values. Not flowery at all, just basic stops on the logic bus line from apathy to what we each define as love. I agree with cadence, we each choose and shape our own very unique definitions for love, and we each make it real for ourselves. And, for most of is, it's more rewarding to have partners that we trust respond to what we consider our positive traits as well.

People are complex, our emotions (even the ones more simple than love) are multifaceted and always built from multiple building blocks. Yellow is a primary. Blue is a primary. Blend them, you get green. Green is no less real than the two colors that made it. Add differing amounts of each ingredient, or introduce a third, your end result changes. Same with emotions. Same with love. If the green ends up fading in the sun, no one goes back and says the the color you started with wasn't real - it just didn't last in its environment. Hopefully that metaphor was straightforward enough, and not so flowery as to be misunderstood.

Anyhoo, bottom line is that for me personally, I do what makes me happy with the people that are conducive to that, and the relationships in which I have busted out the "L" word have all managed to live up to the expectations I've had. In fact, over time, they've exceeded them. Maybe I'm just lucky, though I doubt that's it.