What Is Your Understanding of Love?

[tude]

Wow, this thread about 'love' is like reading any thread about 'God'... I think I just threw up in my mouth. No, I am just kidding (about the love part).

I first learned what love is from my first born niece. I learned about the love of a child and the love for a child. I learned that it is unconditional and pure.

I have yet to discover if this kind of love is possible with other relationships.

 

[linasmom]

*sigh* the love for a child. It is seriously the most wonderful feeling in the entire world. When my daughter was born, everything changed. Everything. I had never felt that way in my life.

When I met my husband, I had never felt that way, either. The love is just as strong for both of them, but it is a different kind of love.

I guess it goes back to what I said earlier in the thread - that love is created.

 

[spiritofnow]

I have never found the love I speak of with a mate but I have found it through my beautiful boy. I wish to love like this and to be loved back in the same way with someone I can call my 'soul mate'.

A gentle kiss when you least expect it!

Spirit x

 

[Grama-Herc]

Years ago I asked my mother how I would know if I was in "Love"

Her response surprised me . She said "Love is caring for the other person more than you care for yourself"

 

[sallyb98178]

Love is what you DO, not how you feel. Did you know love, lust, pain all have different places in the brain where they are experienced? I wish they could excise the ptsd.

 

[spiritofnow]

Love has only shown me hurt and abandonment.

That was not love Pandora, that was the misguided, who also do not know how to love. Love never abandons you once you have it in your heart. Love is what we should give to oursleves. I believe this, no matter how hurt or betrayred I have been. Love comes from within and then surrounds you. I am waiting too, to feel it every day no matter how the wolrd wakes up and behaves.

Spirit x

 

[pandora]

I realize that tihs was negative.....I have felt love from my second husband and there are always factors they have to work on he was willing too and i ran...left all my belongings there came home, started over. I know he loved me really to have think it was love becasuse I fell dead over heels...does love make you dumb, it seemed to make me deaf dumb and blind.......I guess love still confuses me!

 

[Awakening]

Love is letting go

 

[spiritofnow]

Love is acceptanace; to accept we cannot control others'. To accept that life is flawed, messy and beautiful all in the same breath. Acceptance, that love too, is not perfect and comes in many different guises. To accept love and to give love is indeed a gift. To accept that love and happiness are inextricably linked and that our quest for both is not always about ownership, but the experience of them. Acceptance that love can just grab a hold of you and shake you around. Acceptance that we cannot control when love appears. Acceptance, that sometimes we wait....

Spirit x

 

[Ubu]

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails....And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love

This is a biblical definition. But me wife has PTSD moved out over a year ago. talk to her everyday. The kids n i see her for a couple days of each month. This is the saying that keeps me going. Im not saying im all of these, im human and it very hard and sad somedays being without the one you love. But I strive for this. Pure Love.

 

[Cowgirl]

Someone said that love never ends except with death. No, I don't buy that.

I was married before. We were in love. After four years of marriage, I got pregnant. That pregnancy was nearly the death of me, and I spent the last portion of it in the hospital. Mention was made of a heart lung machine to keep my body alive for the baby, but fortunately it never got quite that bad.

My then husband did not cope well with this crisis. He ended up spending time with another woman as his coping mechanism, rather than sitting with me in the hospital. I found out because I brought home a baby, and he brought home an STD (thankfully one treatable with antibiotics).

I struggled to keep the marriage together for a number of years after that, but in the end we divorced. It is difficult to rebuild trust once shattered, and different people deal with crises in different ways - some healthy, some unhealthy. Love without trust can die.

Lasting love requires the commitment of two people. It isn't all a rose garden. Some love survives because both people in the relationship are strong enough to pull through anything together, and to be there for each other through the worst of times. Love is easy during the good times, it is tested (as are the people themselves) during the hard times.

Cowgirl

 

[upstream]

Wow, this thread about 'love' is like reading any thread about 'God'... I think I just threw up in my mouth.

Interesting observation, tude. I wonder what the connection is.

Perhaps we should distinguish between the noun and the verb? Love and "in love"? The feeling and the act? How many forms of love are there? A trip to wikipedia uncovered many, many different forms of love
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love