What is love, and why are we so confused by it?

[DaveJord]

Love by definition, is a feeling of deep affection in something that brought you interest and pleasure.

If you were to ask me how many times I have been in love, honestly, I would say 16 different times. Why would I say that? How is that even possible, right?

Well, that is because I have been with 18 different women in my lifetime, and I took, "a great interest and pleasure" in being with 16 of them. The other two were just terrible.

Why do we get so wrapped around the axle over this concept of love? I have probably been on 100 or more dates in my lifetime, I slept with 18 different women, and at any point in time I took a "a great interest and pleasure" in dating, talking or dinning with more than half of them. But many will say that is not true love, it's just infatuation.

They will say that infatuation is not true love, but isn't that how it always starts?

Infatuation by definition is an intense but short-lived passion or admiration for someone or something.

Have you ever loved anyone you were not infatuated with? I never have.

All the women I have been romantically intimate with have generated intense passion and admiration within with in me (infatuation). They have generated deep affection and interest that brought me pleasure and affection (love), no matter how short lived.

I have often been told by women that is infatuation and not true love. But I have never been in love with someone I was not infatuated with.

There is this popular concept propitiated by society, and highly mediatized that love is forever and in fluctuation is not. This is the biggest lie ever told.

I love peanut butter. When I tell someone, I love peanut butter they accept that as fact. I truly have affection for peanut butter, and it brings me pleasure. With that said I would not give any of the moments I have shared with a woman up, for peanut butter. Therefore, you could arguably say I do not truly love peanut butter.

Peanut butter on its own has never brought the same level of passion as I have experienced with a woman, no matter how short lived. I would honestly tell you that I am in love with peanut butter, but I am truly not infatuated with it.

I was married to my ex-wife for 22 years. I can say I did truly love her, and I was totally infatuated with her for decades. But love, like infatuation, is not forever. She is my ex-wife and no matter how infatuated I was with her, she like all of the other women are out my life and peanut butter is still there for me.

Peanut butter is incapable of emotion, it will never love me, but it will always be there to bring me pleasure and therefore I have a deep appreciation and admiration for it.

The point I am making, is love is all you have left once the infatuation is over, even if it was never present. Love is ever present in your life no matter how long or short lived it is. Love is what you make of it for as long as you can maintain it. Once you devalue it or dismiss it as something else... that is when it becomes fleeting.

[StormChaser838]

Mr. Dave, you have hit on a very intense and most difficult topic, as Shakespeare put it there is a reason Cupid is portrayed as a child and is painted blind. On the other hand, Plato, in his discussion of the hierarchy of truths, describes true love as the highest truth.
As for my most humble opinion ,,,, infatuation is not love, but love is always not true love. However, true love is true love, for there is and can be only one true love. So then what is true love?
To me true love has to be unconditional, everlasting, non judgmental, irrational, selfless and the many ands that come with it. I think the closest I have come to it is the love my Mum has shown to me or the love I have seen is my pet animal's eyes. I have only ever given my heart to a woman once and the experience was I'd say not the greatest. But I guess it's better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all...

[DaveJord]

I on a theoretical can agree... by your description of true love, that would make it unattainable.

So on the hierarchy of truth... I do not know were infatuation or lust would fall into the order. But do not assume its not a form of love. Love is its many forms are all around us, it depends on how much you value it when it's found.

I will agree that infatuation and lust are not true love by themselves, but they both are essential elements on the path to love... so again you can easily say a seed is not a flower... but all flowers start as a seed.

[JustMeL120]

Thank you that means a lot to hear this. Love is selfless. true love is completely selfless. Therefore it can't be due to someone giving us pleasure because that would be selfish.

[DaveJord]

@JustMeL120 Relationship are 100% transactional... but acts of selflessness are never truly selfless. There is always some benefit or personal motivation behind all we do.

So, I definitely believe in love, but true love or the very concept of true love is a myth.

You hear this all the time, "All I want to do is find my one and only true love." Well you can only do that if you are truly capable of truly loving another person, in all the ways they want to be loved. Not just in the ways you want to love them.

But nothing we do in life is selfless. So true love is myth, and unattainable goal. Everything is transactional, and you can't demand something you are unwilling to give.

[JustMeL120]

I think true love is rare and you have to be someone who is definitely not like everyone else to feel it. You can be a conformist. We live in a world where love is not given a good image. People see it as cheessy. Naive, obsessive. Mentally ill. Criminal. The world we live in is dangerous to feel true love for someone so people try not to feel it and some people are not capable. To feel love for someone one must have an independent mind and not be scared of other oppinions. And also it to do with wether you are religious. Because some people think it's just an high dose of dopamine. some believe that love is a spiritual thing.

[DaveJord]

@JustMeL120 The world is full of people that want to be loved, but don't know how to give love.

They buy into this believe that true love is unconditional love, but it's a false premise.

[StormChaser838]

Yes Dave and Justme, when I am mentioning true love here, it is the , "true love" , that exist in it's purely conceptual from, in its true essence. As living things, we are relative situations not absolute situations. This is a little hard concept to mathematically or logically understand, for example like, smartness, I can be smarter than the poor dumb guy next to me, but I cannot be smartness personified. Simply, when you look up smartness in the dictionary, you don't see a picture of me as the definition of smartness, right. The only time we see mathematically, that being and concept are one, is in the concept that is God. Therefore, only God could be capable of true love. However, we can spend our lives trying to keep getting closer to it. And yes, there are many types of love, and they all are love, infatuation included. Even hate and revenge, often is driven by love and it's pain. But, there are also other loves, that are the strongest of things that have ever existed in time, like the love for one's country, and the love of a mother and child. Also a human can never be truly selfless, therefore again he cannot achieve true love, but he can certainly come close.

[StormChaser838]

@JustMeL120 Justme, you are a very smart girl for 28, I am very impressed, keep it up !!! And you are right again about society and love, that is why you have to be irrational and bold to love , in fact love makes I wisest of us do stupid things, that is why Cupid is a child and blind. But love is an incredible drug, it runs many more things than we are aware of even. Like I did a lot of casual sex and the whole life style bullshit, and I found out the hard way, that sex without any love or even connection, ( which like infatuation, is a low form of love), becomes very mechanical, even in fact at times, down right ridiculous. So in most places we don't even know what is and is not love.

[aquamarine321]

We are confused because we don’t fully understand what love is because of what we think love is and by experience and/or by what we see in the media (books, television etc)

[DaveJord]

100%

[StormChaser838]

Yes!!! love has been the greatest conundrum for the greatest of minds for the greatest of time. Everyone wants it and everyone fears it too.

[ohsheeT]

This is a very good question because love is unconditional there are 5 billion different types of love
You can give it. You can Recive it.
You can share it. You can want it .. You can need it . We are born with it. And it's some thing we experience as we grow and become it
I think there are very different levels of it
I believe in order to understand it you have to experience it.
We only know what we know. Until we experience in another way another level

It with anything else we do in life we only know it until we experience in another way

I only know math or algebra until they don't even though there's deeper levels of it I still have not experienced it yet so I don't know it

Same with love you can only love someone as deep as your experience of love is.

If you love love that mean you can only give what you have experienced

How many people on here have just got in to a new relationship they make you feel so happy and you look at it as if they are the reason you feel this way.. well it's true to a point because it was them who came in to your life and everything is new again.
They opened up a door in you to feel something but it is only you on the in side that can give yourself that feeling or produce that feeling Within

If you believe in God and we came from him that means we have the God particle within us he's going to give us the best of everything it's already inside of we just need to experience it to understand it every emotion possible we have within us even love to get to the peak of all these emotions we need to experience them to let them out we need to become them we need to become the best that we possibly can become

This question is one of the reasons why I like GaG so much. And the people on here. No matter how good or silly the question might be there are many if us on here that remain on here it's like this question and the person who asked it has been here for ever with this question we all keep growing we all keep seeking truth or another level to become better and more understanding. Of life
My answer can only be one thing love is beautiful love is powerful love is exciting is real love is pain of his hurt but love is love and in order to share it you must experience it over and over and over like I said there's 5 billion different types of love and we can only give but we know if you want a deeper meaning you have to have a deeper experience life is nothing but an experience we only know what we know but we keep walking forward step by step to get more our goal in life should be become the best of we possibly can and I think with love we keep going forward

There are 2 sides to everything

The opposite of Love is hate is Darkness people that hate look how miserable they are they go nowhere they're angry they feel as if everybody's against them nothing works right

Love like anything else is a choice

Love yourself love love and give it love love is beautiful. feel it and share it..

For me the confusion is I love everything everyone all at different levels but once you love yourself and life then you find true love and no one can make you feel anything because it's all within we either find ourselves to bring it out. Or we wait for someone to come in to our lives to open those doors for us

[Leapfrog00]

Love=Question mark, question mark, another question mark lol. A feeling one gets thats nauseating. It haunts your dreams, causes you to do the most stupid things, takes what it wants when it wants.

Just when you think you understand it, the trickery tosses you in all directions. It inconveniences you at the worst times. It's like snow flakes, no two are the same. Once you find the perfect one, it will never leave you feeling empty ever again.

Now ask me what I really think if it, lol

[DaveJord]

What do you really think?

[SaRang21]

Infatuation can be a start of love, but time can test if it will turn into love, it must stand the test of time and distance and other obstacles. If passion fades away and you no longer want them, then it's not love, if you haven't seen them for a while and get over them, then it's not love.

Love can also start from compassion, or other sorts of feelings and emotions, if in the end, after amount of time has passed, you still desire that person ans still will them the best, then it could be love because love is giving.

There's actually a difference between being in love and loving. Infatuation is a strong desire to want to be with the other person because of strong attraction towards the other person. Actually love is a complex thing. Some say it's just emotionally attachment. But what's important is you want that person the best even if they aren't with you despite your strong infatuation for them.

[LaFemmeFatale_1]

Love is the motivation,

to reproduce,

to survive,

to live,

or so on.

It is the drive that keeps you going.

But it’s not as beautiful as the movies portray, in all seriousness it’s obsession with another person, due to the fact that you are most likely born a child together and to make sure, child reaches a safe age before the parents pass ways, nature thought of creating love.

That’s why most say love only lasts for 3 years, everything else is it’s artificial lengthening. Love isn’t supposed to last forever. Sadly.

[midnightmoon05]

Love is when you want the best for your partner, in term, he/she gives back similar. This is for each other. Better health, better life together, better finance together, bettering each other daily. You compete to make each other better.

From my simple mind, living a simple life.

[Hinaaaaa]

Love is when you pass that infatuation state & don't see your partner with your own imagination of them... I think it can only happens when you don't expect anything lol... but at the same time I think everyone has their own definition of love...😂😂their own potion lol

[Hinaaaaa]

Or maybe when the other person feels like Home🙃

[TheMadLad]

Love is a fictional idea represented in Movies to pass time.

Marriage is an agreement made between a Man and a Woman to vow for complete loyalty and mercy.

[DaveJord]

Marriage today is a legal contract period. The social concept of marriage in a traditional sense is dead. Because the law does not reward you ever live up to the vows you made.

[lightbulb27]

@DaveJord
Marriage trashed in the 1960's legal changes!

[Siri137]

Good question! Now if only I could answer it.

[strateguy632]

love is not "ever present" it is when anyone feels affection as you started.

[magiusX26]

it used to be something worth looking for. it has now become a useless relic of past humanity.

[DaveJord]

I don't want to be the cynical... but its hard to argue

[msc545]

Love is a neurochemical event in your brain that makes you want to copulate.

[DaveJord]

Thats a sad thought.

[msc545]

Yes - I felt sad writing it actually. It is also the truth.

[DaveJord]

Hope is desire for a certain thing to happen.

Faith in a nonbiblical sense is the conviction is a belief when you have logical evidence to support it. Mark Twain once said, "faith is believing in something that ain't true."

I haven't lost that level hope or compete faith yet.

[DaveJord]

*Have no logical

[goaded]

Do your parents love you?

[msc545]

@goaded Depends - which set and which parent in which set do you mean?

[goaded]

Well, it occurred to me that the comment wasn't universally applicable once I posted it, sorry if it wasn't for you. The point is that there are different kinds of love, many don't have anything to do with sex. I think what you're describing is better called lust.

[msc545]

@goaded I think the OP meant romantic love but yes, he should have specified that.

[DaveJord]

@goaded Everyone likes flowers but every flower starts as a seed and every seed need water.

Love= flower
Infatuation= Seed
Lust= Water

I never been in a serious relationship without some lust, that fueled infatuation that turned into love. this the way, so whenever someone says it's not one thing or the other, or just this or that... then they obviously don't understand that you don't get the Flower with the seed and water.

[msc545]

Nice metaphor!

[Jltakk]

Commercialization, constant societal changes in definition, more and more people not having ever experienced the feeling of being loved by someone who wasn't in their family.

[Kingofkings1992]

Romantic love is a lie. The only love that exists is love between family members.

[DaveJord]

There is defiantly some truth to this... I definitely agree that family is family... no doubt.

[shades777]

Nothing confusing about it, but people have different definitions of it

[BoopBoopBeep]

Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more...

[DaveJord]

Tank you sir, may I take another?

[Simslover92]

Bopping my head while I read that lol

[DaveJord]

@Simslover92 LOL :)

[Sixgunsound]

"What is loooovveee? Baby don't hurt me"

[whistlingwh0res]

There is no love

[Gabriel-Chicanito]

Love w/out support;is not love.