Define love

[jeanne]

This thread: http://www.bdsmlibrary.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=20911 started a discussion about the definition/meaning of love and other feelings. I thought it would be interesting to hear other's thoughts about what those other emotions feel like to you.

Love - how do you define love?

[Thorne]

Love - how do you define love?

This is a tough one. I don't know how anyone can truly define love. I love my wife, but I don't necessarily miss her when she goes away to visit people. I love my family, but I don't see many of them very often, and seldom enjoy myself at family gatherings.

I guess I would have to say that love is the feeling I get when my wife laughs.

[jeanne]

I guess I would have to say that love is the feeling I get when my wife laughs.

That is lovely. :)

[wmrs2]

Love is a two way street. I care for your well being as you care for my good. Love is having wonderful thoughts because of you.

[steelish]

Love is absolute light and harmony

[grinner666]

I like Heinlein's definition of love. Love, he says, is an emotional state in which the well-being of another is essential to your own. All in all, I think that covers the emotion fairly well.

:D

[IAN 2411]

Love is, dedication and loyalty, and the willingness to give unselfish sacrifice to the person you love. Love is, to forfeit your own enjoyment for your ill mate, so that they can live their life to the full. Love is going that extra mile for your mate, and although there will be no spoken word of thanks’; you have the knowledge that it is there for you. Love is, the invisible force that binds the world together.

[TantricSoul]

Love has so many, many, varied descriptions, and states, after all, there is Loving someone or something, being In Love, Puppy Love, Real Love, True Love, Deep Love, False Love, Love You like a Friend, Tough Love, Unconditional Love, and the modern definitions go on and on.

The Greeks defined love in four main ways: ( so sayeth Wiki)

1) Agape love is unconditional love. It is love by "choice" even if you are not pleased. A good example is "God loves us with our faults."

2) Philia love is the dispassionate virtuous love, guided by our likes or our healthy or unhealthy needs and desires.

3) Storge is the word for family love and the physical show of "affection", the need for physical touch. Sometimes the love between exceptional friends.

4) Eros is the physical "sexual" desire, intercourse. It is the root word of erotic, and eroticism.

My own beliefs? Here are a few things I've written about love in the past.

Unconditional love is not so much about how we receive and endure each other, as it is about the deep vow to never, under any condition, stop bringing the flawed truth of who we are to each other.

If you try to understand love, before being held, you will never feel compassion.

When love is deep, float upon it, or dive for the depths.

The center I once glimpsed is all around me,
A landscape I now live in,
And I will not pretend anymore.
If those I love can't recognize me with my soul out in the open,
I will no longer retreat and show what is familiar.

I would be anything for you,
Would you be yourself?

The dream is awakened when thinking I Love You,
And life begins when saying I love you,
And joy moves like blood when embracing someone with love.

Does any of this really define love? I think, I feel, that for each of us it is different, everchanging, and evolving, and very much a process.

But what do I know?

Respectfully,
TS

[VaAugusta]

I'm afraid this thread is unsettled by the common definition paradox.

We need an instance of love to create a definition, however unless we have a definition we can't know that the instance is love.

[Canyon]

Best definition I ever read. Not so much what love is, but what love does.

1 Cor. 13
1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. 2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned,[a] but have not love, it profits me nothing.
4 Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part. 10 But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.
11 When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.
13 And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Does anybody live up to this?

[denuseri]

For me it's best defined in the words of one of my countryman and favorite poet, in fact I like his work on love so much...I made a portion of it my signiture here when I joined..

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams
as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.

When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, "I am in the heart of God."
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

[His little one]

Define love...I doubt that can really be done, though I think denuseri's post comes as close as it gets, and I think it is inevitable that we will all define it differently. Especially given all the different ways in which we love. For me, love is dragging your ass out of bed and going to get your sister at 2 AM no matter where she is, love is telling the truth even if someone doesn't want to hear it, love is accepting the truth even if it hurts, love is accepting someone for who they are, knowing them as good as/better than, they know themselves, witnessing them at their very worst, and still being able to hand them a cup of coffee in the morning caring more about them than you did the day before. Total love is without judgement, it is unconditional, it is the ability to not like someone much one second and be willing to defend them without question the next. imho.

[angelhunter]

It is like the concept of death. It is your heart beating like a butterfly, it beats so fast and so hard as your heart is trying to beat itself out of your chest. It feels like you grasping for air like you are drowning. You can be in pure darkness, when you see her there is light. When she smiles at you, her smile is only for me. Truly as I think about that feeling it makes you feel alive and there nothing in the world around even matter. You feel that you have this power to reach up and grab the stars.