I'll give you a penny for your thoughts and you'll throw in your own two cents, we'll worry where the extra penny goes in another topic. I'll add my own thoughts later tonight. Don't be afraid to define the different forms of love. There are an awful lot of them.

The leading love definition in my thoughts as of lately is the caring one. You know, the one that states that loving someone is caring for them. That love is absolute respect, wish for the well-being, and perhaps even admiration for the other person, when that exceeds all obstacles like physical appearance or 'dark sides' of the other person's character.
I also say 'absolute' there because I don't believe in love gradings; it's either 0 or ?. Or, to say it differently, you either love or you don't. That's why I'm believing in at this moment of my life.

Saying I love you to someone in it's simplest form is pretty much saying, all that I have to give, I give to you. If I had more, I would make it yours. Saying I love my family is, I will sacrifice what I have to make you happy. When I tell someone I love them I am telling them I WOULD die for them, because they matter that much to me. Telling a girl I love her means I have no secrets you cannot hear and no faces you have not seen. My body, my soul, and my mind are yours to do with as you please. When I tell my best friend that I love him I am telling him that I am always there for him if he needs me, that he comes before all else besides the girl that I love. Bros before hoes, but lovers before brothers. When I tell someone I love them I mean that forever and always. I tell few people I love them, but I make sure I mean it for all that I open up to. When someone tells me they love me I am very skeptical and normally respond with: "Well, thank you, I love me too." Mostly to be humorous but when they inquire I make sure they truly mean that they love me. To be told of love and find it was only lust is the worst f*cking thing you can have done to you. I would rather die than have that sort of pain inflicted on me again. I could live through it, I have a few times now. I just know that I'm a sucker for a pretty girl's smile. I'll add even more later, I just had 5 minutes to spare.


EDIT- Before anyone interprets that last line wrong, I open up to these girls because I want to instill faith in people. Also, it is necessary in case one day the TRUE girl for me comes along and needs such a chance. It hurts, but it's worth it.

Love is hard work. To be deserving of it, one can not simply "show up". Regardless of anatomy.

And speaking for myself, strictly, I bring it all.

The older I get the more I think 'love' is overrated.

What love is to me...

When I love someone. There always in my thoughts. There someone I always miss. I stay with them to hold on to the good memories that last forever. Someone who can heal the loneliness and share my life with me. Feelings so strong with out a doubt I would help them before helping my self. Its a feeling of Happy,joyfulness and can also feel like eternal ecstasy during a tender privet moment with someone I'm passionate with. Someone who I can trust or learned to be trusted.
Someone who is so important to me that there loss would be a total devastation to me. Someone who can help me through the pain that life throws at me and I be there for them in there time of need. Someone who helps comfort and satisfy a need, want or desire and in return with respecting proper boundary's.

Love for the mag...
The mag is a home for in witch Ix has help built for our family. I get a warm fuzzy feeling when I wake up and see all the people I got to know over the year I been here. This is a place I always look forward to coming to everyday. I'm very protective of it and the friends I made here. I can no longer picture my life with out the mag. It means the world to me.

Love for my friends...
As Ix new sig states. Pride, Honer, Respect. I think that says it all. I take pride in our friendship. I honer and respect all of you.
I can honestly say that each and everyone of you has made me smile at least once. So if I add that up... I had quite a few happy days spending time with all of you. I can't speak for others.. But if anyone where to leave the mag. I would surly miss them very much. Because you all helped made the mag what it is today.
Your really the only friends I have. Outside of my friend Peter and my husband. So I take this place seriously.

Love for my family....
Like many of us the family life is not always easy. I hang on to the good times and look forward to better times. The holidays is the only magical time I have left with them. Because being in that fantasy, of holiday time, when all problems are forgotten and the love I feel from my folks during that time is worth it even for that short moment. There all I really have. So I hold onto it.

Love for my husband...
With all of my medical problems, emotional and physical needs. I'm lucky hes still alive. XD
Hes been there for me for the past 7 years. And has only took 2 weeks off from me due to a fight. 2 weeks of heart ache for each other. Where each others shadow. And I would not have it any other way.

Overrated how?

The way that I think love is overrated is by it existing as a separate concept other than the other feelings or emotions that go along with it. In other words, if I have appreciation, respect, desire for union, etc. with someone, then where does the love exist. Is it a real entity, or is love merely the set of real entities that characterize love (like appreciation, respect, desire for union).

Yes I feel love for my family and my girlfriend.

I also feel love for other people, or for music, or the nighttime, or the city.

I thought about it and said that maybe I shouldn’t have called it ‘overrated’ but I guess that is how I ultimately feel.

I guess that I am trying to be less idealistic these days, not because being idealistic is a bad thing, but rather because believing that one’s own idealism will necessarily reflect a common reality might lead one to great disappointment. Maybe even despair.

I had a good childhood and a good family life. I am ‘complete’ in those areas.

I also feel in control of my relationship to most other people, music, the nighttime and the city.

But when it comes to amorous love, I believe so much of the despair for all of us is the reinforced idea that it is to be shared with only ‘one’. Everyone spends his or her whole life dreaming of the ‘one’ and looking for the ‘one’, and then later (arguably) forcing someone to be the ‘one’ or denying that they are aren’t the ‘one’. When I say that ‘the older that I get the more I think love is overrated’, I am really saying the older I get the less I trust this traditional notion.

I think that amorous love should be more communal. As such it will lose some of the idealism that revolves around it, as the ‘one’ will no longer be the special designation, but it will be much more real, and in my belief, lead more people to truly feeling complete about themselves.

I pretty much agree with everything Bo said.

Besides, an unbreakable agape love is a fleeting thing. Just when you think you have it, you realize diffrently. You, alto, admitted that yourself... at least to some degree. And yes, it's a horrible thing to experience.

The truest form of love I believe in is the one that is shared between your family and friends. But when I say friends, I mean true friends... which sometimes, aren't all to easy to run across. I value my life to a degree, but is something I would give to any of my true friends or any of my family.

Agape love at least from the romantic side, is really hard to gauge. You can believe it will be the longest lasting love in your life, and only in months time, dwendle to nothing (IE: devorce, breakup, ect.).

Love is worth the pain and worth the uncertainty. Sure there will be times when you've pulled the wool over your eyes and seen something that isn't there, but oh well. Get back up from the pain, dust yourself off, think about what went wrong, and try again. It hurts, damn does it hurt, but the way I feel when I matter that much to someone is more than worth the hurt. Love can be communal, that sounds great to me Bo. I like the individualistic romantic love because I feel it's me pretty much picking my false idol to worship. =p It's me paying, in my eyes, the ultimate tribute that I can pay. I promise my everything to you, and only you. That is an awful large notion admiration. It truly makes the person feel like a million dollars too. Unless they swindle their gifts and take them for granted. Then you'll just have to learn from your mistakes, take adequate time to heal your wounds and try again until you find the right one. Even if you never do find the right one, you'll have plenty of happy memories from all the ones you tried with though. There probably is a one person who you fits perfectly with on all levels, but I'm not looking for that. I'm looking for as many variables to match up as I can see, then trying to see if I match up with theirs, then we will work together to fill in any gaps. Love is something I can say with pride that I will never lose appreciation for. There are other words for it, but none that ring with such clarity. I feel better knowing someone has faith in me. That's all really love is, faith.

For some, the pain outweighs the happiness. And for those people, I think it's bes that they step out of the game for a bit... try living their lives without aid of a significant other. And sometimes doing so will pull an even stronger love towards others... not on a romantic level... but love never the less.

Faith... I would agree that love, to a degree, is faith. And I'm not putting faith into just one person. I've done that all to many times. The more you put belief in what you can't see, the more you may very well be setting yourself up for pain that you could very well do without.

True, I'm not advocating going out and loving anyone you meet. It takes me about 5 months of constant dating before I tell a girl that I love her. I make sure I mean it by all accounts and by all definitions before I tell her. I also make sure I'll mean it even if we go our separate ways. I've only loved two girls romantically, and I still do to this day despite us going our separate ways. I date many girls, but I rarely follow up on the dates with more dates unless I really feel a connection with the girl. Even then, I approach cautiously. Giving your everything to a someone before he/she's even remotely ready will make he/her start to really think and the conclusions he/she will come to are almost never good for both of you. For instance, for a little while I was bad about doing something called Hovering. It's showing far too much interest in a girl far too quickly. Meaning calling several times the next day or something along those lines. It could make me seem desperate and not really serious about the relationship. OR the most common thing that happens to me, it makes the girl think about why she's getting all this attention, then she concludes she doesn't deserve it, and thinks she shouldn't be wasting my time. I wish girls would just trust me. =( I think too many kids my age confuse lust for love and dating for relationships. Dating is good and healthy! It helps give you experience for when the right girl comes along that you want to start a relationship with. Don't go around being a slut or just never calling back. Date and if you don't find common interest in someone, or not enough, then make friends with them. It's always nice to have more friends. Love at first sight I suppose I could believe in, but it would be so rare and so improbable that I don't have much faith in it. I do believe in it though.

Love is when someone of the opposite sex lets me stick my dick in the mashed potatoes. =P

OK, in all seriousness, it's really difficult for me to define love. For one, there's different types of love you feel, and second, it's more of a feeling, an intuition.

The love for family is usually a given. You have an attachment to them as a child. Most people tend to love their family, even if the family gives them a real reason not to. It's pretty much the unconditional love that you'll almost never find anywhere else.

Then there's what we call friendship love. I share this with only 4 people. Friendship love, in my opinion, is where you have an overwhelming amount of trust in someone and you feel a strong connection, sort of like they're blood. You'd do anything for them and you know they'd do anything for you. You can tell them your secrets and they'd never tell a soul, and you'd do the same for them.

Then you have lover's love. This one is more difficult to explain simply because it's weird. There are many different reasons to love another person intimately, most of those reasons, we don't really understand. You get a gut feeling and try to go with it. One thing I know is that it's not something to fear unless the person you love is actually a b*tch/bastard. I've had that happen once. The feeling of love is a great one, and even if that love isn't reciprocated, it's not something you should regret or blame the other person for. I wouldn't change how I've felt in the past for anything. It has given me hope that maybe I can share a life with someone and start a family of my own some day to continue the process.

Now I'm just rambling.

Rambling is good.

KA:

OMG LOLOLOLOLOL! Awesomeness...

BO:



Lantis:


Well then do you think what I, Gnasher and Alto have to say about this topic is then in fact overrated to all of yous?

Please, we said nothing directed at you... we aren't stepping on toes here. It's our own opinions.

If you take what we say out of context like that, this topic will end up like the 'toplessness' topic.

So, play nice... k?

Anyway, due to the past that I, personally, have experienced... I think that sitting back and going lone will be the best for me. And I'm sure that would be the best for alot of people. Love can be found in places other than a significant other, so there really should be much demand for one.

Alto, I do agree with dating... and I do. In fact, I had one last friday. Dinner and a movie. And I'm heading to the state capital with her tomorrow to watch a concert. But we've known each other for years, there's no romance involved. I date... just not for the same reasons as you, I guess.

I don't believe that much in different types of love.

Love is love, no matter at whom it is directed at; friends, family, lover, girlfriend, wife, pet... I at least see no difference in the feeling. And @Bo: I think that yes, love is one feeling and not a set of them.

That being, I think that when this love (which has only one form) comes together with what we call lust or passion or desire for someone, then you have 'romantic love'.

That's just the way I think. The only romantic love I ever thought I felt actually turned out to be just lust, alone, but faking to be love. So my experience there is not that deep. ^^

I really can't say I agree too much with that.

But to each their own. Love of family and friends kind of happen... it seems that love (romanitc) is aquired through search and consideration.

And the sad thing is... that love, that's not spontanious... that is planned fails more often than the others (friends/family).

I've heard that before you can climb, you've got to be ready to fall first. And I've fallen one too many times.

@Kittykicker

I'm not sure I understand your question. As best I understand it, I'm saying that if someone is truly happy with a traditional notion of love then more power too them but I think that the 'overrated' part of any tradition is the idea that gets accepted that because it was a good thing in the past and/or for a number of individuals that it must presently be good for all individuals.

I think that there are a lot of people conditioned and reinforced to find love for the 'one' but I really find no persuasive reason that this IS the way things WERE MEANT to be but rather that it happens to be very good for some people and for the others, they either make it work or get so bitter that they abandon tradition.

I would say tradition is overrated unless it earns its distinction and it only earns its distinction if nontraditon had a chance to compete.

Hm. Maybe not?
Like many a great thinker have said, if you need to consider it, it's not love?
Just speculating.