The truest definition of the term "Love"

[johnfisher]

I know there are different views on this matter, some people believe it is possible to love over and over, as many times as the human heart can allow. But then there are others (including me) who believe part of the definition even if it's not official, is that it's an emotion than can be only be experienced once in a person's life.

I hope I don't offend anyone by asking the next few questions, but here goes.

1. Those people who believe they have loved more than once, do they experience true love or is it just liking somone amplified.

2. If a person has loved more than once, say 3 times in their life, will they have experienced the same love someone who has loved only one in their entire life?

3. Does loving more than one person during the course of your life demean the meaning or love?

There are so many threads on here where people keep saying they loved their ex bf, or 3 ex bfs/gfs that I had to ask these questions.

[blent]

it's human nature to mate with more than one person, especially for males... so you'll always continue to love more and more. also... ur logic doesn't make sense, if i laugh from a movie, will i never laugh at another movie again? will i never be thirsty again if i drink this milkshake in my hand? will i never enjoy correcting a stupid question again after i answer this one?

[Take2]

Love is not a finite resource. When my daughter was born, I felt the most pure and intense love I had ever felt. And yet, when my son was born, I felt an equally pure and intense love for him. Most people love all their siblings and cousins and parents and grandparents. Sure, romantic love is different, but it is not weaker or more limited. I think it is in the heart's nature to love again after one love dies or fails. That certainly is the pattern that history shows humanity follows through all time.

Tell me, OP, what is the basis for your assertion? What logic or evidence supports romantic love being a once-in-a-lifetime deal? History, literature, art, science and my own personal experience support the opposite conclusion, so I am curious.

[sookie6]

To me these are excellent questions!
I've loved only once in my life (I'm 35) and I sometimes think about the people in old times who would never marry again after they've lost their first love...

Now I would not want to go to that extent because I think dwelling on one lost love is unhealthy but still I find it frightening how quickly people jump into the next relationship. My ex used to say 'I love you' 10 times more than me but at the end I think I loved him more or at least more deeply.

I think we should all be more careful with the word 'love' because saying 'I love you' is a commitment...so to say it after one week or a few weeks going out with someone is irresponsible and boils down to making a promise that we might not keep.

Now, with the hindisght and having wondered about the same thing as you the OP, I'm thinking that everyone is gonna love differently and that does not diminish the love they feel for someone. It's like friendship..;some people will only hang around with one person or 2 while others will have a real bunch of friends...

Some people can love different types of people while others are very peculiar about what makes them tick so it's not likely to happen everyday.

[Take2]

Sookie, what old days are you referring to? Marriage was not about love 75 years ago. And people remarried almost instantly if a wife or husband died. Women needed a provider and men needed a housekeeper and child minder.

In 1950, my great-grandmother was widowed. Everyone thought she was insane for remaining single. She had to rent out her house and move in with her adult daughter for a while and go back to school to get a job. It was not the norm, for sure. Her siblings who were widowed all remarried.

[johnfisher]

Sure, romantic love is different, but it is not weaker or more limited. I think it is in the heart's nature to love again after one love dies or fails.

Tell me, OP, what is the basis for your assertion? What logic or evidence supports romantic love being a once-in-a-lifetime deal? History, literature, art, science and my own personal experience support the opposite conclusion, so I am curious.

Firstly I was referring to romantic love and romantic love, love for friends, children, family etc is a completely different thing.

Secondly, a part of me wants to believe that true love can only be experienced once. I have not been in love, but if and when I do I want to experience it with one person and one person alone.

Sookie made a comment about people saying I love you willy nilly and jumping from relationship to relationship without a second thought. These people are of course entitled to do and say as they please, but the question is, is it true love? I mean to just break up with someone and 3 weeks later fall in love with someone? If you truly love someone surely it would take a long long time to recover and and even begin to forget them?

Also take2, you're previous post about re-marrying is slightly off point because I did not mention marriage, I was referring to love. Often spouses were required soon after the death of their previous spouse, but it does not mean a person developed the same level of feelings for the new spouse.

Like I said a aprt of me wants to only be with one woman my entire life, to love her and her alone. I am religious and from a very traditional family (divorce is non existent concept for us), so perhaps this leads me to think the way I do.

[sookie6]

Like I said a aprt of me wants to only be with one woman my entire life, to love her and her alone. I am religious and from a very traditional family (divorce is non existent concept for us), so perhaps this leads me to think the way I do.

There is what we want/ what we believe in and then reality. You can't help who you love and how long it will last. Sometimes you think you know the person you're marrying and then they become a huge disappointment...so nothing is set into stone.

I personally don't fall in love often but it would make me extremely sad to think that it only happens once in a lifetime. There is a danger in being 'absolute' in what we think. You're very likely to let happiness slip you by if you maintain stron beliefs such as 'I must love one person forever'...

[Take2]

Firstly I was referring to romantic love and romantic love, love for friends, children, family etc is a completely different thing.

Why do you think that romantic love is a totally different thing from other types of love? It is all love, right? Sure, it is different, but not thoroughly different. Love, in general is infinite. That's kind of the point of love.

Secondly, a part of me wants to believe that true love can only be experienced once. I have not been in love, but if and when I do I want to experience it with one person and one person alone.

Why do you want to believe that? And why would you think that your wish for it to be so would make it so? Do you have any evidence or rationale for this belief? What is hurting you when you contemplate the idea of love being infinite and it being possible to love again after losing some past love?

Sookie made a comment about people saying I love you willy nilly and jumping from relationship to relationship without a second thought. These people are of course entitled to do and say as they please, but the question is, is it true love? I mean to just break up with someone and 3 weeks later fall in love with someone? If you truly love someone surely it would take a long long time to recover and and even begin to forget them?

Two things here. 1. The only love you need to quatify or understand is your own. If someone believes they are in love, even if it doesn't meet YOUR criteria for love, who are you to say it is not? 2. It's not either/or here. You don't have to either believe love is cheap and easy or that it can only happen once. I personally do not take love lightly at all, would not claim to love someone without careful consideration, and have not been in love many times. But I know from personal experience that one can love deeply, lose that love and be brokenhearted, then eventually heal to the point of loving again just as deeply.

Also take2, you're previous post about re-marrying is slightly off point because I did not mention marriage, I was referring to love. Often spouses were required soon after the death of their previous spouse, but it does not mean a person developed the same level of feelings for the new spouse.

Excuse me? My post about remarrying is in response to Sookie's post about remarrying. I am not off point at all. Sookie mentioned people in old times who never remarried after losing their first love. I have studied recent and ancient history, and was just commenting that there was never a time when that was a common practice. And actually, as I stated above, marriage had little or nothing to do with love in most of history. Not only would a remarried couple possibly not love deeply, but actually the first marriage was probably just a friendly contract rather than a love connection.

Like I said a aprt of me wants to only be with one woman my entire life, to love her and her alone. I am religious and from a very traditional family (divorce is non existent concept for us), so perhaps this leads me to think the way I do.

Of course you WANT to be with one woman your entire life. And I hope that works out for you. But what if that woman dies? What if she divorces you, no matter how you feel about the matter? Do you feel that your God is so unkind that He would not allow a new love to enter your heart after you lost one through no fault of your own? It is precisely because I am religious that I cannot believe that. God is, after all, LOVE!

[doppelgaenger]

Love is just one stupid, overused word (generalization) for thousands of feelings and emotions that all differ in context and variety - it is the epitome of ambiguity, and here we all are, sitting in front of our monitors as if it was some concrete essence that we've had our whole lives to master, and still feel entitled to preach to others about it.

[doppelgaenger]

Sookie, what old days are you referring to? Marriage was not about love 75 years ago. And people remarried almost instantly if a wife or husband died. Women needed a provider and men needed a housekeeper and child minder.

In 1950, my great-grandmother was widowed. Everyone thought she was insane for remaining single. She had to rent out her house and move in with her adult daughter for a while and go back to school to get a job. It was not the norm, for sure. Her siblings who were widowed all remarried.

I thanked your post for making a valid point - Marriage, for most of its history, has not been about love. I wouldn't generalize the terms/customs of remarriage, though. Some cultures did not allow this to be practiced. A poem titled "[URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sati_%28practice%29"]Suttree[/URL]" beckons my memory (click the link). I'm glad that you can make the distinction/separation from love and I think it's necessary to clarify that. In fact, if you survey some literature, you will find that love is often portrayed against virtues - Sir Lancelot betrayed King Arthur out of love and violated his marriage and the code of chivalry. This was a common theme in earlier literature... interesting, huh? Love against virtue, I mean. Today, chivalry and love mean completely different things than just a few centuries ago. Anyway, continue the debate.

[MynameisJesus]

Love is an uncontrollable attraction towards qualities that you wish you had. Usually confidence and an exciting lifestyle.

I hate it when people say that there is this 1 person running around on this planet, destined to be with them. That is the biggest lie I was ever told.
Romantic love is not infinite, unless you shut down access to every other potential partner that is around. And it is not a once in a lifetime experience. I believe that you can fall in love with 100 000 people on this planet. It's just that people take the one they meet first.
Romantic love is not unconditional, and neither is friendship.

[VincenzoG91]

Yeah, I think that it's absurd to believe that there is only one compatible person on the planet for each of us. For one thing, some people have very common tastes. For example, if "I like to watch movies, eat at nice restaurants and walk around the lake." Hey, who doesn't like those things? Odds are, you will have an easy time finding somebody who also likes those things. I don't mean to be dismissive about the concept of love, but it's not necessarily a once-in-a-lifetime deal.

Another example, young love. Two teenagers can certainly fall in love, and experience intense romance. And as they mature and change, they can fall right out of love. It doesn't make them bad people, they just changed and grew up.

Johnfisher, I think that you are setting yourself up for a world of pain if you obsess over love and idealize it to an extreme degree. What if the first woman you love turns out to be a cheater? Or gets hit by a car? Or just can't stand the way you chew your food after a few years together? Things happen. Life is complex. It doesn't matter if you want to keep everything in simple black-and-white terms, we live in a world that is challenging and ever-changing.

All that said, my parents were married for 43 years, until my dad died of cancer two years ago. I've been hoping that my mom wouldn't start dating again, because she is starting to struggle with Alzheimer's. So it was a big relief when she told me yesterday that she still loves my dad and isn't interested in dating someone new.

One other thing. While I believe that people can love multiple times in a lifetime, I don't believe that anybody can feel real romantic love for more than one person at the same time. In those kinds of situations, I think that the two-timer just loves himself (or herself).

[Take2]

Doppel, you are right, I should have specified the Western world. Still, I don't think marriage and remarriage and even death on a funeral pyre in history can tell us anything about love throughout history since it was not generally about love at all.

Jesus, I don't think love is necessarily an attraction to what we wish we had. Love can be an attraction toward the things we most esteem, but sometimes those are attributes we have ourselves as well.

I also think it is crazy to think there is one person in the world for each of us. My therapist calls that magical thinking, which is appropriate developmentally for preschoolers but not adults. I think that for most of us, the majority of people out there are not a perfect match. But there is some number of people out there who are physically, intellectually and emotionally compatible with each of us. And some portion of that number lives in our general area and is romantically available and speaks our language and has similar enough life circumstances to be a potential mate. For a 20-something girl of average inteeligence and income and looks with mainstream interests, that number is probably in the thousands. For that same woman at age 60, the number will be much smaller. Unusual tastes, high or low intellect, financial hardship, unusual appearance and small children are all variables that will lower the pool available to some of us. Once we find one of these people, we can build a relationship and align our lives so that we become a better and better match over time. If both parts of the pair dedicate themselves to this goal for life, then there will be a lifelong love. If not, there won't.

[MynameisJesus]

Jesus, I don't think love is necessarily an attraction to what we wish we had. Love can be an attraction toward the things we most esteem, but sometimes those are attributes we have ourselves as well.

That could be true. I am nobody to assume that love means the same thing for you as it does for me. After a few years with multiple love experiences I have come to realize what I fall for.
First I thought it was the extreme confidence those women had, but the last 2 were pretty insecure.

What I fall for is the ability to enjoy sexuality. I have been raised with the idea of " There is this one woman.. You should only kiss her if.. " Because of that, I have put sex on a pedestal and I am a virgin at the age of nearly 25. And I regret it, I wish I had said yes to all those bar sluts that wanted to have a one night stand with me in my first college year.
I fall in love with women who find that sex means nothing, that it can happen with anyone at any time. Because they have the quality to see the fun of it and I have been puting it on a pedestal for years.

To be in a healthy relationship, I'll have to work at those insecurities. Love shouldn't be about finding someone who has what you are missing

[ianoulla]

I have been in love twice in my entire life - I am now 63, I married the first. The last time was 3 yrs ago and I certainly didn't look for it, neither did I expect it. It came like a bolt out of the blue - love at first sight, with a totally unsuitable person, which I tried to resist, the heart doesn't choose on a suitable basis. Yet, I know people who are constantly falling in love. I believe they are in love with the idea of love, rather than the person. It never seems to last long. I believe what I experienced was real love. I have known people who say they fell in love, with totally perfect people, everything was right, sadly those relationships didn't last. I can't honestly say I know people who can say they fell in love and then lived happily ever after. I wish I did.