42 replies to this topic

[KingPridenia]

Love to me is very complex and is something I know that at this point in my life I am not stable enough emotionally to have a relationship with a woman. How can I care for and provide for a woman if I can't even take care of myself? That and the main reason I ended my relationship with my girlfriend 2.5 years ago was because I was getting angry at her for petty reasons and verbally abused her a lot. I kind of wanted to "protect her from myself" if that makes any sense.

 

The problem is that even 2.5 years later now that we're just friends, I'm still very protective of her. Not to the point she can't be within 20 feet of guys, but to the point if I saw her getting attacked by a guy or abused by a future boyfriend I would gladly risk going to jail and/or getting my ass kicked to protect her. It's really weird and I don't understand it to this day. I mean we haven't dated in so long, yet I still look after her and am very quick to protect her. Though I will say that I'm more mature about it than when I was a teen. Back then, nobody, not even the adults in high school, said anything bad to my ex without me getting offended and telling them "You don't talk to my girlfriend like that!"

 

Again, I was never jealous or anything of my ex while dating her. But even now, when I'm driving her in my car, I am more cautious about her safety than my own. I make sure nobody does her any harm, physical or verbal. Am I weird for still feeling such a strong level of devotion towards someone who is now just my friend? If it makes any difference, I dated her over 4.5 years and we were each others' first significant other.

[anikom15]

I think you start to understand love better when you realize it is not a response. It's more than just needing somebody. Needs create problems. Anxiety, jealousy, fear, abuse, they all come from the fact that you need a lover. Let me tell you, a lover cannot fulfill your needs. Love is not about telling someone she is beautiful, or holding open her door or protecting her from danger, real or otherwise. That is in fact what all men should do for all women.

Love is bonding. Love is sex and hugging, and kissing and procreation. It's wanting to spend your life with someone and help each other to achieve success. It's to spend time with each other. It's to keep each other from being bored or alone. It's to be a support in the darkest times. This love isn't based on needs. It's based on respect for each other. You respect her so much. You want her to be free more than anything. You want her to have her way in the world. Likewise, she wants all the same for you.

I'm learning new things about love all the time. I have to realize that it's not about me, but about other people. I have to always remind myself to say things that have real meaning and truth behind them, and not hollow, forgettable tones.

Sorry if this was hard to follow. It's late and I'm quite besotted right now.

Edited by anikom15, 25 February 2014 - 03:13 AM.

[klop422]

Love is bonding. Love is sex and hugging, and kissing and procreation. It's wanting to spend your life with someone and help each other to achieve success. It's to spend time with each other. It's to keep each other from being bored or alone. It's to be a support in the darkest times. This love isn't based on needs. It's based on respect for each other. You respect her so much. You want her to be free more than anything. You want her to have her way in the world. Likewise, she wants all the same for you.

Or him, if you're a woman.

Also, may I point out that what you describe is only romantic love. Also, I would like to mention that your second sentence: "Love is sex and hugging, and kissing and procreation" is, at least in my opinion, not quite true. As far as I know, romantic relationships can work without these. At least without sex and procreation. Maybe without the others. I don't know.

 

Of course, there are other kinds of love, which are different. Sibling love, for example. Or a parent-child bond. Or love between friends. These are all kinds of love. Between people. There's also the Owner-pet bond. Or the way we all love The Legend of Zelda. Again, different loves. Love is a very broad term, encompassing all of these, and probably more. However, what you said:

 

Love is bonding... ...This love isn't based on needs. It's based on respect for each other...

Both are correct for all kinds of love between people. The other things you listed, though, aren't as valid for other loves.

[Sheik]

Or him, if you're a woman.

Of course, there are other kinds of love, which are different. Sibling love, for example. Or a parent-child bond. Or love between friends. These are all kinds of love. Between people. There's also the Owner-pet bond. Or the way we all love The Legend of Zelda. Again, different loves. Love is a very broad term, encompassing all of these, and probably more. However, what you said:

Or him, if you are man. Get over the stupid heteronormativity, it is tiring.

Anyways, you point at an important issue: you can feel love towards all kinds of subjects and objects: lovers, parents, siblings, children, friends, relatives, pets, things (such as houses, cars...). Now, if you assume that these are different kinds of love, technically speaking you are wrong. There is only one love module in the brain (and it would be awefully un-economic if there was more than one system for the same function) and that module is responsible for all kinds of affection. What makes us perceive love as qualitatively different depending on the target is not that it is something different, but that it differs in intensity and - most importantly - in what it correlates with. Love for you parents thus probably is more intense affection than love for you friends. Love for you lover is more intense yet and (at least in what western society considers "romantic love") is correlated with sexual attraction (which is triggered by another module in your brain than the module which is responsible for affection).
So, you see, physiologically speaking (as in, the way the brain operates biochemically), there is only one kind of love. It is one dimensional phenomenon (rather than multiple category phenomenons) and it can come in different degrees of intensity. Further, in experiene, it gets mixed with different correlates, which creates certain love patterns (or profiles, if you want). But these patterns are not independent or distinct of each other.

[anikom15]

Shiek, couldn't one argue that love being on one axis is much like chrominance, and like chrominance, comes in many hues. So, would it be reasonable to say that love comes in many different sorts?

[Sheik]

If you look at it neuropsychologically you have to assume that love is one specific response created by one specific brain module (which comes in countless degrees of intensity and can correlate with countless different kind of things).

There is John Lee's classification of the seven "types" of love (eros, ludus, storge, pragma, mania, agape) which is however grouping different correlations (with love or sexual desire and the target) into these "types" (those seven, by the way, are similar to the classical four greek ones: agape, eros, philia, storge). Then I also remember the triangular model, which again is simply grouping correlations (of passion, commitment and intimacy) into broader categories which is kind of adding an experiene based facor (intimacy) to the love based (commitment) and the sexual desire (passion) one. Nothing new in these theories if you ask me.

(...personally, I think that none of these are truely useful. I think highly, however, of Erich Fromm's distinction between having mode (Habensmodus der Existenz) and being mode (Seinsmodus der Existenz) as applied to the phenomenon of love (where in the first you want to possess somebody/ be possessed while in the latter you are interested in the actual act of loving somebody).)

[KingPridenia]

So anikom, you're basically saying there is nothing wrong with the fact I'm still a bit overprotective of my ex-girlfriend? Again, it's not like I get offended if she's near any other guy or anything like that. It's just I guess because she's something no other girl could be to me, my first love. I do wonder if I go too far with the chivalry though. I still feel just as compelled to protect her now as I did when we dated. Of course, if she gets with another guy that ends up becoming her groom and he's like me, I think I can safely let him take the helm in that regard, unless I find out he's abusing her.

 

It is kind of odd though, because I always felt more comfortable with members of the opposite sex than the same sex. Before college, I had a great amount of disdain for most other guys around my age; for every 4-5 girls I talked to, I talked to maybe 1 guy. By the time college ended, it was more like a 3 : 2 ratio. Even for just normal female friends, I still exhibit that chivalry where I can become aggressively protective of a very close female friend. The one thing that would really set me off is a guy hurting a girl in a way to make her cry. Ooh that gets me enraged when a guy gets a girl to cry! Luckily for me though, my ex is a very strong woman now, almost as if breaking up made her much stronger and more independent.

 

And yes, I do want the best for my ex. I hope she gets the greatest man ever, a good job, nice kids, the whole nine yards. And I know both her and her parents want the same for me; to marry the perfect woman, have an excellent career, children even more successful in school than I was, etc.

[strike]

I see no reason there can not be multiple forms of love. I can name at least three. Loving someone like your siblings and parents. Loving your soulmate. Loving personally aesthetically pleasing things.

Loving people like your parents is, in my very humble, ill formed, ill shapen opinion, a result of you subconscious having a reliable connection between them and positive stimuli. Loving your mate is the result of hormones triggered by your body and subconscious that tell you to love him or her. Loving specific things or experiences are because they are patterns that you find pleasing or easy to grasp. And a final love: the love of inherently positive things like good food. That is a far more base reaction than any of the others.

I am approaching this from an artificial intelligence point of view.

-Strike

[anikom15]

And Adam, I don't know. I don't judge ッ

[Sheik]

I see no reason there can not be multiple forms of love. I can name at least three. Loving someone like your siblings and parents. Loving your soulmate. Loving personally aesthetically pleasing things.

The idea is that the brain has evolved several modules to perform several specific functions that bring solutions to problems that evolution has confronted the human species with over and over. The two most ancient systems are approach and withdrawal (for example approach to rewards like food or mates (sex) or withdrawal from aversive things like dangerous heights). A few thousand years later as life evolved further, a third system was established: emotion regulation (which for exampe, gives us the evolutionary very functional ability not to lash out on everybody when we're angry but allows us to regulate these feelings down). These first two systems are working in all members of the animal kingdom, the third one takes a somewhat more elaborated organism to be necessary. Mammals then developed the love/nurturance/warmth system which has the primary function to bring forth high-quality offspring (from an evoluationary point of view). And that's that system that is still working in all other kinds of love. It has one primary function - something we could call affection - and depending on it's intensity and what other responses it correlates with western society calls it "romantic love", or "motherly love" or whatever other "type" of love there supposedly is. When you track it to the roots, though, and look at the correlates as things of their own love is always the same one thing: a response by the love/nurturance/warmth system. (A fifth system which might be exclusive to humans and the highest evolved mammals evolved a lot later: conscientiousness, which allows us to delay reward and such.)

The way you worded your reply though, points towards something else: the literal and methaphorical use of the word "love". When you talk about love for food, you do not really talk about love (in a biopsychosocially meaningful way at least) bur rather about approach (of rewards). The approach of rewards is a different thing than love though, because it serves a different function. The function of love is (evoluationary speaking) always a social function and aims at such things such as bonding and group cohesion. Reward approach is always an egoistic thing, so to speak, and has functions like dominance in hierarchy or mating. In intimate, sexual relationships these things get mixed together (or rather correlate) and create an experience which might - in the light of western society socialization - feel like something distinct entirely, but really, there is not so much of a difference between loving your mother, your lover or your dog. What makes the difference is what else (besides love) is going on.

Lastly, it kind of boggles my mind to think that somebody would look at the human psyche from an artificial intelligence point of view. Not only because it lacks every organic component (which is so curcial to the human situation) but also because intelligence is merely one tiny ability (and not the most impressive either) of the human potential. I don't know, but I kind of prefer to think about humans as... well, humans.

 

Edited by Sheik, 26 February 2014 - 03:18 AM.

[strike]

I agree we probably disagree mostly with different definitions of the word love. It is so broad a word and encapsulates so many things. But that is kind of what I was saying: there are multiple types of love. There may be only one biological definition but there are others besides that.

I have my own reasons for approaching from a artificial intelligence perspective. I also wish I could think of humans as humans. But when it comes to the human mind it resembles a machine too much for me to shake off. I personally think that artificial intelligence as a field is currently utterly stupid. I feel the approach is idiotic honestly. If we actually want to make intelligent things they need to look at least a little like humans, not like inflexible, task oriented tools. This is getting off topic though.

-Strike

[klop422]

Wait, so romantic love is a subconscious (or even sometimes conscious) sexual attraction?

Ok, I'm suggesting something here. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I thought to myself, "How can you find a good sense of humour [for the sake of argument] attractive like that?"

But I think I may have the answer:

 

The primary use, biologically, for Intercourse, is reproduction. Therefore, if you are sexually attracted to someone, whether consciously or unconsciously, then you in some way finds those traits to be desirable ones; traits which you would like to pass on to your descendants. Right? Therefore, falling in love with someone is like a subconscious way to not only advance the human race, but to advance it well.

Sheik, you seem to know a lot about this, so if you know the answer, can you tell me; am I right? If not, then google could help, I guess.

 

Also, about the different types/forms of love, at least in my opinion, type may be a valid term. Do we not refer to sandwiches as different types? They are basically the same thing; two bits of bread, with a filling.

That may not be the best example, but I had another one. Let's see if I remember it later.

If you can't use 'types' as the word, then at least you could use 'manifestations', right?

[Sheik]

Wait, so romantic love is a subconscious (or even sometimes conscious) sexual attraction?

Ok, I'm suggesting something here. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I thought to myself, "How can you find a good sense of humour [for the sake of argument] attractive like that?"

But I think I may have the answer:

 

The primary use, biologically, for Intercourse, is reproduction. Therefore, if you are sexually attracted to someone, whether consciously or unconsciously, then you in some way finds those traits to be desirable ones; traits which you would like to pass on to your descendants. Right? Therefore, falling in love with someone is like a subconscious way to not only advance the human race, but to advance it well.

Sheik, you seem to know a lot about this, so if you know the answer, can you tell me; am I right? If not, then google could help, I guess.

 

Also, about the different types/forms of love, at least in my opinion, type may be a valid term. Do we not refer to sandwiches as different types? They are basically the same thing; two bits of bread, with a filling.

That may not be the best example, but I had another one. Let's see if I remember it later.

If you can't use 'types' as the word, then at least you could use 'manifestations', right?

If you were referring to my rumbling than you got me wrong. I was arguing that love is not (a) sexual attraction. They are seperate, independent things (that can occur at the same time and systematically even, which is correlation, though).

Now, you are throwing together a lot of things that you need to keep apart to have everything nice and clean, theoretically that is.

If you are talking about the goal of intercourse as reproduction than you are assuming a Darwinian evolutionary point of you. You can do that, of course, but you have to be aware that there are other valid theories like for example Kropotkin's biology which gives jouare de vivre its rightful place in evolution, that is to say, that you may have fun (this encompasses sex) just for the sake of it (and don't have to explain it theoretically in terms of productivity - which are terms of 17th centuary economy that Darwin adopted). Than the use of intercourse would, even biologically, be an end in itself.

Where you are reffering to the unconcious you are entering the realm of psychoanalysis. What you describe is not wrong per se (that you are attracted to traits that you find desirable), let me try to sharpen it, though, from a psychoanalytic point of view because that is the one you imply by your terminology. In the psychoanalytic story, you are attracted to what you (conciously or unconsciously) feel you are lacking. Falling in love is a good example of this and I described it in the quote I posted on the first page of this thread. To fall in love (through the primary process that is, so through means that are object to the unconcious and that you can not possibly exert agency over) is to perceive something in somebody else which you were looking for (because you are lacking of this) without knowing, though, that you were looking for it (not knowing because it's an unconcious process). That's why falling in love is such a striking experience. "You were looking for somebody, you were lacking something and all of a sudden it seems to be there." (What's lacking, by the way, and thus what you are drawn to, is decided in the formative relationship, the relationship with the primary caregiver/s.)

Anyways, let me get back to your theory that people feel attracted to traits that they judge desirable (because, let me add this, they feel lacking of them unconciously) in order to reprodue offspring of higher quality. This is a point that you can take, but it isn't really explaining love as much as it is giving a theory about the Darwinian goal of reproductive sex. If you want to bring love in here, from the Darwinian point of view, you basically say the same, for different reasons though. From the Darwian point of view love as well betters the quality of offspring. Not because love plays a role in sex (though it can, through mere correlation and not through causation though) but because love (or warmth, if you want to use a less 'mystical' term) works as a motivator: loved (cared for) children mature 'better' (in a more adaptive fashion that is) than children that are not loved for and are more likely to become prosocial members of the species (as opposed to unloved children that tend to be asocial).

When talking about types of love (and now I am assuming the point of view of academic psychology), I object to the use of the term "type" because it implies a qualitative difference (like the differene between apples and oranges) while it actually makes more sense to think of it as quantitative differences (like the difference between small apples and big apples). The word love is such a tricky one because it really is sort of an "umbrella term" which encompasses many things that share one core feature (which is love, or affection if you will) and then add something else it (like sexual desire for example). However, if you are grouping together different correlational patterns you don't really group together different (qualitative) types but you make a classification describing these patterns based on outside criteria. And as such you are really talking about profiles and not about types. The term manifestation doesn't really seem to me to get a the qualitative vs quantitative issue (which is the only point I am trying to make with regards to this) as manifestation could be translated as nature. Now, if you are saying that love comes in different natures, that's not really right because it much rather comes in one nature and this one nature tends to correlate with different things (without "merging" into something qualitatively new, though).

I hope this satisfied some of the questions you were raising.

Edited by Sheik, 27 February 2014 - 01:47 PM.

[Aevin]

Love is not about telling someone she is beautiful, or holding open her door or protecting her from danger, real or otherwise. That is in fact what all men should do for all women.

I have no problem with men and women who prefer that sort of relationship, but to suggest that every couple should conform to your chivalrous ideals is just silly. I get pretty frustrated at being told how I "should" act if I'm in love with someone, just because I'm a man, or that I'm somehow less of a man because I don't go around holding doors open for random strangers who just happen to be female. For what it's worth, my wife and I open doors for each other, and it has nothing to do with which of us is a man and which is a woman.

 

What works for you doesn't work for everyone else, so please don't try to dictate what all men "should" do. You do not speak for all men.

Edited by Aevin, 27 February 2014 - 03:04 PM.

[anikom15]

I have no problem with men and women who prefer that sort of relationship, but to suggest that every couple should conform to your chivalrous ideals is just silly. I get pretty frustrated at being told how I "should" act if I'm in love with someone, just because I'm a man, or that I'm somehow less of a man because I don't go around holding doors open for random strangers who just happen to be female. For what it's worth, my wife and I open doors for each other, and it has nothing to do with which of us is a man and which is a woman.

What works for you doesn't work for everyone else, so please don't try to dictate what all men "should" do. You do not speak for all men.

When I wrote 'all men should do for all women' I meant it literally, as in I do hold doors open for everybody, and I always thought it was rude not to. It's common courtesy, not chivalry. I also compliment my friends often because people (some more than others) try their best to look nice. It's just being nice and I don't think there is anything wrong in suggesting that people be nicer to each other.