Does love exist? Or is it all made up rubbish?

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No, don't agree. Romantic love is far too unreliable and short term to sustain capitalism. Substitute "the nuclear family" - far more designed politically to encourage consumerism and the currently individualistic values of capitalism, where any form of interdependency has been stigmatised. This has marginalised the elderly, the single, the non-breeders - all of whom may experience romantic love, but are not considered to be model nor even very good consumers of the goods produced by companies based primarily on the profit motive.

Romantic love is dangled as bait to hook the fish into forming nuclear families - it's only part of it though. People marry for many reasons - money, status, power, companion, to conform, to hide an alternative sexual orientation (yes even now), social and family pressure, political alliances, or because they are too unmotivated to achieve anything themselves and want to coat-tail on a more successful person.

A book about connecting with your Aspie partner says to love unconditionally.

Being an aspie my self (she didn't believe it even when her own doctor told her!) have learned that love is conditional.

The lovie dovie run into your arms, king of the world, titantic, I will do anything for love, is device to move a story along.

Respect, now that is real. Tell the truth, be brutal, don't sugar coat one damn sentence, and for the act of f*****g, do not tailor your responses to what she wants to hear!

A book about connecting with your Aspie partner says to love unconditionally.

Being an aspie my self (she didn't believe it even when her own doctor told her!) have learned that love is conditional.

The lovie dovie run into your arms, king of the world, titantic, I will do anything for love, is device to move a story along.

Respect, now that is real. Tell the truth, be brutal, don't sugar coat one damn sentence, and for the act of f*****g, do not tailor your responses to what she wants to hear!

i have a very limited idea of what "love" is.
i love things that i consider to be innocent.
i love things that i am aware that i need to nourish in order for their survival.
i love things that are weaker than me (like animals) and i love to provide them with a good and happy life.
i love to take care of a being that looks to me for their protection and sustenance in an innocent way.

i love things that are not authoritarian or arrogant.
i love things that are real and i hate fakeness and most of the time everyone is faking something or another, and so i do not love much with respect to other people.

Does true love exist? I think so, but truly it is rare. what people tend to think is love now days is that honeymoon stage they go through when they get excited and the hots for someone new, I see a lot of people now days dumping partners once that honeymoon stage is over, which tells me its all biological and once that thrill wears off they want someone new. and to be honest, even though I know men do this too, I notice its mostly the women who do that. not trying to be sexist, only stating this is what I been seeing. its as if people are searching that that partner where that honeymoon feeling never goes away, which is VARY unrealistic.

It's a little of both. Love is a very real emotion that's been poetically exaggerated over the ages to an impossibly romanticized (no pun intended) idea.

Romantic love could be a trap for expanding capitalism.. It doesn?t matter whether romantic love itself is unreliable or short term (or even real), it?s the HOPE that everyone cashes in on. The hope of health or prosperity or happiness or love is what will make people buy anything and buy into anything.

?Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.? Nietzsche ?and keeps you buying into things you might have given up on a thousand times already.

Love exists, but requited love doesn't. At least not in my world.

It seems to be a far more difficult question than people give it credit for.

There are different kinds of love, appropriate to different kinds of relationship: that between friends, between parent and child, between individual and humanity; self-love; romantic love; love for experiences or inanimate objects; etc. Asking what they all have in common is, I think, equivalent to asking what love fundamentally is. And that, perhaps, essentially has to do with desiring, or desiring plus taking pleasure in, something's happiness and/or flourishing and/or existence.

So, if that's right, then many kinds of love are straightforwardly real. But romantic love seems problematic to me for the following reasons.

First, I'm not sure it deserves its own category. What makes it different from the sort of love that exists between close friends? There's physical intimacy, of course, but as people are eager to observe, a relationship based solely or primarily on sexual attraction isn't "really" based on love; such a relationship is second-rate, degenerate - it's essentially "lust", or "infatuation". Physical intimacy is thus apparently seen as an "added bonus" to romantic relationships; moreover, it's something that comes and goes; sex becomes dull and perfunctory, or in any case, less frequently desired. But, they say, the love remains all the same.

My other worry arises from the notions of commitment and exclusivity, which are also likely to be proposed as answers to the above question (What makes romantic love different from the sort of love that exists between close friends?). Commitment seems to consist in something that might be called both reciprocal self-denial and reciprocal possessiveness. "We're in this for the long haul"; in less figurative language, "I'll suppress any urge to abandon you if you suppress any urge to abandon me." But what "abandonment" means isn't entirely clear. It seems essentially to involve certain discontinued benefits, or the pursuit of these benefits by means of something other than one's partner. And here the benefits are primarily sexual, it seems. Think of cheating, how that can destroy a romantic relationship, how traces of the desire (in the form of sexual attraction to other people) can never be ruled out - and how that is so often taken to necessitate exclusive commitment. Romantic partners are expected to suppress the desire for physical intimacy with other people; to act on this desire is to forfeit or betray one's love.

Now, what exactly is my worry with this? Just that when we're honest, it seems a bit pathological! It seems to impose arbitrary constraints on love ("So long as I?m with you, you are not to act on certain desires of yours, because...well, because!"), and it seems that when these constraints are violated, people readily allow love to turn into resentment, contempt, or even hatred. ("That no-good, cheating bastard!")

But, again, romantic love without this bizarre sexual possessiveness is hard to understand except as friendship - with unrestricted "benefits".

This all makes me suspect that romantic love is, at best, a spurious concept we invent to glorify something that would otherwise be seen (unfairly, perhaps) as more ordinary and mundane - namely love between friends - and at worst, a spurious concept we invent to de-pathologize our sexual possessiveness. Or some combination of the two.

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That said, I tend to want "romantic love" all the same, and my adult life has been almost completely devoid of it. But not all our desires are rational; some are the result of training and suggestion.

I also fear what a successful romantic relationship would naturally turn into in the long run. (Boredom, restlessness, dissatisfaction?)

I have trouble knowing what love is anymore without the fear of being tricked, or betrayed and left in eternal suffering.

having not experienced this particular kind of love, i have no idea what it is.

"love is the absence of judgement."

Am new here. Greetings!

Have opinion: Love is intentional decision.
- A feeling of positive warmth cannot always be 100% maintained, BUT deciding to do the "work" and upkeep of the loved person is the important thing. It deepens over time. I do not think the " fuzzy positive" fairy-tale true-love sensation described in movies exists, but like my version better actually.

I would qualify this somewhat. It is not the absence, but both love and friendship require being less judgmental to actually work. Even if there is 'ribbing' you have to be sufficiently tolerate of their quirks.


Meaning that you HAVE to let some things slide, becuase people aren't perfect and it hypocritical and not soliciting of reciprocation not to do so.


This can be really difficult for concrete, or hyper-analytical thinkers. This is soemthign I can relate to, but cripes once you let go of your hangups, it is so rewarding you wonder why you didn't do it sooner. Without needlessly to pandering to stereotype, it is still a bit of a problem in this section of WP.

I find the topic of love to be a very subjective thing, much like faith. In faith you have gnostics, agnostics, and atheists. Love has, in my opinion multiple meanings to multiple people. I myself am indifferent to the concept of love, I don't find an emotional bond with it. I think of it from a purely scientific stance, in rhe sense that it is arandom collection of biochemical reactions.

People who believe in actual love, in my opinion look at more lime faith, in that it is a mystical force that bonds people together.

Just my opinion.