Is love real?

[Angrboda]

As I lay listening to a romantic song while lying in bed, a line in that song stuck out for me.

"I still carry a flame for you
Burnin' me like a brand"

And it made me remember that the idea of such passionate feelings that they're physically painful has always struck me as something alien.

I've never felt things that way, toward a lover, a friend, or even, not romantically, but an upwelling of feeling toward family.

Even the woman who I in hindsight think was probably "the one" and who I now realize that I loved deeply never provoked such sentiments.

I've always explained it away as being just me. I've always been a loner and somewhat cold and distant, taking after my father who influenced me more than my mother.

And a lifetime of depression, on top of being raised in the shadow of two sisters who were palpably more loved than I, has left my emotional circuits somewhat dead.

But I still wonder to this day whether love isn't more myth than reality, at least the feeling of it.

Which leads me to wonder, is love real?

[The Grand Nudger]

Yes, love is real. Its not panacea, and I bet you could live your whole life never knowing it. Many of us know it, even if one of us has never.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Of course love is real. It may be equal parts physical attraction, infatuation, obsession, and so on, but the agglomeration of all these things is love.

Heinlein once defined love as the state of emotion that exists when another person’s happiness is essential to your own (the inversion of this statement is pretty strong evidence that it’s true). I’m in this state.

Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

Case in point, there's no thing that I wouldn't do if I thought it would make my SO feel loved. If I had to skin kids..that's what'd do. There goes love.

[Fake Messiah]

But is it true that when you fall in love the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie?
That the world seems to shine like you've had too much wine? That the stars make you drool just like a pasta e fasul? That bells ring, ting-a-ling-a-ling, ting-a-ling-a-ling and you sing, "Vita bella"?

[The Grand Nudger]

It's all true.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGJTaP6anOU

[Brian37]

As I lay listening to a romantic song while lying in bed, a line in that song stuck out for me.

"I still carry a flame for you
Burnin' me like a brand"

And it made me remember that the idea of such passionate feelings that they're physically painful has always struck me as something alien.

I've never felt things that way, toward a lover, a friend, or even, not romantically, but an upwelling of feeling toward family.

Even the woman who I in hindsight think was probably "the one" and who I now realize that I loved deeply never provoked such sentiments.

I've always explained it away as being just me.  I've always been a loner and somewhat cold and distant, taking after my father who influenced me more than my mother.

And a lifetime of depression, on top of being raised in the shadow of two sisters who were palpably more loved than I, has left my emotional circuits somewhat dead.

But I still wonder to this day whether love isn't more myth than reality, at least the feeling of it.

Which leads me to wonder, is love real?

Emotions are most certainly real, but each word for each emotion can be highly subjective and can have many meanings. The word "love" is abstract so you have to be specific about what the word is being applied to. 


"I love ABBA" like a fan.

" I love my cat" that is "love" in a very deep emotional attachment.

" I love pizza" only refers liking a food.

Just like numbers are real but also can also be abstract. 

1 apple 
1 car
1 dog
1 thought.

[The Grand Nudger]

Talkin away...I don't know what...I'm to say.....

[Angrboda]

Of course love is real. It may be equal parts physical attraction, infatuation, obsession, and so on, but the agglomeration of all these things is love.

Heinlein once defined love as the state of emotion that exists when another person’s happiness is essential to your own (the inversion of this statement is pretty strong evidence that it’s true). I’m in this state.

Boru

Well that's just it. Is it nothing more than an agglomeration of things?

Philosophers and psychologists talk about "folk psychology," which is a sort of informal theory about how the mind works, and that "model" of how the mind works is populated by things like beliefs, and drives, and emotions, which themselves don't point to actual things in the mind so much as they provide convenient handles for explaining why we have the mental experiences that we do. In a similar way to how Vulcan's video explored whether chairs as objects exist, or whether it might be more objective and real to say that chairs are just independent particles "arranged chair-wise," isn't it also possible that the idea of love is more a hook for explaining what we feel and do and experience than an actual thing? That love is more realistically viewed as unrelated emotions, behaviors, and experiences arranged "love-wise?"

There are times I think the Jane's Addiction song, "Jane Says" must be about me. Jane says, "I ain't never been in love. I don't know what it is. I only know if someone wants me. I only know they want me." Infatuation and the loss we feel when someone is not around get roped into being a part of love, but if you unbundle the things, and remove everything that is simply "roped into being love," then what exactly is left?





(I'm also reminded of the song "Round Here" for reasons which have momentarily eluded me. Perhaps it's the lines, "Then she looks up at the building / Says she's thinking of jumping / She says she's tired of life / She must be tired of something" -- in the same way that being tired of life is just a hook for being tired about some specific thing in life, perhaps love plays an analogous role, a hook for groups of things, feelings, experiences, that we simply want to seek or shun, "as a group."

[arewethereyet]

I still have deep feelings for my older daughter's father. Crazy, I know it. He left when I was just a few months pregnant and we only were in contact a few times over the years, mostly via phone and now he's dead. I should probably hate him. But I don't and no one has even come close to making me feel the way I did when we were together. Now, I am the first to admit that may be my fault. I don't think I ever let anyone else that close.

There were others I care(d) about but nothing at that level.

That's as romantic as it gets from me.

Love for my kids is a different thing altogether.