Spritebox

My friend is always in sorrow over this argument. She doesn't believe there is an emotion such as love. I want to be optomistic about the subject, for if there is no such emotion, life would indeed suck. The problem is that I cannot make a valid optomistic point in favor of love, since I have not yet felt the euphoria that I've heard it induces.

What can I tell her to allow her to not be so blaphemous against an emotion that she, or myself, have never felt before?

neddy65

Love comes in many forms and is as individual as you are. You can surmise about love all you want but when you feel it you will know. Can I prove love exists? Nope, at least not on any level that i can comunicate to you. Love to me is and should be different 'cause it's my love for whomever and doesn't need to be rational or rationalized.
People throw the word around so easily it's easy to doubt love in any form.
Hugs n' Kisses, Love Neddy( heehee)

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mirevolver

The search button can be of great help.

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...threadid=26150

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anti fishstick

this thread is slightly different than that thread i think though. at least, i have no inclination to reply to that thread but obviously i'm replying to this one. so it must be different in my head at least :P

i can't answer what love means to me because its a hard emotion to describe. but i CAN answer that love exists. i think that love, in its purest form can not exist or be felt with humans. because we're certainly not perfect, and even the best relationships have some dysfunction here and there or things that could be worked on. similarly, happiness in its purest form also cannot be felt. love and happiness coincide with eachother, i think. we can only catch glimpses of happiness or love in 'pure' form but its never constant. things, life, situations change.

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And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
~Anais Nin

bundy

correct me if i´m wrong, but i heard one of my lecturers once say that ´love´ or the feeling that we associated with love, is just a series of complex chemical reactions that usually last for no more than about 30 days... after that the reaction either repeats or is substituted for another emotion.

rather unromantic, hey.

but i´m single and not thoroughly enjoying it, so what would i know??

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Ohayo!!!

kryoptic

If it's real to you then it's as good as real, regardless of the source. It can be a chemical thing or it could be a spiritual thing. That you feel and respond to it is what matters, whatever "it" is.

Nefir

There are two extremes in the way people can look at the world.

1)Depressing Realist: Everything has a physical or chemical explanation. There is no love, hate, or good will. We are just a complex box of switches, a biological computer running some nifty AI code. There is nothing beyond the real.

2)Hopeless Romantic: The real is just a scaffold upon which to build our souls. Love and soul (and soulmates too) are abstract things, but they exist, and when the real is gone, everything we built on it will carry on.

If (1) was.. well, 1, and (2) was 10, I'd rate myself as a 7.

I refuse to accept that I am just a computer, ticking away in my biological routines, reading in the stimuli and producing a reaction based on a set of rules. That makes life so... pointless.

Yes, the physical sensation you get when in love is caused by chemical reactions in the brain, but I hope there's more to love than the just physical aspect...

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Stiltzkin

Love is whatever you want it to be. If to you love is eating an icecream cone on a calm, sunny Sunday afternoon while watching a boring soap opera, then that is love. If to you love is kicking someone in the shins and then running away laughing, then that is love. If to you love is having endless amounts of wild monkey sex (most popular), then that is love. You decide what is love to you. I will now go sit in a corner...

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The most important thing in this world is love.

bermuDa

sounds like your friend has been hurt, and for that I'm sorry. You can tell her that love in degrees does exist, but it's up to her to find it.

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skysooner

Love absolutely exists. There is no other explanation for what I feel for my wife. It just gets better over time too.

CandleInTheDark

Know how and why emotions happen doesn't make them any less meaningless.

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Where there is doubt there is freedom.

zfleebin

Spritebox: I think the first thing you should know is love is not just an emotion. If you try to break down love into something as simple as an emotion or a chemical reaction or even a funny feeling your gonna miss what it truly is.
All too often people get into a relationship and are so excited that they identify there first true connection with their boy/girlfriend as love. Yes the first connection might feel magical and play with your mind and senses but love is deeper and permeates every element of you. I guess the more and more I try and explain it the more I realize I cant explain it. But I will leave you with this. The feeling of love is like the feeling of complete satisfaction. Love fills your mind body and spirit completely. I could go on but it would get boring. The only thing more I think I should say is if you ever feel something like this and can tell where its coming from you should put all your effort into making the person who shared this with you feel the same way. Once they day take it up a notch and see how much more they can hold. You will soon find that the more you put into love the more it will satisfy you and your partner and there is no limit to how much love you can share with an individual( trust me on this I test this theory every moment of my life). If you do this you will realize the absolute infinite power of love that has inspired humans throughout time.

zfleebin

Bundy: I almost forgot. I would love to see the research on that because I am currently in a cognitive neuroscience class and I have never heard anything like that. I think your lecturer was probably hypothesizing.

World's King

Love is everything.

Just like hate, happiness, anger, and the rest of the emotions that we let rule our lives.

You must remember that emotions are not real... You can not actually hold love in your hand. It's not tangable. You understand what I mean? Therefor you can not be "in love" because we will never know what love is until we see it with own eyes and hold it in our own hands.

But then again, one can say that the act of touching another person that you have the so-called feelings of love for would in fact be touching "love." The skin to skin contact could be the tangable feeling to render love real.

But that's just one bitter, drunken 20-somethings's opinion.

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heavy is the head that wears the crown

Randerolf

A friend of mine once siad, "There is no such thing as love. Only lust and obsession."

Powerful words. As a romantic, I don't want to believe them. I can't refute them, though.

Kyo

*gag* *choke*

Love is nothing. Emotions are nothing. There is only death and suffering in the world. You are born, you will suffer, and you will die. And time will quietly erase all trace of you.

Go out, have fun. Fuck someone. Kill someone. Steal. Cheat. Lie. Maim. Destroy.

Life is what you make of it, disregarding the times it tries to be funny and screws you. Love can't exist if you don't want it to. You can't be happy if you only want to be miserable. We are all victims of our own self-fulfilling prophecies. If you think your life is terrible and not worth living, your actions and attitude will reflect that, and that will become your reality. If, on the other hand, you are determined to experience the best of what this so-called life has to offer, you will accomplish something - whether you reach your goal or not, you'll have done something you consider meaningful, and your life will be better for it.

Mind over matter - what you think dominates what you do. Don't fool yourself into thinking it's the other way around.

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Sure I have a heart; it's floating in a jar in my closet, along with my tonsils, my appendix, and all of the other useless organs I ripped out.

aintyoboyfriend

There are two kinds of love in the world.

The first is the kind that you feel for your family. That kind of love is automatic.

The second kind of love does not exist until you have met that special person, so your friend may be right. Love does not exist in her current state of living. When she meets the right boy love will sneak up on her so fast she won't know how she got pregnant.

World's King

I bet you're a hit at parties.

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heavy is the head that wears the crown

Mephisto2

Of course love exists and it manifests itself in many ways.

Do you love your siblings? Your parents? Most people do, and would feel devastated if they lost them through illness or premature death. Even death after a long lifetime.

Don't you believe parents love, in an absolute unconditional way, their newborn children?

And most people love their spouses. Love evolves and changes. There will be times when (and if) you're married that you may feel the love leave your life. It will probably return.

Life is a rollercoaster with many ups and downs. Love is simply one of the crazy emotions you feel as your rush around. It's also one of the few things that you can offer that can make a difference to others.

Mr Mephisto

Kyo

Bah, parties. Useless, trivial things.

Actually I am, because most people can understand my sarcasm when I'm spitting it right in their faces. And you know how it is with sarcasm - everybody but the victim thinks it's absolutely hilarious.

Besides, walking through life being nice to everyone and putting your sweet lips to other people's backsides is too much work and much too boring. It's a heck of a lot more fun to piss people off, especially when they can't do anything about it ... say, if you're strong and know how to handle yourself, or you happen to be packing your little friend with 2 extra clips in case they've got backup. You know, the little things.

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Sure I have a heart; it's floating in a jar in my closet, along with my tonsils, my appendix, and all of the other useless organs I ripped out.

World's King

Wow. I'm impressed. You set me straight. I feel bad for being sarcastic now. I didn't have any idea I was up against the King of sarcasm. You're so cool.

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heavy is the head that wears the crown

Kyo

Aren't I?

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Sure I have a heart; it's floating in a jar in my closet, along with my tonsils, my appendix, and all of the other useless organs I ripped out.

Litespeed

You've just got to have a little faith. And work on loving the people around you, romantic love is only one of the sides of the many-faceted thing we call love.

GuttersnipeXL

I've only been "in it once" and it lasted for years...now I'm in some kind of weird void. I'd say it does exist and is very real...it takes saccrafice though, you have to be open to it, accept it.

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When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. HST

hobo

Love exists. It is the evolutionary mechanism that makes mates pair for life and parents raise children. How many children would survive in a world without love?

JimmyTheHutt

Joke: "Love is biochemically identical to eating large quantities of chocolate."

Of course love exists. It's there to prove no matter how much pain you are in, you can always have more.

I certainly wish it didn't exist....or at least I never found out about it.

Sooner or later everyone will find it. It is pretty much unavoidable. It is the one constant of human experience.

Veritas en Lux!
Jimmy The Hutt

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Stiltzkin

To address the question in the thread title:

Nope.

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The most important thing in this world is love.

anti fishstick

this is true. one of our primary needs in developmental stages is love/affection.

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And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
~Anais Nin

Cynthetiq

when i was suffocating via an asthma attack and being rescued by EMTs, I realized just how much I really loved my wife of 6 months... we're now about to hit the 2 year mark.

it's like pornography... you'll know it when you see it.

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numist

love exists for sure. My g/f visited over the weekend, and left this morning.

Anytime you feel this much longing and pain to be with someone, that is love.
When you feel more happiness than you thought was possible everytime you look in the other person's eyes, that is love.

Love exists, if it doesn't, I'll be damned.

Crazy/Beautiful

Love is a funky thing. I love my family and my dog but have yet to experience it with a significant other. So that I can't help you on. But it's definately also a scary feeling, and you have to be ready to accept the hardships that come with it. Missing, worrying, about someone. In today's world it is hard to tell whether people or being truthful or not about their feelings so I'm very on guard about that. But my family is different because I do know I love them and would face about any atrocity to help or save them. The people I do love, my loyalty doesn't bend and neither does the extent I will go to to help them if they are in need.

absence_of_color

I think it exists.
If there is so much hate in the world, there just has to be love.

Wouldn't there?

*crosses fingers*

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