Redjake

I don't like it when people say two persons were "meant" for each other. And that "by coincidence" or something they met the one person they were "meant" to be with. There's only one person in the world that you are "meant" to be with and miraculously, every single person that is in love met that significant other by chance. Or maybe there's an outer force bringing us together.


I think it's more like this:

You meet someone that likes you. They actually like you. That makes you like them even more. The fact someone likes who you are (or your body, for some people) makes people excited. They get blinded by other characteristics the person has, good or bad. The thought of someone else liking you is a good thought!

So you begin to like them like I said before. Then you find out other things about them, maybe hobbies or traits, and you train yourself to like those hobbies and traits. You like them so much, share so much experiences together, you being to love them. Love is simply an evolved form of enjoying someone.


For instance, you meet a girl or guy that enjoys being around you. You aren't usually into blondes, but hey, they like you. A month later you all of a sudden love blondes. You find out they don't go to church very often. You don't approve of this, but in a month or two, you don't mind. All of this is a chain reaction. You begin to like every thing about the person based on the fundamental fact of them liking you to begin with. Once you get so engrossed in the person, you begin to evolve your thoughts of them. You begin to REALLY like them, or "love" them. You can't spend your life without them. Expect maybe if you met someone else who liked you.

No one is "meant" for each other or brought together by some force. You find someone you can live with and learn to like their traits you aren't comfortable with.

Little things they do for you all add up and blind you from their traits you don't enjoy.

The reason people get divorces is because they get bored with the person or learn that the only reason they "loved" the person is because they were blinded by the Fact. The Fact they showed interest in you.

The reason people stay married is because they are:

a). Too afraid to get a divorce due to social strife.
b). Stay blinded their entire life.
c). If you're married, you can't date around anymore. Imagine if you were married and someone showed interest in you like your spouse does. And you started to date them. I'm sure people would "love" the other person as well. I guess that's why people get a divorce. Because of this same scenario!

Anyone agree or disagree?

__________________
Off the record, on the q.t., and very hush-hush.

captanhero

Are you saying that the only reason relationships grow beyond "hello" is because of a feedback loop of mutual desire to be liked? If so I disagree. I've been seeing my girlfriend for close to two years now, and while we're probably a bit on the co-dependent side of the middle, we are not together solely because we want to be liked by the other. Personally, a person's attraction to me has little to do with my own attraction to them (as it is, I suspect, with any guy who has been painfully rejected going after the high school prom queen, or the hot girl at the gym, or whatever). But I'm sure there are relationships out there like what you describe.

Master_Shake

I think Bill Maher used to say, "Show me a beautiful woman, and I'll show you a guy who's tired of fucking her."

Relationships have a natural time limit after which they should expire. Unfortunatley there are social pressures to keep people together for much longer than is appropriate. Life long monogamy should be the exception, not the rule.

__________________
-------------
You know something, I don't think the sun even... exists... in this place. 'Cause I've been up for hours, and hours, and hours, and the night never ends here.

lurkette

I agree with you that the "meant for each other" thing, in the sense of finding The One Person who's right for you, is unrealistic and annoying. I think there is a large number of people out there with whom each person could make a life. I don't think it's just "oh my gosh, someone loves me, that must mean I love them back." I think it's a lot more complex than that.

Er...I think that's maybe a little simplistic. Maybe for someone with incredibly low self-esteem to start with, but I think people get divorced for a lot of reasons. Because they stop getting along, because they change in incompatible ways, because they start wanting different things, because they wanted different things in the first place and figured they could deal and were wrong, because they're emotionally immature, because they never really knew each other to start with and don't actually like each other. Or a host of other reasons.

Again, I disagree. I can only speak for myself, but I stay married because I said I would, and because I (stilll) enjoy being around ratbastid more than I enjoy being around anybody else. I am living your example "c" - I was dating someone who showed interest in my like my spouse does. I do love her. I still love her, and I'm not getting divorced. We might renegotiate the details of our marriage to allow for loving and committing to other people, but that doesn't mean that we stop loving each other (me and ratbastid) just because we also start being loved by other people.

Again, I think you have a kind of cynical and overly-simplistic view of how love works.

__________________
"If ten million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."

- Anatole France

*Nikki*

Wow you make is sound like love does not exsist or means nothing at all.

Have you ever been in love?
Have you ever been married?
Are these factors in this statement you are making?

Redjake

Nope and nope. These factors are most likely unconciously skewering the statement I am making, but they actually might support it as well....


Keep the thoughts coming. I am interested to learn what everyone thinks.




The main reason of the thread is the fact I have seen so many people "love" a person and break up a month later. Then I got to wondering....maybe everyone "loves" and has the chance to break up a month later. Some break up, some don't. Perhaps it's will and determination that keep couples together?



Keep the comments coming!

__________________
Off the record, on the q.t., and very hush-hush.

Redjake

But to get back to my main point: I believe "love" is an evolved version of "liking someone a lot." I do not beleive it's a mystical thing. I even think it can be forced upon someone in certain circumstances. For instance, let's say there was only two people left on the entire earth, man and woman. Give it a couple of months (or years) and I'm sure they would say they loved each other. It would be hard to convince them otherwise.


Also gets me thinking: It's pretty funny how someone could pick a random person in the world and love them after a while. I strongly believe this could happen and does happen all the time. Love is random and an evolved form of "getting along."

__________________
Off the record, on the q.t., and very hush-hush.

C4 Diesel

I think this debate can be (and is being) skewed based upon peoples interpretation of Redjake's original statements, particularly "love is just an evolved form of enjoying someone".

I find this to be untrue from a humanistic standpoint. By taking this standpoint, one can interpret the statement to imply that love has no more significance than the enjoyment of an individual over a long period of time. I would then think this statement to be false, as I'm sure a study would find that the overwhelming majority of people would say that love is a much more complex mechanism, and has much more meaning and substance to it, which, since the belief is inherently subjective, would be pretty much taken as truth.

From a kind of neuroscientific standpoint, the statement seems to be much more true. Love, like any other positive response to a stimulus, is just a release of dopamine to specific locations in the brain. Granted, "love" may release more dopamine on average than something that would be taken as merely "enjoyable", but this still allows the comparison in this manner. I.E. something that is a pale red may be "less" red than a deep, rich red but they're still both red.

Where I think Jake is off is on marriage. I believe Jake's take on the reasons people get married to be too centered around personal immediate gratification to be accurate. People are not solely based around the persuit of enjoyment. I think the reason most people stay married is because of family structure. I would believe this to be primarily instinctual, and thus not necessarily consciousally thought out in this manner, but marriage provides the best situation for the raising of children. This instinctual desire and its conscious counterpart (which exists because it is usually obvious that marriage provides the best scenario for the child) is obviously not enough in some situations and the desire for personal gratification will win. By these conclusions I find the factors involving whether a marriage survives to be (on a very simple level):

1) the ability of the marriage to provide a positive environment for the rearing of childern (including the ability to produce the children in the first place)
2) the gratification the individuals recieve from maintaining the marriage. (which is more along Jake's original train of thought.)

Anyone like chemistry? It's kind of like a chemical reaction... There's the trouble of getting divorced which we'll label as the "activation energy" of the reaction. The negative aspects regarding 1 and 2 (a poor enviornment for children or a dissatisfaction with the relationship on a personal level) provide the "energy" for the reaction, while good aspects take away "energy". Once there's enough energy (negatives) to overcome the activation energy (trouble of getting a divorce), the reaction happens (the marriage breaks up). In other words, once it becomes worth it for an individual to get a divorce, that person will do so.

. . . that's my 2 cents.

__________________
C4 to your door, no beef no more...

ngdawg

If I fell for everyone who took a liking to me, I wouldn't have time to sleep.
People get divorced for a vast variety of reasons, not just boredom and people stay together for any number of reasons as well. To pidgeonhole those decisions is erroneous.
Attractions take many forms, not just physical. I have loved men considered ugly and I have been with men considered gorgeous, but if I can't connect mentally, or take the bad with the good, then nothing progresses. I think this is true of friendships of every form, not just lovers.
Society, unfortunately, has somehow taught us that loving more than one person at a time is patently wrong.This line of thinking holds us back, at least most of us, from experiencing the whole of love that can only come from opening ourselves up to a myriad of interpersonal experiences.
Love may come at random times, but I don't think the ones we love are picked at random. People come and go into our lives daily, but connections, while they may seem random, come rarely and with a purpose we are not always aware of immediately.

ironmaiden7o7

There are many people out there that "likes" us. It's far beyond just like. I believe that we all have a special someone out there, whether we are currently with that person or not, it due time, we will realize. But when we meet someone, it's the physical connection that gets us going, when you're physically attracted to a person, there is a magnetic shock that draws you closer and closer. I wouldn't say that "like" has anything to do with it, we won't like a person more because we know that they like us, it's a lot more than that. We do not choose who we love or whom we end up with, and you are right about the whole being afraid to get a divorce thing, most of the time, it's the kids, or the years spent together. Most people live their entire lives so miserable that they are so comfortable with it, but that's by choice!

Toodles.

*Nikki*

A)Possible.

B)Possible.

C)This point bothers me.

If you are married, well you are supposed to be married. This means that if someone else does show interest in you, it really should not matter at all. Like ngdawg pointed out if I dated everyone who showed interest in me I would have no free time. Not to brag, but I think that more then interest is ness. to maintain my interest in someone else.
I know I don't fall in love easily. There has to be A LOT of things about the person that are right for me. On top of that I have to be physically attracted to them and emotionally compatible with them.
In fact, there are so many things that have to come together perfectly, me falling in love would happen quite the opposite of how you stated it would.

pinkie

I feel that my husband was hand picked just for me. I don't think that thinking that is unrealistic or annoying, I think it's rare, and amazing. I am filled with gratitude daily, and look forward to spending forever with this one, the one.

That being said, I've been through 4 serious relationships, and even though I felt genuine love for these people, the relationships did not flourish like the relationship with my husband does. We are soul mates. We know we have something special. We're so perfect together we make our friends sick sometimes.

Guthumba

Could this also be due to the fact that some people have a tendency to blur the lines between love and lust, while others don't even realize there is a line there to begin with?

The term "love" is used far too casually and has evolved to mean "like you alot" in today's society...don't let the mis-use of a word make you believe that those who have these feeling in earnest are deluding themselves...

__________________
Locusts and honey ... not since John The Baptist has there been a voice like that crying in the wilderness. ... Every man knows he is a sissy compared to Johnny Cash -- Bono.

Carno

Exactly.

I think people tend to be a little jaded about love, because of the misuse of the word nowadays.

Redjake

Good point there


Lots of interesting thoughts in this thread so far.

__________________
Off the record, on the q.t., and very hush-hush.

Redjake

I'd like to bring this topic up again: How many of you think you would be able to pick a random person and love them after a period of time? That seems to be what happens everyday. I'm thinking, if this happens so many times per day, the statistics would show that love is completely random. No one was meant for each other. You just love someone because you........well, I don't know. I honestly think every person on this planet could love someone if they were forced to (not physically forced by gunpoint, but you know what I mean). Does anyone understand my logic here? It seems that all these people who love each other didn't pick the person specifically. They met them, or ran into them, or were introduced, or something along those lines. And now they love the other person. So couldn't anyone love anyone if you follow that same pattern? Makes me question what love really is.


For instance: First-time lovers. A guy has never dated anyone before, and he meets a girl, they date, and get married years later. They die together. I've already discredited "love at first sight," so wouldn't this technically be a random encounter with a person and you just happen to fall in love with them? That illustrates my point the best. You can learn to love anyone. Thoughts?

__________________
Off the record, on the q.t., and very hush-hush.

lurkette

That's kind of the equivalent of thinking you are special because streetlights go out sometimes when you pass them. No, you just noticed it because it's a rarity.

The situation you describe above is rare. Sometimes people happen to find a person they can love and live with on the first try, but it's not like just because it happend to them, anybody can find a random person and fall in love with them.

I wouldn't say that you can learn to love anyone but I would say that there is a subset of individuals in the world with whom I could fall in love, and a smaller subset of individuals in the world that I probably wouldn't stay in love with but could live with, and a much larger subset of people that I probably couldn't stand to be around after 2 months. So depending on my standards, the probability that I will meet a person who falls into the first category makes it unlikely but possible that any random person could be someone I'd fall in love with.

I think you're trying pretty hard to oversimplify the complex parts of "relationship theory" and over-complexify the simple parts.

__________________
"If ten million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."

- Anatole France

Redjake

I don't know, there's a couple here on campus that seriously go out every time I pass them. Even at different parts of the day


I'm certainly not trying to simply or complex anything here. I'm just giving a perspective of love, coming from someone who currently isn't IN love. Things are a lot different when you're on the "outside."

I know it's hard to understand where I'm coming from, since being in a loving relationship is such a great thing. But I just can't get over the fundamental "thesis" if you will of this topic: I think love can be formulated.

__________________
Off the record, on the q.t., and very hush-hush.

StanT

I guess I'm just a cynic, but I just don'y buy the "love", "in love" and "soul mate" crap. I've been married to the same woman for 25 years. We really enjoy each others company. We are deeply "in lust", sometimes and there isn't much we don't share. We also irritate and annoy each other to no end. There is no one on this earth that can take me from 0 to pissed quicker than she can. "Perfect match" or "soulmates" ? You've got to be kidding, our relationship works well for us, but all of the terms listed imply a degree of perfection that doesn't exist in our relationship.

Livia Regina

I think you are right that people can fall in love with someone if they are forced to as in an arranged marriage. If you spend a lot of time with someone and have to act as a unit with them, I think you will eventually learn to love them. In the rest of your points, I think you have simplified love too much. There are many people who have liked me and I have liked them but we never could get further than that because something was missing.

__________________
Rule 37: There is no 'overkill.' There is only 'open fire' and 'I need to reload.'

Redjake

This is more of what I'm talking about.

__________________
Off the record, on the q.t., and very hush-hush.

fallsauce

Time to dust off my Pyramid Theory again.

What I think is that there are different levels of compatibility, so while there may be only one person that is your "soulmate", there are others that you can love just as much if you haven't found your "soulmate". And so on, for which every level has even more people you can spend your life with, but who might not be exactly perfect for you.

Of course, I'm not sure if I even believe my own theory, but it's a nice dream.

__________________
"Hey little kitty with your tail dragging on the floor
You could have a following in every town that you go"
Electric Six - I Invented The Night

Stiltzkin

I've had two separate people show great interest in me, and I tried to force myself to become interested in one of them, but that simply did not work out. I suspect that I'm not the only one who can repeat what I have said as a personal experience.

__________________
The most important thing in this world is love.

EULA

Just as thread-fodder:

"If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with."

chickentribs

It's all in the timing... I dated a great girl for 8 years, but was convinced that I would never get married. I didn't want kids and just couldn't see the point of marriage unless that was the case. She decided that she wanted kids and marriage etc... and so we went our seperate ways. That was 2 years ago, and literally in the last couple of weeks I have found my ideas changing about having a family. All of a sudden I find myself thinking about it a lot, and so I wouldn't be surprised if I met somebody and made the plunge within a year or so.

Nobody could have gotten me there before I was ready, though.

__________________
Oft expectation fails...
and most oft there Where most it promises
- Shakespeare, W.

Demeter

I was married at eighteen to a man I thought I'd be with forever. I thought I'd die without him & that we were meant to be together, in the great scheme of things. After several years of his drug & alcohol abuse the marriage finally dissolved & I met a man who made me feel young again & I started a life with him.
I did not, however feel the great 'I'd die for him' love I had felt for my first husband. But I loved him just the same, I just never got lost in the feeling. Then one day I came home to find he had collapsed & to make a long story short, he died three days later.
Now I am with a gentle loving caring man, and I love & adore him. However its still not the earth shaking feeling I had with my first husband. I often wonder if it was because I was young, I had such an overwhelming feeling? I had better expectations? or maybe after such losses one naturally holds a little back, avoiding circumstancial pain?
I really don't have the answer. I no longer believe in pre-destined matches. 'Meant' to be together? I doubt it. You just got lucky.

ScottKuma

When I met my wife, I LITERALLY fell in love with her (or so it felt) at first glance. I had NO idea if she reciprocated my feelings, but I couldn't get her out of my mind! Two weeks later, I acted upon my feelings and found out that she did, indeed.

We've been married now for four years, have one child and another on the way. Given the time and experience I've gained since our first encounter, I realize now that our original infatuation was just that -- infatuation. If I had not felt those original feelings for her, she would have forgotten about me in a matter of days. It would have been much the same for me if she did not reciprocate my feelings.

I travel for a living, spending about 3 or 4 days of most work weeks on the road. Our early relationship would NEVER have survived such distance. Our current, more evolved relationship does, easily! She trusts that I will not go chasing after each piece of tail that saunters by, and I trust that she won't leave me for a young stud! We BOTH feel that the other is the only person who'd put up with our quirks and pecadillos.

LOVE is what comes after that initial infatuation. It involves choices : the choice to stay together; the choice to continue to work on your relationship, even when from time to time you can't stand the sight of each other; the choice to put yourself second (or even LAST, if you have children) in the choices you make from day to day. It involves work. And, the benefits definitely are worth it.

~Lucian~

In some cases i'm sure that's true, but i'm inclined to disagree. Firstly, it takes the magic away from being in love i mean, if you wanna look at it another way, you could say that you love something or someone because of chemical changes in your head created by your genes or certain connections in your brain. But does that sound human? nah, not really. The idea of love is more than complicated and if it were as easy as summing it up in a paragraph or two, then why are there so few people who have mastered or even truly found it? I choose to look at it this way: There are probably many people out in the world that you could be happy with and make a lasting and meaningful relationship with, but if you're lucky you meet one.

I've been with my girlfriend for almost 2 years now, and we've been past the stage of puppy love, we've been sick of eachother and now we can see the differences in eachother more than ever. Do i love her? Yes, with all my heart and I wouldn't give her up for the world. I'm sure there are other people in the world I could be with, but I honestly don't give a shit because in that respect she is the only one for me. There's a lot more to love than interests and the buzz of someone actually liking you. Anyone in a real and lasting relationship already knows that.

__________________
Dream like there are no limits. Live like there's no tomorrow. Love like you've never been fucked with. Die sans regret.

Gilda

I know for a fact that this isn't true of me. I had three serious relationships before I met my SO. I wasn't in love in any of them, no matter how much I wanted to be. In the last one, I liked the guy enough that I could have stayed with him for a very long time; we liked each other, we shared interests, we were compatable socially and tempermentally, we were mostly compatable socially. But I didn't love him, not romantically; I don't think I could love any man in that way. And he could sense this, and it pushed him away. We tried to love each other, but we couldn't.

With my SO, it was effortless. I lusted after her the moment I saw her, and knew I loved her within a couple of months. Nothing I had ever felt came close; I never had loved anyone before, I just didn't know that until I met her and discovered what true love is.

Can we learn to love someone? I don't doubt that we can. But I doubt that we can learn to love anyone. I've tried. It just doesn't always work.

Seeker

I've had this experience and the same result

I think the concept of unconditional and conditional love comes into play here too. Conditional love being that you love someone for what or how they make you feel about yourself. Unconditional love, I think, would have more to do with a deep mutual respect and caring without the needy aspect.

Redjake: I think I tried to love one because I felt obligated by his love for me, however this would have been a more 'conditional' love. It was something that I couldn't go along with for a life long partner, even though it seemed like the more powerful 'feeling', I couldn't envisage the day to day with him or even wanted the day to day with him. Upon reflection, the fact that his love for me was conditional as well means that because I wouldn't go there, he went elsewhere (quite quickly I might add! - ouch!).

The other I would call closer to an unconditional love, I like/love/respect the other despite the fact that I don't have all my needs met by him - at this point I have not met anyone else I would like to spend my life with although it has it's difficulties. The reflection here also is that despite me going elsewhere, he respected my needs at the time and he was still here when I got back. So I'm guessing his love is more the unconditional type.

Sorry if that's "overshare" but I thought it relevant to this discussion.