Banshee, razz, et-all,
Love is an ill-defined emotion of dubious long-term value. In practice, love is really a combination of other more easily understood emotions. Primarily it consists of feelings of security, satisfaction, contentment, loyalty, and trust, etc. Reduce or remove any one of these components and love will not be present, or will be seriously limited.
Note that you rarely find men discussing among themselves aspects of love. Typically such discussions are overwhelmingly a female arena. This is a direct result of an evolutionary effect where child rearing required such security, even to the point where a mother would sacrifice herself for her offspring. Ultimately love is a mechanism for survival.
Most people find such emotions understandably attractive. But often love is sought because of personal weaknesses. For example putting your total trust and dependence in the strengths (strengths that you lack) of a partner may well give all the aspects of security and contentment, but the partnership is often one-sided since the other partner cannot then depend on complementary strength. If the partner then dies, or leaves then the dependent often suffers severe depression and inability to function properly.
The best partnerships come when both sides have equal levels of strengths, perhaps complimentary strengths, but all factors should be present. We all suffer weaknesses from time to time and it is those times when the strengths of the partner become vital for the relationship to continue. If any of those aspects are missing then one partner will feel betrayed and confused, and love will be false.
The best loving partnerships comes from stable couples who can each offer equal value to each other.
An increasing number of partnerships fail because the relationship is one-side, but also because many find that the need to depend on another is no longer as important as it was many years ago. And most of this is coming from females. As equal rights for men and women gradually become a reality, women are now increasingly asserting their newfound independence and no longer need to depend on the man to be the provider. Many men have not realized this progressive change yet, and must pay the price.
The divorce rate in the USA is now at around 50% to 60%, i.e. most marriages fail. This is higher among young people, who due to their immaturity and inexperience, form unequal partnerships as described above. As soon as one side finds independent strength then they prefer to go it alone or seek a stronger partner.
Unconditional love is the love you feel when you are doing the right thing. Being true to yourself in the first place and your heart tells you exactly how to act to someone you love unconditinal.
No I think that is wrong. Real effective love requires some work. I think learning how to do the right thing and how to act correctly results in effective love, and not the reverse. It isn’t your heart that tells you how to act it is your intellect. The emotions (heart) then will fall into place. If you hope love will just appear without effort then you are deluded, you would be trusting to luck only.
And the love you feel for your soul mate if you are lucky enough to find him/her?
This unfortunately implies that love is the normal state and that one is unlucky if not in love. This attitude that is forced on everyone by the media and trashy love novels, encourages too many people to assume that they are somehow incomplete if they are not in a loving relationship. Unfortunately most people are not in such relationships and the continued propagation of such expectations that they should be is cruel and immoral.
I don’t see that being in a state of love is either necessary or highly desirable. Once you can ignore the media pressure, and have the courage to learn how to support and depend on yourself, then partnerships can then be seen as a disadvantage rather than an advantage. All relationships involve a considerable degree of compromise, and often both never achieve what they would like to do if they were single. That is a loss.
And events in life do change, so an expectation that love will last forever is shown to be an illusion. In most cases love does not last, so one should not expect it.
I remember a deep loving relationship where I remember being so satisfied that the thought that it could possibly end just didn’t occur to me. We divorced 7 years later. The marriage lasted 18 years. We are now two very independent people and extremely good friends, but neither of us has any plans or intentions in participating in relationships with anyone ever again. It just isn’t necessary.
I am sure there will be those who cannot imagine not being in a relationship, and those who are desperately seeking love, I suspect mainly because of media pressure, but most do not find lasting love, and always think they are to blame.
In our modern society independent survival is now easily possible and very practical. The old idea that girls should marry quickly and raise children and depend for their survival on their husbands has now almost vanished. And the basic unit of the family is also beginning to dissolve.
The emotional blackmail spread by the media and religion that love is all you need is irresponsible and causes massive pain and suffering for many young people who do not have the wisdom and experience to decide for themselves.
So if you really want love with another then you will need to work for it, and expect a great deal of pain en-route. Learning to be truly independent and learning to love yourself is a far more practical solution to a very happy and contented lifestyle.
Cris