Today I would like to talk about love. We hear and use this word in everyday conversations, movies, TV shows, newspapers, and literature, but all of us have our own “love” image based on childhood, culture, media, and life experiences.
In my childhood the word “love” had a very negative image. The members of my family rarely expressed this feeling toward each other. I felt that it was shame to love. When I liked someone from our neighborhood, I tried my best not to demonstrate it because I was afraid of being ridiculed. The same my brother did.
In my teenage years I began reading love poetry. There poets talked about this sensation in open and beautiful manner. Sometimes with pride. I accepted blindly their personal view on love.
From poetry I got the sense that love is pain, obsession, parting, being in distance, and unrequited feeling. As a result, I fell in love with boys who could give me what I unconsciously expected: boys from other cities; boys who did not pay attention to me; or even inaccessible adult men. I thought it was normal not be able to reach the object of my love.
I had a friend in university for which love meant exciting sex (her mother was obsessed with sex.) This girl always slept with a guy on the first date (as her mother did,) and only after that she could express if she was in love with him or not.
My other female friend considered love as the ability to take care of someone. She nursed every man she was with hoping he will change: providing money, encouraging continuing university, looking for a job for him, cooking and cleaning after him. She grew up with three younger brothers she had to take care of.
I can provide you with a number of illustrations displaying that love has different meaning for people with different backgrounds. I am sure you have your examples as well.
After years of contemplating on the subject of love, I came to the conclusion that satisfies me and gives me a chance to build my life the way I want: my relationships depend on how I interpret this word – that is which meaning I put into it – in addition to the unconscious patterns within me. This way of thinking prevented me from being influenced by patterns from childhood experience, books, movies, standarts, or personal opinions.
I will share with you a concise description of the “love” image I have created for myself (that is the way I live now):
First of all, love is when both partners can be happy being singly because they are self-sufficient personalities.
Second, a couple lives together to be doubly happier and to enjoy their company with each other. They respect and appreciate each other.
Third, they are connected to each other through the act of creation: their space of love, their home, their garden, their favorite occupation, and their children.
Related Posts on Genuine Woman:
Women's Issues
I must say you have a healthy clear perspective of the word after having a distorted view of love in your younger years. Nice work. Many people never truly understand or take the time to figure things out such as this.
I am very happy with my current perspective. The same I wish to others.
I remember recently in a hotel I was in, a guest bring a cat in the hotel and the management doesn’t allow the guest to bring the cat in their room. It is a strict policy that no pets allowed. So the guest decided to make an early check out for their pet.
Hmm… ok.
I so love your take on the meaning of love.
Reading what you have wrote…I have to ask…
Is Love a learned behavior?
It is interesting how we all come from different upbringings and we all strive for the same thing being….real meaning of Love.
~D~
Very interesting question that requires a lot of thinking, Dorothy! =)
That is what I have for now.
Love is feeling therefore it is hard to define and to control it. But there are other things that are involved in love: personalities, ways of thinking, and childhood experience. These things are under control.
For example, if one is a pessimist and has a negative image of love, love experience will be destructive. While an optimist who considers love as bliss will experience love constructively.
Another example, a selfish person needs to possess an object of love, while a shy one will enjoy love from a distance.
Also, it is not an accident that we fall in love with a certain type of men. It is not an accident that we attract certain men.
***
Anyways, for me love is great and strong feeling which I want to keep and take care of, as well as to experience in fulfilling way.
***
Dorothy, what do you think about love? Do we learn how to love?
Thanks for your comment on my blog. I am having trouble responding to comment there so I thought I would let you know by leaving you one here. Your right, more people should grow their own food & make their own as much as they can. Thanks again and have a great weekend.
Love is a natural gift of life. My blog Evolutionary Relationships deals with various aspects of this topic. Regarding just LOVE,
http://evolutionary-relations.blogspot.com/2009/06/love.html
Love is..loving someone without caring about their badness
I think the main point in your post is a wonderful one. One’s experience of love is going to be determined to a large part by one’s idea of love. You gave several good examples of this, both from your own life and those of others. Of all the types of love you describe, I like the type you have created for yourself the best
Love is a natural gift of life. My blog Evolutionary Relationships deals with various aspects of this topic. Regarding just LOVE and LOVE
searching something special on the net, i found
this website. so i stay here a moment. looking around
and i think this site very nice and useful, just thank you. i lucky today.
Thank you all of you for stopping by and leaving your comments. =) I deeply appreciate it.
love is the most complicated thing for all………
Hi Ekaterina,
Obviously you’ve worked hard at figuring out how love works for you. And by the way, it’s a great model.
I would add that just simply having fun with the other person is an important component for love.
Not all friends are lovers, but all lovers should be friends.
That’s how love sustains and moves beyond the bedroom.
Thanks for your thoughts.
Bring Back Pluto
“ONE of THE GUYS”
That is the good point, Pluto! I like it! Fun and joy are very important.
I like how you have determined what love is for you. Maybe each person needs a more clear description of what they think love is before searching for it.
My childhood images of love and family are much like the ones you have shared but for me there was a point when I found that trying to define love in any way became a limitation on my relationships.
If I thought love was about helping, I’d meet someone who thought it was about intimacy. Then I would think of love as intimacy and I’d meet someone who thought it was about purely physical attraction. When I thought love was a physical act I would meet someone who thought love was about servitude.
Then my daughter was born. I had no idea what to expect, how I would feel about this tiny person or even if I would ever be able to relate to her. I found that I took joy from her smile, her voice, her coyness and her deliberate nature. Every experience that we’ve shared for these past nine and a half years has been of value. When she’s at school or visiting her mom, I feel the absence and when she’s home we are a family and we are friends and we laugh, play and enjoy our life.
Maybe the way we love our children, with reckless abandon and complete forgiveness, should be a lesson for our adult relationship responsibilities. Rather than having a set of guidelines and parameters going in, we could just wait until we meet someone, let whatever happens, happen and then decide if the feelings we have are actually love or something different.
I see the first benefit being a great deal less disappointment simply because no one has failed to meet our expectations, since we had none to start with.
Next I see much less pressure to “find” love where it may not exist and that would allow for less of a feeling that we have “failed” in some cases just because we’ve invested some time and have nothing to show for it. (By the way, I think there is always something to show for any experience, even if it is merely the experience itself)
Finally I think we might be able to discover what true love is when it develops completely naturally rather than by meeting all of the items on our mental check list.
While this may seem an over simplification it has spared me a lot of hurt and disappointment. My relationships are more genuine and there have been no more temporary or intermediate forays which have no possible hope of lasting. And even though true love has still evaded my grasp, I am much more content with creating and sustaining friendships that are defined by mutual respect and character than to be trounced by a steady flow of meaningless encounters.
I understand what you mean. I feel the same: love should be natural. But in my family and society everything is so messed up that I had to play with my mind in order to have happy life.
Or I had to learn from scratch a lot of very simple things in order to have harmonious relationship with my husband because I did not example in my family – the relationships between my father and mother were always on fire!
Anyways, I am glad with that because it is better to build everything from the scratch instead of copying “unhealthy” patterns of others.
Try:
A General Theory of Love by
Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon.
Very Insightful.
-M
Thank you, Manoah. I will check it out.
Wonderful post. Yes it is one’s life experiences especially during the childhood that shape up one’s perceptions about love and rest of the things in life and then we unconsciously play them into our reality. I just loved your own definition of “love”. In fact it is exactly the same as mine. Reading your posts, I have a feeling as if I am meeting myself. Lots of love dear. God bless you.
Thank you, Pratishtha! I just visited your blog and was amazed that we think the same way. For me it is like a heart occasion to meet one more a person similar to me.