Love : Can you define it?

Love is mostly tender and quiet.
Love is a light that allows people to see things that are not seen by others.

Love is a profound and thorny emotion. It inspires people to heroic acts and drives them to desperate measures. Poems, plays and songs have tried to explain its mysteries and allures. Defining love is a challenge—how can you tell if the feeling you are experiencing is truly love? Love can easily be confused with lust, desire and extreme fondness.

When someone we love enters the room, our eyes and heart light up. We look at this person. We feel a growing feeling of joy within us. We reach out and touch their hand. We feel happy and fulfilled.

Love can generate many powerful feelings. It can provide a deep ecstasy, and a cavernous suffering when frustrated. To some people, love is irrational. Love can seem like an emotional storm.

Some people come to believe that love is a false hope. They began their relationship with romantic feelings. They had dreams for their future. They felt that life was finally rewarding and worthwhile. But eventually the relationship began to fall apart. They remember when they were in love. They feel tortured by their inability to see how or why their love was lost.

In spite of these experiences, people are still drawn to something they hardly ever reach. It is an extreme yearning. A desire that is difficult to extinguish. Love is not something that must crumble when faced with practical realities.

Most people never learn how to keep up a loving relationship. The reason is simple. Nobody showed them. The mere fact that a man and woman feel love toward each other does not assure that they will be able to create a joyful and rewarding life. Love does not automatically teach a person communication skills. Love does not teach a person how to resolve a conflict. Love does not teach people how to weave their love into the rest of their life.

For most people who fall in love, a time will come when they sense the start of problems. They know that love can produce great joy and happiness. But with time, they begin to feel more alone. They experience self-doubt and they feel the consequence of their unmet needs. They begin to see the other person more like they truly are and not what they needed them to be. They usually begin to find faults in others and they may become jealous, angry, bitter, sarcastic or cynical. Many will separate or remain together in misery. They will often have children and try to raise a family in an effort to revive the relationship or to feel better. Many will have an affair. When they separate or divorce, some will get involved in another relationship too quickly. They try to find some way to ease the pain. They idealize this new person in their life and the cycle starts over. They say to themselves, "I'll never be hurt like that again.

It is to be remembered that marriage itself does not create or sustain love. To love someone, and for that love to endure, requires the ability to see that person with clarity. For example, we have all seen how some people will idealize or glamorize their partners. They exaggerate their good qualities, and they ignore and avoid considering significant differences and potential problems. Why do they do this? Many reasons, but mostly because they need to see the person in this idealized way. People can fall in love with the idea of a person who doesn’t really exist and then hope the relationship will endure.

To quote the quote:

Marriage is not a ritual or an end.
It is a long, intricate,
intimate dance together
and nothing matters more
than your own sense of balance
and your choice of partner.
- Amy Bloom -

When a man and woman encounter each other in midst of love they seek intimate contact. In a general sense, love is a response to something we intimately value. Love is the experience of joy in the presence of a loved one, joy in being close to a loved one, and joy in our interaction with a loved one.

To live successfully is to put ourselves into the world; to give expression to our thoughts, our values, and our goals. Whenever we express our personality, we make known our values, our intelligence, and our sense of life, our rhythm and temperament. Each of us expresses ourselves in our behaviour - - how we act and what we say. Whatever we express in our behaviour can be reflected back by the response and the behaviour expressed by others. We see how others respond if we are paying attention. The way they act, how they look at us, the way they speak to us, and especially the ways in which they don't respond.

When we encounter a person who thinks as we do, and notices what we do, and values what we do, we experience a strong feeling of contact with that person.

Sometimes two people meet and are on the verge of falling in love. They may have a lot in common and they may be physically attracted on the basis of their appearances. Yet they can feel strangely out-of-sync with each other. They may even feel irritated and have difficulty accounting for these feelings. The person who is naturally fast and eagerly explores life may feel chronically impatient with a person who savors life at a slower pace. The person with a less fevered pace may feel chronically pressured. The person who interprets these differences as personal or intentional by the other will feel frustrated and even angry in the relationship.

Failure to understand the importance of our rhythm and energy, and the effect on relationships, will lead to quarrels and disagreements. These differences can become antagonistic even though they have the potential to become complimentary. When couples don't recognize or appreciate their differences, many will become extreme or try to change the other person in order to create a balance. When this fails couples begin to look for faults in each other. As the relationship begins to fail, they may begin to explain their problems in terms of the alleged faults. They remain unaware of deeper reasons for their discomfort and acceptance of differences.

When a man and woman meet and feel "in sync", there can be an exhilarating experience of harmony and that their relationship is right. Being "in sync" is an experience of knowing the other in a very special sense. Both may resonate to a marvellous kind of rhythm.

Love is not blind - It sees more and not less,
but because it sees more it is willing to see less.
- Will Moss -