What is love between a man and a woman?

[Wolfsage]

I'm not good with love. If anything I'm afaird of it. The pain of loss. Or being used and lied to. Manipulated and abused. So what is love? I have my own ideas. But, need some clarity in the subject. Thoughts are welcome.

 

[Markness]

I’ve only had one real relationship but it’s all I have to go on. It was like having a friend with a lot more warmth, especially when you hold hands, hug, and kiss. I miss all three things.

 

[MyLifeAsAnAspie]

It's an instinctual attraction between male/female intended to produce offspring. Yes, it produces instinctual rewards to ensure breeding success. Not a good answer if asked the question on a first date .

But seriously it can be great. Makes us feel like we're almost human. Took me a long time to get from a feeling of playing a game that I couldn't learn the rules of to almost getting it right enough.

 

[All-Rounder]

Love is personal. It involves choice, the choice of love and self work. Healthy love can't happen until both people have solved their issues. Unhealthy and unprogressing coping mechanisms can't make things last.

That being said it involves consequences for equalizing, mirroring of emotional involvement for equalizing and understanding for equalizing.

Some people are said to be unable of love, because their emotional experiences are limited.

Love is honest and automatically selfless. It gets easy to feel what you want to towards the person, to understand them beyond your needs and fears. That is when I think love starts to bloom.

 

[Aspychata]

Love is personal. It involves choice, the choice of love and self work. Healthy love can't happen until both people have solved their issues. Unhealthy and unprogressing coping mechanisms can't make things last.

That being said it involves consequences for equalizing, mirroring of emotional involvement for equalizing and understanding for equalizing.

Some people are said to be unable of love, because their emotional experiences are limited.

Love is honest and automatically selfless. It gets easy to feel what you want to towards the person, to understand them beyond your needs and fears. That is when I think love starts to bloom.

You took an extremely difficult concept and broke it down in a very poetic fashion.

 

[Aspychata]

You took an extremely difficult concept and broke it down in a very poetic fashion.

For me- love is a connection of mental, physical and spiritual. This rarely happens. We may connect on some levels but rarely on all. I take delight in their smiles, in their laughter, and all of what they share of themselves. Every day feels like a new beginning storyline to discover and connect.

 

[Markness]

For me- love is a connection of mental, physical and spiritual. This rarely happens. We may connect on some levels but rarely on all. I take delight in their smiles, in their laughter, and all of what they share of themselves. Every day feels like a new beginning storyline to discover and connect.

I miss those things as well. It’s the physical and emotional warmth I miss the most, though. Getting to cuddle and being told “I love you.” after years of getting physically harmed and having “Mark” (Yes, my sn comes from my real name) said in a hostile tone was unlike anything else.

 

[Aspychata]

Love is personal. It involves choice, the choice of love and self work. Healthy love can't happen until both people have solved their issues. Unhealthy and unprogressing coping mechanisms can't make things last.

That being said it involves consequences for equalizing, mirroring of emotional involvement for equalizing and understanding for equalizing.

Some people are said to be unable of love, because their emotional experiences are limited.

Love is honest and automatically selfless. It gets easy to feel what you want to towards the person, to understand them beyond your needs and fears. That is when I think love starts to bloom.

Yes. Also it feels as if you heal each other in some weird neurotic way. Because you understand each other's dark emotional void and embrace it and lead them to a understanding and acceptance in the process. So you may share some of the same trauma even or understanding of it.

 

[Gerontius]

Mutual respect, understanding, and kindness. There is the sense sometimes of knowing you are loved, and then knowing you have someone to care about. It's one of the greatest things in the world.

Not married so cannot speak (and would not speak) of other aspects of this; however, affection & care for another is powerful. It is one of the few things that can make us, Aspies, realize we are actually normal in a way.

 

[Au Naturel]

Love is caring for the welfare of the other person. Their happiness becomes an extension of your own. When you lose someone you love, it is just like an appendage has been ripped from you. (The deeper the love, the bigger the appendage.) This definition of love works for every loving relationship, parent-child, romantic partners, pets and their owners, and friends. The Greeks had at least 7 different words for different kinds of love but I would argue that love is just one thing with different flavors caused by mixing in other ingredients.

Love can coexist with anger. Just because you care about the welfare of the other person doesn't stop you from caring about your own welfare. (Or if you get too controlling. You can love a possession but people aren't meant to be possessions.)

Love too deeply and you are in danger of obsessing. You're in danger of missing out on all the practical considerations needed to make love endure. You are in danger of neglecting your own needs which will drag love down to a miserable end. You're also in danger of burning out.

Such passionate joys have violent endings. They die in their moment of triumph, just like a spark and gunpowder destroy themselves in an explosion once they touch.
Therefore love moderately; long love doth so. Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.

Act II, Scene V, Romeo and Juliette

​

Lust is pretty much self-explanatory. I use lust in a broader sense than just sexual arousal. It is the entire reproductively driven complex of feelings but it pretty much centers on at least the possibility of arousal. Like chocolate and peanut butter, love and lust go really well together even though they are fine by themselves.

Romantic love is love plus lust. If the two of you are sympatico, you may get successful pair bonding. The biggest problem with romantic love is that it blinds one to defects in each other and the relationship. A rush of love and lust bring people together who will not enjoy each other's company when the pheromones and endorphins and oxytocin and testosterone wear off. (That makes for a breakup or a divorce.) The almost inevitable admixture of lust is what makes it difficult for men and women to "just be friends."

Loving deeply and lusting powerfully seems to be what teens and young adults are evolutionarily primed for. A good strategy for making and raising lots of babies as fast as possible. That's how paleolithic humans expanded the population despite having huge infant mortality and a short life expectancy.

A long term relationship requires more than love and lust. It also requires a pair bond. A pair-bond results when two personalities match well. It happens in friendships as well, so one could say a love-lust relationship that includes strong friendship will likely succeed.

Successful Long term friendships include an area where interests are shared but will also include opposite traits that are mutually supportive. I may be overly wild in some areas where my wife is overly conservative. I may be a logical anchor in areas where she may be emotionally untethered. I have interests she is utterly uninterested and vice versa. That allows us to have strong independent lives outside of the relationship. But that brings up the issue of trust, also essential for a good pair bond.

Good relationships have a lot of trust. At the beginning of a relationship, trust is based more on faith than experience. Trust is something that can be learned and is also something that is earned. Jealousy can happen when trust has not been learned but just as often it happens when one or both fail to earn it. Or having appeared to earn it, betrays it. Either way, legitimate trust is more easily lost than gained.

And there are people who simply cannot trust. Avoid them.

If you are fortunate enough to fall head over heels for someone, enjoy it for what it is worth. You will be doubly fortunate if your partner also falls head over heels for you. That isn't something you can control. Whatever the level of love you feel, the relationship probably won't work over the long haul if it is asymmetric. It will always redound to the disadvantage of the one who loves more. The one with more love will feel deprived and the one who feels less will feel imposed upon.

 

[Fino]

Love is when you care for someone's well-being more than your own.

 

[Gracey]

Love can be so many things according to anyone who's experienced and written or spoken about it.

I want to write ,
A raging surge of hormones and neurotransmitters triggered by attraction,
tapering off to less dramatic levels once attachment is established.
(I think that initial dramatic phase may be known as 'The Honeymoon Period')

I think 'love' is what happens beyond that initial phase.
The attachment and caring that can extend sixty plus years into the future.

I suspect that there 'attachment and caring' is built upon the experiences of our early years and developed over time.

 

[Thinx]

Yes, the 'Honeymoon phase' is where you see only the best stuff about the other person, and after that gradually acknowledge all of who and how they are. Losing the idealisation but exchanging it for reality, which is potentially a better, truer foundation for love and intimacy.

I guess that's where the factor of loving them despite their downsides comes in. I don't know if I subscribe to the idea of loving them more than I love myself? As much as, seems a more secure basis for a relationship to me. I don't want anyone to die for me, I want them to live for themselves and me. And to offer that too, good enough self worth alongside solid appreciation of the other person.

 

[hatfullofrain]

Mutual respect, understanding, and kindness. There is the sense sometimes of knowing you are loved, and then knowing you have someone to care about. It's one of the greatest things in the world.

Not married so cannot speak (and would not speak) of other aspects of this; however, affection & care for another is powerful. It is one of the few things that can make us, Aspies, realize we are actually normal in a way.

I was going to say this too. Respect is absoultely the first and most important thing. Even when you disagree, you will hear out someone that you respect. If someone respects you, then you are more likely to want to meet in the middle. And if you love each other on top of that you will want to find ways to make each other happy and find ways to live together. And you will want to spend time together.

Too many couples seem to get together because of just attraction and hormones and societal pressure that you have to be in a couple to be a grown up. But they neither love nor respect each other.

 

[hatfullofrain]

Love is when you care for someone's well-being more than your own.

True, but you've got to be careful with that. Make sure that they love you back otherwise you will get used. Too many idealistic people have wasted their lives on others that didn't care about them.

OP. If you are scared of being used then learn what red flags to look out for. The general population is pretty decent, but it's good to have the skills to weed out users.

Here's a good list.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/in-flux/201407/10-relationship-red-flags

My first boyfriend was a manipulative, controlling type, which is a shame, but at least I learned what to look out for early on and I've never been in an abusive relationship since.

 

[Crossbreed]

"There are three things which are too wonderful for me,
Yes, four which I do not understand:

• The way of an eagle in the air,
• The way of a serpent on a rock,
• The way of a ship in the midst of the sea,
• And the way of a man with a virgin."

 

[hatfullofrain]

eew

"There are three things which are too wonderful for me,
Yes, four which I do not understand:

• The way of an eagle in the air,
• The way of a serpent on a rock,
• The way of a ship in the midst of the sea,
• And the way of a man with a virgin."

eewww

 

[Thinx]

"There are three things which are too wonderful for me,
Yes, four which I do not understand:

• The way of an eagle in the air,
• The way of a serpent on a rock,
• The way of a ship in the midst of the sea,
• And the way of a man with a virgin."

Maybe you could give some context about that?

 

[Crossbreed]

Maybe you could give some context about that?

Not outside of the "Religion" sub-forum, I can't (but one can Google it).

 

[Thinx]

Not outside of the "Religion" sub-forum, I can't (but one can Google it).

I'm guessing it's a quote from a religious source then? Just, on it's own without context, it is hard to interpret. I think you can give sources of quotes without breaking the rules probably.