09-27-2014, 05:18 PM
I just had an insight, and I'll post it before I forget.
It has to do with 'love', and the concept of 'loving' someone. This is strictly opinion.
To start, I think it's important to define how the verb 'to love' is relating the subject and object as part of our English language.
I believe that 'to love' is a transitive verb, in which the subject ("I") is directing their feelings of love towards the object ("you"). If 'I love you', then the 'subject' is directing their feelings of love towards the 'object' See: SVO, or Sujet-Verb-Object if you're confused.
I think that most people get the concept backwards, where they 'love' someone by extracting value off of the person they're 'in love' with. Instead of loving someone just because, there's an aim towards a guided or specific action that the person (the 'object' in the sentence) should be performing. Either it's paying them attention, buying them things, "proving" their love, or just loving them back.
If the first definition is correct, then it should be okay to "love" a woman you've just met, or even to love all women. All you're doing is directing feelings of love towards these women; it's loving for the sake of loving them. It's also unidirectional; it's got almost nothing to do with them (they don't necessarily need to love you back).
One step beyond this is to direct love even when it's not convenient to do so (see: unconditional love). Of course, this needs to be functional, along with healthy boundaries to prevent dysfunctional behavior to occur, much less to condone bad behavior.
Mind you, this isn't the "I need to marry you" type of romantic love. It's simply "I feel positive emotions and I'm directing them towards you". Love certainly deepens and matures as we spend more time together and gain more positive experiences with one another, and it would be irresponsible to jump into a binding legal agreement until you've sorted out your compatibilities and made damn sure you're in it for the long run (that's a different story).
If we're going by the second definition, my love is actually a deep-seated need for the other person to give me some sort of value (value, in its crudest sense, as a form of attention directed towards the subject), be it kissing, sex, love redirected towards them. By this definition, love needs to be "proven", such as romantic stipulations "prove to me that you love me by marrying me/having kids/having sex with me" or even familial stipulations "prove to me that you love me by cleaning your room/eating your vegetables/going to college". This turns love into a conditional and dysfunctional mess.
Love is pretty simple under a certain light. If I love you, I love you. Love doesn't to be "proven"; if I love someone, I love them. That's all the proof that's needed.
As a matter of fact, with this insight, I don't understand why it's weird to say "I love you", unless it has an underlying tone of "...and I hope you love me too". The first half is a simple statement, saying "I feel many positive emotions relative to you, and that these emotions are not held hostage to your approval or actions."
One cannot help but throw in the second half ("and I hope you love me too") if they're coming from a place of conditional love. Removing the conditional nature of that statement takes emotional maturity, healing of traumas, and a cultivation of self-sustaining love for self and others.
Most are unwilling to undergo this process of healing themselves, and so being told "I love you" by an emotionally broken person can make one very squeamish, as it's almost an emotionally manipulative tactic; either comply with their forthcomings, and be boxed into a cause-and-effect relationship of needing to perform certain actions to make the other person happy, or reject their declaration, and deal with the knowledge that you've failed to give them the value that they craved with their "love".
Being told "I love you" by a person who is emotionally secure/strong/mature and a deep sense of love of self and others could only be a neutral or positive experience, as it offers no conditions (the object does not need to do anything about it), it's unidirectional and doesn't really need the other to return those feelings (the object isn't obligated to love the subject back). Being told "I love you" can only add positive emotions, as real and true love itself is a positive emotion.
That said, it's perfectly fine to love others fully, love everyone, and love people you've only just met. Whether they love you (feel and direct positive emotions in return) isn't any of your business, and is completely theirs.
This makes the game of waiting a year/fifteen dates/whatever-extraneous-condition to tell your partner "I love you" (or for her to tell you first) as completely moot, as it's saying "I need your go-ahead to experience and direct the positive emotions that I've felt towards you, but haven't been expressing as it's vulnerable".
Whether you choose to say it or not say it is up to you, as others may not completely understand love in this light, but you have complete choice to feel it. Were you feeling it less before those words were said?
It seems that people wait to say 'I love you' because, in coming from the conditional aspect of love, they want to be damn sure that the other person in this exchange is feeling conditional love towards them, so that their declaration won't leave them holding the bag (they couldn't handle it if their love were unidirectional). They also want to make sure that the other person says "I love you" too (more conditions and stipulations).
By this new definition of loving for its own sake, I most definitely feel love towards a sizable amount of women. I feel and direct positive emotions towards them and the aspects of them which I find pleasing, and if they don't return the favor, that's fine. This could be with women in relationships, or just uninterested.
The hole in my logic is that I feel more positive emotions towards women that look a certain way (which is conditional, therefore not unconditional). Love could also be confused with lust in this case. But I can feel love towards women of all ages, even if they're not within "fucking age" (a very crude way of saying 'the age in which I would want to engage with them in a sexual relationship'). This means young or old, I'm able to feel some form of love towards them; the emotions that are felt are just different.
Or, this whole essay could be completely wrong, as I'm still recovering from my cold, and it's having me write silly things. Or, I have a tape worm that's attached itself to my brain stem and wanted to express itself.
It has to do with 'love', and the concept of 'loving' someone. This is strictly opinion.
To start, I think it's important to define how the verb 'to love' is relating the subject and object as part of our English language.
I believe that 'to love' is a transitive verb, in which the subject ("I") is directing their feelings of love towards the object ("you"). If 'I love you', then the 'subject' is directing their feelings of love towards the 'object' See: SVO, or Sujet-Verb-Object if you're confused.
I think that most people get the concept backwards, where they 'love' someone by extracting value off of the person they're 'in love' with. Instead of loving someone just because, there's an aim towards a guided or specific action that the person (the 'object' in the sentence) should be performing. Either it's paying them attention, buying them things, "proving" their love, or just loving them back.
If the first definition is correct, then it should be okay to "love" a woman you've just met, or even to love all women. All you're doing is directing feelings of love towards these women; it's loving for the sake of loving them. It's also unidirectional; it's got almost nothing to do with them (they don't necessarily need to love you back).
One step beyond this is to direct love even when it's not convenient to do so (see: unconditional love). Of course, this needs to be functional, along with healthy boundaries to prevent dysfunctional behavior to occur, much less to condone bad behavior.
Mind you, this isn't the "I need to marry you" type of romantic love. It's simply "I feel positive emotions and I'm directing them towards you". Love certainly deepens and matures as we spend more time together and gain more positive experiences with one another, and it would be irresponsible to jump into a binding legal agreement until you've sorted out your compatibilities and made damn sure you're in it for the long run (that's a different story).
If we're going by the second definition, my love is actually a deep-seated need for the other person to give me some sort of value (value, in its crudest sense, as a form of attention directed towards the subject), be it kissing, sex, love redirected towards them. By this definition, love needs to be "proven", such as romantic stipulations "prove to me that you love me by marrying me/having kids/having sex with me" or even familial stipulations "prove to me that you love me by cleaning your room/eating your vegetables/going to college". This turns love into a conditional and dysfunctional mess.
Love is pretty simple under a certain light. If I love you, I love you. Love doesn't to be "proven"; if I love someone, I love them. That's all the proof that's needed.
As a matter of fact, with this insight, I don't understand why it's weird to say "I love you", unless it has an underlying tone of "...and I hope you love me too". The first half is a simple statement, saying "I feel many positive emotions relative to you, and that these emotions are not held hostage to your approval or actions."
One cannot help but throw in the second half ("and I hope you love me too") if they're coming from a place of conditional love. Removing the conditional nature of that statement takes emotional maturity, healing of traumas, and a cultivation of self-sustaining love for self and others.
Most are unwilling to undergo this process of healing themselves, and so being told "I love you" by an emotionally broken person can make one very squeamish, as it's almost an emotionally manipulative tactic; either comply with their forthcomings, and be boxed into a cause-and-effect relationship of needing to perform certain actions to make the other person happy, or reject their declaration, and deal with the knowledge that you've failed to give them the value that they craved with their "love".
Being told "I love you" by a person who is emotionally secure/strong/mature and a deep sense of love of self and others could only be a neutral or positive experience, as it offers no conditions (the object does not need to do anything about it), it's unidirectional and doesn't really need the other to return those feelings (the object isn't obligated to love the subject back). Being told "I love you" can only add positive emotions, as real and true love itself is a positive emotion.
That said, it's perfectly fine to love others fully, love everyone, and love people you've only just met. Whether they love you (feel and direct positive emotions in return) isn't any of your business, and is completely theirs.
This makes the game of waiting a year/fifteen dates/whatever-extraneous-condition to tell your partner "I love you" (or for her to tell you first) as completely moot, as it's saying "I need your go-ahead to experience and direct the positive emotions that I've felt towards you, but haven't been expressing as it's vulnerable".
Whether you choose to say it or not say it is up to you, as others may not completely understand love in this light, but you have complete choice to feel it. Were you feeling it less before those words were said?
It seems that people wait to say 'I love you' because, in coming from the conditional aspect of love, they want to be damn sure that the other person in this exchange is feeling conditional love towards them, so that their declaration won't leave them holding the bag (they couldn't handle it if their love were unidirectional). They also want to make sure that the other person says "I love you" too (more conditions and stipulations).
By this new definition of loving for its own sake, I most definitely feel love towards a sizable amount of women. I feel and direct positive emotions towards them and the aspects of them which I find pleasing, and if they don't return the favor, that's fine. This could be with women in relationships, or just uninterested.
The hole in my logic is that I feel more positive emotions towards women that look a certain way (which is conditional, therefore not unconditional). Love could also be confused with lust in this case. But I can feel love towards women of all ages, even if they're not within "fucking age" (a very crude way of saying 'the age in which I would want to engage with them in a sexual relationship'). This means young or old, I'm able to feel some form of love towards them; the emotions that are felt are just different.
Or, this whole essay could be completely wrong, as I'm still recovering from my cold, and it's having me write silly things. Or, I have a tape worm that's attached itself to my brain stem and wanted to express itself.
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