Love: Is it a behavior or an ability?

Thanks, dlowan, for the insights. I'd learned some of it before, but that filled in a few gaps for me.

Hiama, I've known some of those "saints," too (and I'm the better for it, I should add.) As I've gotten to know their families though, I've found that even they have their quirks. Still, on the whole they're much better off than the rest of us. Although it's hard to believe sometimes, there really are healthy families & healthy marriages out there. I try to hang around them as much as possible, hoping I will learn something useful. And I usually do.

Debs and Sozobe, thanks for the great insight.

Visitor, it definitely is better being around positive people. Slightly off topic this, the same principle can be applied when relating to loved ones and realtionships though.

In many of my management positions, some quite senior, I have come across senior managers and directors who always seem to need to blame someone for something. After many months I managed to manage my current boss out of this state. If there was ever a problem, I'd say ok we had a problem, we've spoken about how it happended and how we can resolve it, lets MOVE ON. After several sessions like this, he started to say it back to me !

Success !

Hmm, Hiama - I am trying to do that with a secretary where I work - she always seeks a scapegoat for mistakes - every time I happen to catch her in a whopper I say how we all make 'em, let's just get on with dealing with it.... hope it helps some day...

Behavior is the ability.

My vote as usual falls beween the cracks; "all of the above".

Love is a state of mind.

It includes all the baggage, hopes, fears, joys, failings, past relationships, dammage, strengths, medals, punishments....... all aspects of a life lived.

It is the bringing of another, willingly into this "space", to share all of this experience together.

I did not mean to disappear but things got a little complicated.

Maybe my dysfunction is thinking that my family functions. I have one sister who doesn't function fully but that is more from her own actions than those of my family, although this does not prevent her from pointing the finger of blame directly at my parents.

It is a fact that none of us are saintly and it is a fact that we are too prone to the blues and too much enjoy sarcasm to be described as optimists and it is true that there are areas of each of our lives that could be easily deemed "unconventional". Yet we all live happy, full lives and enjoy love and success.

My family always had very loose boundries as to what consitutes a "family" (which may account partly for my current situation). Blood is not thicker than water within my family; but the water is pretty damn thick anyway.

Maybe, as dlowan says, having been loved is essential to loving - being loved as a child teaches us how to love others.

The research that dlowan and sozobe mention sounds very, very interesting to me (and very relevant). I need to hit the library.

Hi BoGoWo and thanks for joining the thread.

I'm not so sure I agree that love is a state of mind but I need to put my thoughts into better order before I'm able to discuss it better. (I doubt that "agree" is the right word in that no one really sees love as a fact.)

Meanwhile, I would love to hear you elaborate on your idea a bit more.

BoGoWo ~ you said it perfectly for me!

(((((boomerang)))))

There was a show on Oprah about a month ago about long-lasting marriages. Our social circle is also unique, because all of us met when we were all single. For those of us that married, none ever ended in divorce, although our kids have. Our group is made up of eight couples and three single ladies. I've been married since 1963. c.i.

It's probably helped that ya'll have had that social circle, c.i.

What's the old adage.....'it takes a village to raise a child'?

Even a marriage/relationship needs the village's help every now and then. Who better to turn to than friends?

I believe that it is an innate ability that is learned
at the same time ... just that the individual must
have the "capacity" to learn something so very
difficult to learn. Love very quickly ceases to be
a simple feeling & there is where love stops for
many, but when it becomes a VERB - a word of
action, a doing- thing, this is where the innate
ability of an individual makes it possible for this
type of love to continue on and to flourish, beyond
all difficulties & trials that life & love bring.

Boom.....; enlargement as requested;

my "state of mind" of course, implies the most important aspect, that of committment; at some point "love" becomes a conscious "decision" to make that "other" the "one"!
And of obviously, it will only last, grow, and endure if both "signatories" to the "pact" remain committed (in my experience, a very rare occurrence).

Reading this has been VERY interesting.

As I read, I kept thinking how we have used the word "love" repeatedly, for everything. Is it because of the sense of emotion?

I mean this: When we're talking about a thing that is FAVORABLE to us, using the words "i like" or "this is appropriate for me" sound so dumb and do not GRAB the sense of emotional reaction we want.
as "I came to A2K... it seemed reasonable and I like it."

OK, that sounds nice and well-rounded, but what if it does not convey what you really feel? More like,
"Hey guys, I found A2K - and gee, I just LOVE what I get from there. Man, am I learning from the 'Computer' forum. Stuff, I want to KNOW. Its great!!!"

Still, we need to get the word 'love' back into the confines of it's real meaning. More like 1 Corinthians in the Bible.

I am thinking of a topic to hear from all of you on it. coming right up:
What word/s (or phrase/s) would you use instead of 'Love' that would better define your emotion... to stop OVERUSING the one word too broadly.

Verbal lee, All good points, but let me infuse a little bit of cultural trivia into this subject of verbalizing the word "love." In the Japanese American culture of yore, parents and children 'never' used the words "I love you," but the parents and children 'knew' they had that love. It's not because of the absense of emotion. To go one step further, parents and their children 'never' hugged - in private or in public. c.i.

Sounds like a good time to reiterate my point. Love is a natural feeling, we're born with. That's life. Then as we get more learnin' fed into us, things get all intellectualized, and civilized, and confusion ensues. That's people....... Look how long we've been debating this. If we were all together in one house and someone bought a newborn baby into the mix, all need for debate, would vanish for awhile.

Hmm, I go away for almost two weeks and this is still fascinating.

Booman, I 'loved' your example of bringing a baby into the mix--that would be a quick and effective way of showing that love is the most natural emotion in the world; a primitive, selfless, profoundly focused emotion that supercedes all else. Yet, not all people find babies to be little miracles; instead, they think of newborns as pooping, screaming complications. This thought makes me even more certain that love is innate, but must be learned if it is to grow and become what makes life so sweet.

Verbal lee, I am guilty of overusing 'love' in conversation when I want to express how much I care for something or how enthusiastic I am over a new book or a new restaurant. I don't know if it is wrong or if it is accepted when used in a different context, giving the word an altered meaning more appropriate to the thing being described.

If you start a thread, I'll give it a try.

BTW, did I meet you in Boston a few years ago when you showed me and the others there a picture of your adorable little boy? This is a sort of generallee kind of question.

Diane, he did start a thread and he's not generallee.

Thanks littlek. I've missed the general.

Yes - he is generallee loved! heehee

Well Diane, ...you certainly didn't overuse it when you said you loved my example. :wink: The serious part of that, is that I think overuse of love, or the word is the least of our problems. To me, that's like complaining about the "seasonal", good cheer and love, prevalent during the Xmas season. I say, "SO WHAT, enjoy it already!
...And I have to add I think the only thing , that has to be learned about love, is to follow your instincts, and let it flow.... And that's my worth.