what is love?

Re: what is love?

If we take 0 to represent a point of indifference,
then + 1 will represent liking something, or someone
to a mild degree, with + 2 indicating a higher degree of good will,
perhaps + 10 will be love,
whereas - 1 will represent mild dislike,
- 2 indicating a higher degree of ill will, or aversion,
with perhaps - 10 indicating hatred.

David

very intreresting and a numerical reply...thanks OmSigDAVID

I love to help
David

Love is never having to fire a warning shot.

Lord E, I disagree poetically. Sharing a spatula can lead to some varied and interesting experiences.

Stuh's poem was lovely and should be sent to someone in whom he has a romantic interest.

Blacksmithin' boy are you right. If you fire a warning shot, that special someone might get away. That's why I had to sneak up on Dys.

The best one, as far as I'm concerned, was posted by vikasradhakrishnan:


There are far too many kinds of love to make one definition at all possible. I never had a relationship as full of love and warmth and respect and friendship and sex and full of life as I have with Dys, whom I met three years ago when I was sixty. That is when my life began. So love at sixty is different than love at twenty or thirty or at any other time in your life. If they are real, then they all should be thoroughly enjoyed and valued and cared for.

In your vu,
how is " love at sixty ...
different than love at twenty or thirty or at any other time in your life " ?

Omsigdavid, love at sixty is mature, much more responsive to the other's needs and comforts, far less defensive, much more appreciative of what we have (I guess because we know that our lives will end in not too many more years). We never forget to treasure what we have, we never forget to really look at each other, to hold hands, to touch affectionately, to cherish each other. I love knowing that this is the man with whom I will spend the rest of my life.

He had a stroke just four months after I moved to Colorado to be with him. I thought I had lost him and when he came home from the hospital, I wasn't sure if he would be the same Dys that I had fallen in love with. He was, with some changes in health and perhaps a minor slowness in remembering things that he had had at his fingertips before the stroke. I started a thread of the effects of stroke if you want to take a look.
http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=2439628#2439628

Anyway, after that it simply became even more intense. It really hit home how fragile life is and how easily it can end or change irreparably. That is something you begin to understand as you get older, but it hit us in the face when he had the stroke.

Even though I have said that I wish we could have met earlier so that we could have raised a family, we both agree that it wouldn't have worked when we were young--for reasons I won't go into here, but defensiveness and emotional damage were the major factors.

Love between older people seemed absolutely boring to me when I was young. I guess it takes a lifetime to begin to appreciate just how beautiful it can be: it can even be thrilling, believe it or not. Even though I am not at all religious, I feel very blessed.

I hope that helps. It's a shame this question wasn't answered by someone far more articulate than I, but that's about the best I can do.

I thought that u were abundantly articulate
and did a nice job.
David

Thank you for your kind words, omsig. Amazingly, I left out two of the most important parts of our relationship: Total trust and acceptance. Those were the two initial responses to each other that first made us realize that we had something very rare in each other.

Niether of us had experienced total trust or absolute acceptance ever before in our lives. There are lots of reasons for that, some from outside sources and some from inside ourselves. You are probably familiar with the common human trait of allowing self-inflicted guilt and grief consume you; sometimes for years, sometimes only for a few days. Regardless, we were both far too familiar with automatically assuming the worst in relationships. The trust and acceptance were just there, we did nothing to test each other or to even question the reality of our feelings. It just was. Again, that might be from lives lived for many years because I don't think very young people can or should trust their instincts.

So, I wanted to add that bit. I'm still a bit amazed that I have grown so used to being accepted for who I am and for being able to trust without thought, that they have become a part of my life, that I no longer think of them as unusual. The same with Dys. That is a luxury that niether of us had ever experienced.

I don't know about 'should' but I find it very, very difficult to trust my instincts. I'm just nodding to what you said.


Anyways, your story made me smile Diane.

Pantalones, glad to make you smile.