The Nature of Love

[CaptainSkelebob]

What is the nature of love? Is love a psychological thing like a kind of obsession or possessiveness? Is love a natural process like natural selection? Or is love something deeper like a gift from God or a spiritual feeling which cannot be expressed with words?

One thing for certain is that love exists and is very real, even though it can't be seen or touched. Love is a deep feeling which cannot be quantified with words. But the nature of love is not an all encompassing thing, indeed Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle held the theory that love has many different forms. This is also something I experienced in a psychedelic experience.

Here are some of the various forms of love as theorised by Plato and Aristotle. Which of these forms of love are you enjoying at the moment? Which forms of love is your life lacking right now?

Eros - A romantic love initiated by sexual attraction. The kind of love that two lovers might enjoy. At the moment I have no Eros love in my life, but rather than get depressed about such things, I just enjoy more time to myself and with friends and my daughter. I've experienced unrequited love for a woman before and this can be quite painful. @Outcast9428 alludes to Eros love being one of the most important things for a functioning society, this is why he advocates for a return to traditionalist values. Do you agree with him?

Agape - A kind of unconditional love. This is altruistic and selfless love. The kind of love an all loving God has for his children. I have this kind of love for Shiva and @MrMan undoubtedly has the same kind of love for the god of the Christian Bible. But what do you think? Does Agape love have much importance in society?

Storge - This kind of love is the kind of familiar love. The kind of love shared between parents and their child. As a father I can say I experience this love pretty intensely for my child who makes my life feel so much better for her having been part of it. Also wanna send a shout out to my buddy @MarcosZeitola, a proud father of, is it NINE? children with another on the way. How do you guys enjoy the love between your children or parents? How important is this kind of love?

Philia - A spiritual love or bond shared between true friends. Those who share the same values who you can relate to and trust implicitly. Some friendships are based on empty things like utility or other vacuous things like a common interest (such as drinking together at a weekend) true friendship is a mutual understanding and respect for each other which can't be expressed with words. I have this kind of bond with @Lucas88 who has been my closest friend since school. Also my buddy @Tsar. And I'd also like to think I've started creating these kind of bonds with other users of the forum such as @WanderingProtagonist and @WilliamSmith as well as some who have already been tagged previously.

Philautia - A self love. Not love for oneself in a narcissistic or selfish way, this is not what Greek philosophers meant by Philautia or self love. Self love is necessary in order for you to be capable of loving someone else or receiving love from someone else. @Mercer seems to be someone who has no self love, which is evident from his constant negativity. He should learn to love himself more and not devalue himself just because we live in a world which is becoming farther away from one of love and compassion. @CaptainSkelebob is someone most of us would associate with Philautia with how he goes on, but in actual fact he's just narcissistic and this doesn't qualify as a kind of Philautia love. He should have more compassion for others and more understanding.

So these are just some variants of love. Some people associate love with a romantic relationship with a partner or spouse, but as we can see you would not have the same kind of love for your father as you would have for your wife. That would be weird. What are your thoughts about this?

For me love is the blood rushing to my fat piece of meat when a hot piece of ass invites me back to her place

[Lucas88]

I've been thinking today about romantic love and how superficial and bullshit it is 90% of the time. I don't think a woman has ever loved me, not truly. And where some people might resort to depressing black pill ideology, I just feel nonchalant about it. My kid's mum didn't love me. She was really nasty and said some pretty hurtful things to me I also think my latest girlfriend, the Polish one, was more of an obsession than true authentic love. I am starting to believe that eros love is something I have never experienced.

I think many people latch on to someone and they mistakenly view their obsessions and fantasy as love. If a lot of women loved their men for who they are then why do most of them try to change their man all the time? I've often said this is an issue with modern relationships. The incompatibility between men and women. She wants him to change and he never will and he wants her to stay the same but she never does.

It seems to me like a lot of modern relationships are simply a competition for power and control in the relationship or marriage. Control over who their partner talks to, control over finances and behaviours.

I wonder if those types of souls we colloquially refer to as NPC souls are even capable of true authentic love, or whether their "love" is just an obsession or fantasy they are trying to live through their partners. They have their expectations adopted from romantic movies and try to live their lives in accordance with these Disney Princess ideals

What do you think? @Lucas88 @Tsar

I am also of the view that most accounts of "romantic love" are illusory and make-belief. That's why I'm not too thrilled by the idea and will probably never fall for it again.

Most people who claim to be "in love" don't really have genuine love. They merely have an obsession or an infatuation and confuse it for love. Many couples thought that their own love was somehow special and unique and that it was even predetermined by fate and would last forever but in the end parted ways nevertheless after encountering the most mundane of stumbling blocks.

Marriage based on love is also a fraud in most cases. Many people don't really marry for love at all. They marry or remain married for practical reasons such as kids, finances, social status, etc. The "love" part is often nothing more than a feigned front.

I believe that authentic love is exceptionally rare. It might truly exist among a small minority of soulmates who find each other and discover a genuine and lasting spiritual connection but that is certainly not the norm. Most couples are together due to superficial infatuation or for purely practical reasons.

I believe that my relationship with my Peruvian ex-girlfriend was based on infatuation rather than true love. Once the infatuation stage was gone, we soon discovered that we didn't really get along and had little in common and eventually parted ways amicably due to irreconcilable differences. We still maintain contact and I can tell that she wants me back. But that isn't because of genuine love but rather out of fear of being alone and knowing that I'm now probably the best she can get at this point.

My relationship with my Mexican ex-girlfriend did feel like a much deeper and more genuine spiritual connection and we certainly had a lot in common but one day she told me that she wasn't cut out for a relationship because of her own social and psychological problems and inability to face life like an adult. My vision was for us both to grow together and make a new life for ourselves but she told me that she couldn't do it and the relationship ended. That experience left me extremely bitter and disillusioned.

I no longer have any interest in romantic love or marriage. I'd rather not live a lie. Now I only believe in pragmatism and passionate eros. At least I can be sure that those things are real. In light of my own honest reflection, I'd rather not get married but rather pragmatically find a woman as appropriate breeding stock - a Latina with good booty genetics and an athletic body - whom I would impregnate but to whom I would not offer commitment, and then have my other girls for pleasure (escorts, prepagos, mistresses, divorced milfs who need sorting out). Most women are full of shit. It is better to treat them simply as breeding stock and passionate sex partners rather than falling for all of that naïve lovey-dovey bullshit.

Marriage has little to offer a desirable man. It is simply a medium through which a woman is able to lock down and increase her control over a man. Moreover, in most cases the professed love is nothing more than a lie. It is better not to get married. You can still impregnate a carefully chosen woman and sire children with her, but then continue to visit escorts and have passionate encounters with other hot mamasotas while maintaining much more of your freedom to do what you want and living crazy adventures with your buddies and without having to put up with some broad who you call your wife constantly giving you shit. It's better to be free and never sacrifice your balls to anyone!

[WilliamSmith]

Wow, you guys are deep around here, LOL, hey I really mean that.

It's true there's a truckload of brain chemicals that flood up when you have a hot sexually charged romance (oxytocin is I think the most well-known one) that then subside over time even if a meaningful relationship remains in the wake of this hormonal tsunami, but I think a lot of the drive toward this passion for romantic (and sexual love) is actually rooted in a spiritual reality, even though the chemical and physical side is how it manifests in our earthly lives.

Materialists, atheists, and so on, tend to dismiss it all as chemicals and hormones alone, but I honestly believe we actually have *spiritual* (not corporeal) gender opposite soulmates (i.e. if you are a man, your soul-mate is a woman, but actually a spiritual being who is a part of you, but separated by whatever cosmic drama we are wrapped up in here, and vice versa for women and their male spiritual soulmate).

Of course in the corporeal realm we all live in, this is also totally mixed up with physical lust for women on a more animalistic level, an interesting puzzle to try to sort out, to say the least...

Anyway, I'm past 3am so lacking coherence, but I think earthly relationships can mean a lot, but that the sort of unearthly passion for love that can end up creating a lot of drama in peoples' lives is largely because of projecting that inherent desire to be with our spiritual soulmate onto another earthly human being, even though it is actually our spiritual soulmates who we really yearn for, and no other earthly person can fulfill that, even if you're lucky and choose a good earthly mate for your life, family, etc.
(I personally consider myself lucky that I never really had that problem of projecting that desire I feel onto an earthly woman, luckily, because of me being one of these creatures raised by single Moms from a broken home... So I started out both instinctually loving women, but also deeply distrusting women, until later when I studied and observed them more and began feeling a little more sure of myself, eventually getting to where I feel I understand them well enough to where I don't distrust them anymore but just understand that their brains/bodies and even spirits work differently from ours as men, even if we are meant to ideally understand each other...)
Oh yeah, that reminds me: @Outcast9428 gave a big denunciation of those man-eating chicks I mentioned who were my teenage friends who were trying to get me into the sack behind their boyfriends' backs (which I agree they shouldn't have done), but I honestly owe those girls one, because they made it obvious that I couldn't just play the game of projecting idealistic romantic desires onto these females, even though I always liked them as friends then, and still do.

Anyway, back to the subject of spiritual soulmates and our projection of our passion for romantic love based on wanting to be with them: There is a lot of ancient lore that talks about this (a lot of it is in old folklore after some of the big religious priestcrafts tried to wipe out the old traditions), but why do I believe this? Well... at first I was reading huge quantities of old lore books and read old Pagan stuff about this (the "Fylgja" and so on, but it exists in many other cultures).
I'll try to follow up on this sometime because I have a bunch of books where I studied all this old Germanic and Celtic and "Arthurian" lore that talks about these.
But I eventually started experimenting with somewhat extreme hypnosis techniques, but later had a disaster and one of those NDE things too, so I actually felt like I had actual contact

I also think that the "kundalini" energy is connected with this spiritual soulmate.
(The "M" rune "mannaz" I think it's called is connected to this.)
I'll get back to this subject later sometime and tie it into my Chi Gong thread. I really should focus more on positive stuff like this more.

Oh yeah, and in my latest "wall of text" above, I only responded to the concept of romantic/sexual male/female love, but that's kind of my thing and I don't know what to say about the other types.

[WilliamSmith]

This is all bluepilled, superstitious garbage on a forum that is anti-science. There is no such thing as "love", it's all based on looks and genetics. There's a reason why Chad and Stacy are the most loved people no matter how they act, it's because they look better than most people. The better looking you are then the more you will be "loved" and the uglier you are the more you will be hated. It's not very complicated and there's nothing deep about this.

No little jew, you are wrong. Like I said, it's deep stuff, a deep thread, and "Love will save the day."

[WilliamSmith]

I think many people latch on to someone and they mistakenly view their obsessions and fantasy as love. If a lot of women loved their men for who they are then why do most of them try to change their man all the time? I've often said this is an issue with modern relationships.

Ahhh, the classic phenomenon of what I've heard described as "betafication" of the male!

Example:
The woman has the hots for the man at first and thinks he's a catch but then almost seems wired to try to keep doing things to make him compromise to a long list of demands and changes he has to make about himself, which most men do after rationalizing... leading to an initial uptick of her conscious approval for doing what she said, while meanwhile her primal sexual attraction to the man plunges into a stage 4 downtrend, since they're actually only aroused by us when we're sort of blazing forward on our own course of destiny and not being submissive or compliant to her, even if the women like being desired and appreciated, loved, etc.
I haven't had huge problems with it personally but am thoroughly familiar with it, seen dozens of cases, and read of it being totally widespread. I don't think women do this to be consciously manipulative at all, I think it's one of those quirks wired into human female biology.
Well, here I go with my usual theme again about how women are the greatest thing and my #1 reason for living, but also have to be thoroughly studied to avoid disaster, LOL.

[Lucas88]

I've been thinking about the topic of love and its nature a lot over the last few months. I think it's like a trap door spider, in the sense that it just springs out on you whether you want it or not. You can't choose who you fall in love with, it just happens. I've recently fallen in love with a girl, and I suspect the gradual build up in intensity is something which has been happening for a long time, rather than something which happened overnight.

I agree that true love just hits us out of nowhere when we least expect it. I've always found love at times when I wasn't even looking for a girlfriend or had even given up on the idea. I don't think that we have much choice in the matter. I met both of my Latin American girlfriends this way. They both suddenly appeared in my life due to circumstances beyond my control and we soon fell in love and entered a relationship.

From a metaphysical perspective, I intuit that our souls or "higher selves" simply make agreements with other souls who may be suitable from the spiritual realm without the knowledge of the incarnate ego. Behind the scenes two compatible souls plan to meet somewhere in the physical world and fall in love. When this happens, the incarnate ego is just amazed since it all seems to come out of nowhere. This is how I believe that it works. It's not that our love is preordained by fate but rather that our higher selves agree to come together with a potential significant other and arrange for it to happen. This isn't fool-proof though. Our higher selves do their best to make it work but sometimes obstacles in the physical world can get in the way and sabotage the plans of souls.

@Winston, what do you think of my theory above?

Conversely, I don't think that we can force true love. Many people go out and proactively look for a girlfriend or a wife and try to force it but in reality they simply pair up in accordance with purely practical or material needs and then end up trying to force their own ideals onto the other person and mold them in accordance with their own desires. This kind of "love" is illusory and these kind of relationships often become about power, control and exploitation. I believe that the majority of relationships and marriages fall into this category.

[Lucas88]

I think most so-called traditionalists fall into the aforementioned category. They claim they want a loving relationship with a significant other, but look at how these relationships are structured. The man wants a housewife who is treated akin to a pet. She's to be kept in the house and the only purpose of her existence is to serve her husband. Her dreams and aspirations are totally irrelevant and if anyone dare speak out against these barmy traditionalists then they're automatically a feminist for the crime of having respect for a woman

Most of these traditionalists are nothing but NPCs who are unable to conceive of true and authentic love. They only care about the power dynamic in which the female is totally subservient to her husband. When real love should always be based on mutual respect and a desire to see your partner reach their true potential. True love is about being there for each other and not having any desire to have any kind of power over your lover.

I will always support my girlfriend and help her flourish in any way I can. Because I believe that her personal growth and happiness are in alignment with my own goals. Growing and flourishing together like two plants intertwined is the true essence of romantic love. Not one outgrowing and choking the other like a weed. This is someone who is narcissistic and desires personal power over someone else.

Those fools who believe women should do as they're told and serve their husbands like f***ing slaves do not know true love and they never will. Most women don't feel the need to be subservient to some husband when they can flourish more efficiently alone.

I bet most women would rather have one night stands with respectful studs like my buddy @WilliamSmith as opposed to becoming some little housepet for an insecure little tradcuck with tiny little garden pea balls. It's a no brainer. Women deserve respect. Everyone deserves respect in a living relationship. Respect and trust are the f***ing cornerstone of any functioning relationship.

I agree with this assessment.

The vast majority of self-styled "tradcons" online are weak undesirable manginas who simply want the authority to control women and force them to submit to their whims. All of their talk about "love" and "morality" is just pretense. This is the reason why those sniveling little weakboys who shouldn't even be called "men" have the desire to strip women of their ability to make their own money and thereby remove all independence for them. They want to make women completely financially dependent on them so that those weak undesirable subpar males can force women to come crawling to them and trap them in loveless marriages through imposed desperation. Let's be honest. Some of these tradcon manginas are truly evil people and little vindictive control freaks. They simply hide behind a cloak of moral superiority blowing smoke up each other's asses and claiming to be exemplars of righteousness.

Our friend @WilliamSmith expressed a similar opinion about these pathetic mangina tradcon weasels during his most recent HA rampage. He too can see how perverse they really are.

Noble people in a truly loving relationship don't seek to control their significant other through money and authority. They want their significant other to flourish freely and support them in their personal goals and aren't insecure about their significant other leaving them or cheating on them with someone else. The marriages of financial dependency and entrapment which these vile manginas long for and want to impose on everyone else are not based on love at all. When I was with my Latin American girlfriends, I didn't want to control them or make them completely dependent on me. I wanted to elevate them and encourage them to flourish too. Guys who are noble and genuinely able to fulfill a woman and elevate her usually have no problem keeping a noble woman. We don't need to have financial control over women or subject them to authoritarian doctrines like those ignoble little pieces of human excrement do.

I also notice how many self-styled "moralists" and religious fanatics are actually far more immoral and evil than most liberals and secular people. They like to incessantly tubthump about moral values and their own "one vision" which they attempt to conflate with objective truth but, when you get to know them better, you find that they are just vile immoral individuals with no respect for the freedom of others or anything outside of their short-sighted fanaticism. But what else can be expected of a group of people who revere a "holy book" chock-full of heinous atrocities and with an obsession with blood sacrifice to some psychopathic Jew god (this also includes the (((New Testament))), by the way)? I think that in most cases their perverse souls simply resonate with that perverse religion and that's why they're so attracted to it. Perversity attracts perversity.

[Lucas88]

When you fall in love, you make a subconscious decision to break your own heart at some point in the future.

What do you think to the above statement? Could it be true?

@Lucas88
@MarcosZeitola
@publicduende
@Winston

I'd like to point out that my relationship is still strong. But interestingly this is a consideration I've had when entering past relationships etc. When you get the girl the issue you have is keeping them.

Do relationships always inevitably lead to heartbreak and disappointment?

I'd say that that is generally the case. Whenever you open up your heart to somebody else and commit to them, you're usually setting yourself up for future heartbreak or frustration. You're likely either to suffer an abrupt breakup and suffer intensely as a result or your relationship will slowly descend into a stagnant state resulting in protracted dissatisfaction and mutual animosity.

I'm not a fan of those Disney-esque lovesick types of relationships for a reason. The candle that burns the brightest also burns out the quickest and the emotional pain that results from the sudden extinction of such a bright yet fast-burning flame is often extremely damaging.

However, if you go into relationships with a different attitude - one that is not fixated on the unhealthy emotion of lovesickness -, then it is possible to have constructive relationships that don't lead to heartbreak. With a more realistic and pragmatic attitude, even if you separate from your partner, you can still recognize that you both gained from the relationship in terms of learning and positive experiences without being too overcome with emotional pain. You can go your separate ways knowing that you both benefitted in some way or another and became better people. The key here is non-attachment.

Relationships are not the be-all end-all. Many of them are actually quite toxic and almost all of them become boring at some point. There is far more to life than that. Things like artistic and athletic endeavors, the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom, and spirituality can be far more fulfilling. In my view, relationships and the pursuit of sex should be more of an accessory than the main goal. That way you build a more solid foundation for your own happiness and self-development without investing all of your energy into some external thing that could potentially cause you untold heartache.

[publicduende]

When you fall in love, you make a subconscious decision to break your own heart at some point in the future.

This is tantamount to saying "By being born, we make a subconscious decision to accept the trouble of getting older and dying at some point in the future".

There's the famous legend of Prometheus, the esoteric tradition equivalent to Lucifer (the Light Bringer), a God who descends on humanity to gift them with fire. With fire, men may now bring light into the dark, defend themselves from dangerous beasts, prolong their activities beyond the day/night cycles.

The lesser known part of this myth is that man had, until that moment, been hiding in dark caves, paralysed by the terror of dying. As well as giving something, fire, Prometheus also took something away from humanity: the fear of death. Without the fear, indeed the awareness of their limited time in this world and empowered with fire, mankind could now be not only the protagonists of their existence, but also project it in the future, by creating a legacy that could outlast their brief lives.

It's the same with love. Together with life, love is another one of these "prometheic" drivers, which goes beyond the awareness of its limited, transitory nature. If we started a relationship with the awareness that it will end in a few months or years, and hearts will be broken, very few people would still want to give it a shot. Nobody would make a full-hearted effort to enter and maintain it strong.

Few would remember that the main goal of a long-lasting relationship is to build that legacy that projects us beyond our own existence: children. Even fewer would observe that a serene family life is prime ground to making a man (and to some extent a woman) a fully-productive member of society. Once the tension of procuring a sexual partner is gone, man can focus on what he can do best: use their ingenuity to build a better world.

So, I would argue that the opposite of the OP is true: love, real love, always comes with the subconscious awareness that it will last forever.

[publicduende]

Thank you for this very good response @publicduende I would however disagree with some of your principle points. Your opening statement where you said:

This is tantamount to saying "By being born, we make a subconscious decision to accept the trouble of getting older and dying at some point in the future".

There is a significant difference. We do not choose to be born, but we make a conscious decision to enter a relationship and there is the old saying about how marriage ends in one of two ways: death or divorce. So in that sense, you are definitely making a subconscious decision to suffer heartbreak in the future (under the supposition that your wife dies before you).

In saying that, even though I do believe the statement is true to an extent. I don't think people should avoid loving relationships based on an irrational fear that it will end in tears. I think it's better to live for the moment and also I think sharing special moments with a significant other enriches the experience somewhat.

Love comes with the assumption that it will last forever. This is naïve. Nothing lasts forever. Also, to base your relationship solely on the premise of procreation and becoming functioning members of society seems like flawed logic. I know yourself and @MarcosZeitola probably disagree. But think about it. You could procreate without entering a relationship (if you were so inclined) if you wanted to create a family you have to be sure of the woman you intend to get knocked up in my opinion. This is the mistake I made. I got a woman pregnant who I was in a hostile relationship with and now I have the heartache of having a child I love who I barely get to see. I'd like to point out that I don't fully regret this decision, as my child is someone who does enrich my life and give me a sense of purpose. She's like a little shining light in a world of darkness. But my main point is, a relationship should exist for a relationships sake and not to fulfil a different goal etc. Without a functional relationship, there is no family unit.

I know, and that is exactly my point @Pixel--Dude, mate. With life, there is a 100% certainty of being dead at some point in the future. Yet, almost everyone who is born on this planet gives a half-decent shot at having a full life: make experiences, love some of them, hate and regret others, treasure them and learn from them. And that's for a living being who is 100% certain will not last, say, their 150th birthday.

Like with life, with love, with make the subconscious decision to follow our nature of relational beings. It's always a risk, there is a non-zero possibility of ending up burned (or charred), broken and bent out repair. Yet, we wouldn't be human beings if we didn't have at least a desire to love, to entrust part of our life to someone who was a total stranger one week, one month or ten years before. Sometimes it goes well, sometimes it doesn't go so well. We would always end up wiser, with bittersweet memories, stories to tell and a feeling that "we might well give it another try".

It's illogical, it's risky, it's bad, say what you like, but it's totally and profoundly human. A human being who doesn't want to risk it all for love because they feel it is not worth the time and energies will, very probably, see their prophecy self-fulfilled. This, I know by experience because I know a few people who ended up empty handed because they never wanted to give too much in the first place.

Very few people, especially men, can survive total loliness, living on an ivory tower of logic based on the fact that "all girls are bad" and "all relationships end up in a broken heart and a depleed bank account". I personally know I would never been able to. I don't know anybody who has, so far, been able to attain a perfect life by carefully avoiding feeling too involved, too invested, too emotionally drawn to someone else: be this someone else a single woman, a dog or an entire community.

Even the most hardened MGTOW who professes self-love like the ultimate solution to life BS, will still have a small network of like-minded people who mean "little more than nothing" to them.

As the famous motto goes, we can live without knowing why, but we can't live without knowing "for whom".

@Lucas88 & @publicduende I wanna ask you guys

What do you think to the notion of soul mates? Do you think that people have soul mates? Or is this just naivety and people just pair up with people they vibe with in the moment rather than it being some preordained meeting?

I don't know about soulmates, I have honestly never believed that there is "the perfect partner for every man or woman". However, I do believe there are degrees of personality compatibility, plus affinity that comes from many other aspects of life: belonging to the same community or culture, life-changing experiences in common, shared desires and preferences, etc.

Even then, people change and evolve all the time, partners included. For hard it sounds, the real challenge is not to find someone who vibes like you and fall for her/him, but find that vibe and that intensity 2, 5, 10 or 20 years later.

[galii]

If you fall in love or not you will die anyway. Choose your poison choose your hobby choose your passion.

When I grew up there was so much stupidity, lies and bullshit that I wanted to know the truth. That is why I like science because it is not just bunch of lies. So I believe in the evolution theory. We are animals. We get born and and we die end of story.

Problems come up when we want the ideal life. Life is simple we make it complicated. We expect too much. Every minute is a litte gift but we make poison out of it. Btw. the word 'gift' in German means poison. Funny, right?

[galii]

If you fall in love or not you will die anyway. Choose your poison choose your hobby choose your passion.

When I grew up there was so much stupidity, lies and bullshit that I wanted to know the truth. That is why I like science because it is not just bunch of lies. So I believe in the evolution theory. We are animals. We get born and and we die end of story.

Problems come up when we want the ideal life. Life is simple we make it complicated. We expect too much. Every minute is a litte gift but we make poison out of it. Btw. the word 'gift' in German means poison. Funny, right?

I think you're right. I do think human beings do have a tendency to overcomplicate things. Especially relationships. Expectations can be a bit much, which inevitably ends in disappointment and causes the relationship to wear down.

Do you think romantic movies and such are a main cause of high expectations in loving relationships? I think they set an unrealistic standard which cannot be obtained.

Not really I think the problem is we are animals. Some of us will do wild shit. You may not agree with me because it sounds materialistic and not spiritual but people without much 'morals' are normal in humans. People blame capitalism for example but we are naturally a bit capitalist that is why the system works.

This is how many of us are:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/nJPJd3Mxeu4
Joe Rogan horrific ape story

I throw a bit this about our life in there:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FnO3igOkOk
You Can't Handle the Truth! - A Few Good Men (7/8) Movie CLIP (1992) HD

I guess that is why I try to keep my expectations low. Epikur said 'live hidden'. There are too many apes around. If one gets love it is nice but one should not be too greedy and get addicted to it I guess.




Edit:
Love is created by nature for survival. Check this thread:

https://www.actualized.org/forum/topic/ ... ad/?page=6

[publicduende]

Thank you. This was a good response and I am finding it hard to propose a rebuttal for the sake of debate. Love is indeed like life as you said, given the knowledge that one way or another it will inevitably end. But it isn't about the destination, I suppose, it's more about the journey and I must confess as I already stated that experiences shared with a significant other seem to be much more enhanced in quality.

I don't know if my love for my girlfriend will endure in 10 years. Or even in a year. What I do know is that she has been one of my best friends for the last decade and someone I've always vibed really well with. If things didn't work out with her I sincerely doubt I could move on and find another partner with whom I could share that deep a connection. In other words, my relationship now is an all or nothing kind of deal. If it can't endure with someone I've shared close bonds of friendship with for over ten years then in my opinion it won't be worth pursuing ever again. That's my thought on love at the moment.

As for soul mates, if they exist I'd say I found mine.

Well, thank you for appreciating my response. Possibly bordering the cheesy romantic (always count on an Italian for this kind of stuff LOL), but heartfelt and, at least as far as my life experience is concerned, aligned to "my" truth.

I literally had the best and the worst times of my life as consequences of falling for the right, or the not-so-right woman. The dark tragic event that befell me in 2011 was caused by a failed relationship that traced back to 2006, so dead and buried. Said woman was the vindictive type, she had nothing to lose and knew that I had everything to lose. I don't regret marrying my Colombian ex-wife and I don't regret marrying my current Filipina wife. I don't even regret most of the attempts at romance and love, no matter how seemingly useless and ultimately painful for either or both parties.

I can't speak for everybody, @Pixel--Dude, but, as far as I am concerned, no love given is love wasted.

[WilliamSmith]

Thank you. This was a good response and I am finding it hard to propose a rebuttal for the sake of debate. Love is indeed like life as you said, given the knowledge that one way or another it will inevitably end. But it isn't about the destination, I suppose, it's more about the journey and I must confess as I already stated that experiences shared with a significant other seem to be much more enhanced in quality.

I don't know if my love for my girlfriend will endure in 10 years. Or even in a year. What I do know is that she has been one of my best friends for the last decade and someone I've always vibed really well with. If things didn't work out with her I sincerely doubt I could move on and find another partner with whom I could share that deep a connection. In other words, my relationship now is an all or nothing kind of deal. If it can't endure with someone I've shared close bonds of friendship with for over ten years then in my opinion it won't be worth pursuing ever again. That's my thought on love at the moment.

As for soul mates, if they exist I'd say I found mine.

Well, thank you for appreciating my response. Possibly bordering the cheesy romantic (always count on an Italian for this kind of stuff LOL), but heartfelt and, at least as far as my life experience is concerned, aligned to "my" truth.

I literally had the best and the worst times of my life as consequences of falling for the right, or the not-so-right woman. The dark tragic event that befell me in 2011 was caused by a failed relationship that traced back to 2006, so dead and buried. Said woman was the vindictive type, she had nothing to lose and knew that I had everything to lose. I don't regret marrying my Colombian ex-wife and I don't regret marrying my current Filipina wife. I don't even regret most of the attempts at romance and love, no matter how seemingly useless and ultimately painful for either or both parties.

I can't speak for everybody, @Pixel--Dude, but, as far as I am concerned, no love given is love wasted.

@publicduende
Oh good, you're still alive: I heard from @Pixel--dude and @Lucas88 that someone called "Palo Alto Guy" or something like that had come back to the forum threatening to have you bumped off by Pinoy assassins, but I see you must have fought them all off when they tried to carry out the hit.

As for the topic, you guys were already very eloquent, but being a guy who loves women (and also owns over 100 80s-90s era "bodice ripper romance" novels LOL), I more agree with the romantics on this one. But I see it both ways because I'd be scared to make myself vulnerable to heartbreak in the same way as @Pixel--dude is doing by being so monogamously committed to this one special girl.
I don't have any personal rule against monogamy for me either, but being a ladies' man and enjoying so-called "polyamory" (not too crazy about that word, but getting it on with lots of women I definitely like ) frankly hedges your bets because the pain of having so much emotional investment in a relationship with just one woman isn't there, even there is still some romantic love involved, some disappointment when or if things don't work out, etc.