2 frickin Haddaway references in the same thread. Come on now, we all know Love is Arthur Lee and a bunch of hii\ppies that cam and went: Paul Martin, Sherwood Akuna, Joe Blocker, Tjay Cantrelli, Jay Donnellan, John Echols, Frank Fayad, Ken Forssi, Jim Hobson, Bryan MacLean, Alban Pfisterer, Nooney Rickett, Gary Rowles, John Sterling, Michael Stuart, George Suranovich, Drachen Theaker, Melvan Whittington & Don Conka
Or it’s co-dependence, depending on how it’s done, which is definatly not healthy.
Actually I prefer “Love means having to say you’re sorry-even when you’re not.”
[Def Leppard]
Loves Bites.
[/Def Leppard]
Grr… Love Bites… :smack:
Just because we love you: 
*Life will never be the same
Life is changing
Life will never be the same
Life is changing
Everybody needs somebody to love, to love
Everybody needs somebody to love, to love *
I’m not sure what you’re saying. Is it that you won’t be satisfied until someone plumbs the very depths of your being, at which point he will have the right to say he loves you? If so, you’ll have a long wait. I’ve been around 54 years and haven’t gotten to the bottom of myself, so I hardly expect anyone else to get there.
I understand being suspicious, but my advice to you is to go with your feelings. My sense is that you don’t feel love for this guy, or you wouldn’t have started this thread. Or maybe you’re just thinking too hard, which is a good way to get out of touch with your feelings. I’m not saying thinking is bad in this situation (or most others), just that it’s overrated.
Anyway, I loved my wife from the first time I went out with her. We were engaged after six weeks, married after 10 months, and have been married 22 years (happily; see other thread). I was not infatuated. I was 32 years old, and the ability to get infatuated had left me some years earlier. I just wanted to be around her. Still do.
Love means you still like being around each other after having sex.
[Brad Pitt]
Love means eating ice cream and farting in bed.
[/Brad Pitt]
From a more psychological POV:
Infatuation lasts about 4-6 weeks after a romance/dating starts. After that, what’s left emerges, be it love, friendship, indifference or revulsion. This is a major reason why most adolescent couples don’t last much more than a month or so.
There are six types of love characterized in psychology:
Agape: selfless love, where you put other’s needs before your own;
Philos: a brotherly love, felt for family members, close friends;
Eros: erotic, sensual love;
Storge: friendship, and the basis for long-lasting relationships;
Mania: single-minded love, obsession over one person or thing;
Ludus: a shallow, non-commital type of love
Relationships are made up of varying combinations of these types, and the “mix” changes over time as the relationship matures or dies. There are also elements of caring, trust and passion (sexual and non-sexual) in a relationship.
The above-mentioned ex-friend may be approaching the relationship from a ludus/eros style, while your current boyfriend may still be in the infatuation (e.g. mania/eros) stage, and confusing it with a more mature storge/eros/(agape) stage.
Vlad/Igor
I, personally, detest the word “love.” “Love” refers to so many things, as Vald/Igor pointed out, and is such an overused word, that it has no meaning for whatsoever any more. There’s parent-to-child love, child-to-parent love, teacher-to-student love, student-to-teacher love, friend-to-friend love, lover-to-lover love (often known as lust), significant other-to-signficant other love, etc., etc.
What I suppose you’re asking about is romantic attachment and compassion - the emotion felt between significant others.
I know nothing about this. I have never felt it. I doubt it’s existence in my sphere of existence. Even if it does exist, I doubt its permanence for most people. It comes and goes, like all things in nature.
WRS/Thû
I’m terribly sorry: I did not mean to kill this thread.
Mercury must really be in retrograde.
WRS/Thû
Love is more clearly known when love is lost…
I second that.
Infatuation is “loving” someone for how they make you happy. Love is a desire to unite. The latter always has an admixture of the former. The former can exist without the latter.
Both can lead to fixating on the loved. When infatuated, you think of all the ways the lbeoved makes you happy (to use some stereotypes): [/girlish twitter] He’s so cuuute! I know he loves lasagna. I’ll make some, and then we’ll end up on the couch. [/end girlish twitter], [adolescent male] She is sooo hot! I bet if I give her a foot massage, she’ll be all over me! [/adolescent male]. Sure, you can’t be in love without those kinds of thoughts, but love is different. You fixate on what you can do just to make the beloved happy, even if it is mundane: [old married woman] I bet he’d really like lasagna tonight. I’ll make some. [/old married woman], [old married fart] Hmmm, she’s been running around a lot the last couple of weeks. I bet she’d like a foot massage. [/old married fart]. If the primary motivation to give a foot massage is to get laid, you are not in love, you are in lust or infatuated. If the primary motivation is to make your beloved happy, then you are in love.
Of course it is hard to tell the difference. I can tell most easily with my wife when in bed. If I’m thinking, I’d really like to do Y, I’m usually lusting. If I’m thinking, I bet she’d really like to do X, I’m usually loving.
I’m pretty sure you can’t hurry love.
Too true. You’ll just have to wait. Love don’t come easy.
Yeah, it’s a game of give and take… (well, someone had to do it. 
)
Anyway, FWIW, Citygirl852, I’m with you, don’t really believe anyone can be “in love” after only a month.
Vlad/Igor, those definitions are fascinating. I define love exclusively as “agape”, the other definitions to me seem to be variations on “like” or “infatuation”. Interesting that there are some much more liberal definitions on love. Hmmmm…
There were types based on research that’s about 15 years old now, but I think they still stand. English, and many other languages are pretty poor when it comes to love. Essentially there’s like, love and damn!. If you go to Greek, though, there are razor-sharp definitions. All of the styles I listed are Greek words defining distinct but closely related human emotions and emotional states.
This is one short discussion that includes Pragma, which I forgot. This Wikipedia entry mentions Hendrick and Hendrick who developed what I discussed above.
Vlad/Igor
“Love without anger isn’t love at all.” – Devo
“A few handy pointers . . . a few handy pointers about the subject of love. First of all, love is not the end of the world. Love is the BEGINNING of the world, you see. Many people write about the subject of love as if that was some ultimate attainment to a spirit. Go fuck yourself! But no, really, ladies and gentlemen, they are trying to stultify your minds, because you can have love where you can go beyond that into realms that are even more interesting. I won’t bore you with the details.” – Frank Zappa
As for myself, I think love is a delusion, but then again, so is consciousness, so what the hell. One can waste time trying to be all philosophically pure by only believing in that which is true, but really, delusions are only harmful when they cause suffering, which love sometimes does and sometimes doesn’t. So what the hey.