Love

[alexmegami]

http://www.canoe.ca/LifewiseSexromance0201/jan7_science_print.html

Contrary to popular belief, while men and women are equally capable of romantic passion, it is usually the men who fall in love the fastest and the hardest. They are the true romantics. Women, on the other hand, tend to treat their affairs with at least a degree or pragmatism and common sense.

I remember learning about these studies! Yeah, lots of interesting things in them.

Most people, she finds, associate confidence, caring for the other, respect, loyalty, devotion, sacrifice and satisfaction to both love and commitment. On the other hand, they attribute intimacy and happiness strictly to love. Even more unexpected is the fact that most of the people Fehr interviewed for her study consider the feeling of trust to be an essential component of what they call love. As well, mutual respect, loyalty and tenderness—over and above raw physical attraction—were identified as those things likely to form the foundation for a loving relationship.

So, Paul, I guess the reason 'like' and 'love' only seem like variations on the same thing to me is that I do have some degree of intimacy with my friends (backrubs! Yay!), and my friends make me happy (this seems like a rather odd thing to be love-only o_O). Most of the things they list as typically attributed only to love, I also get out of my friends. So it's not that my love is less, it's that my like is more ;)

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"Love Means Never Having To Say You're Corny"

And for all our intellectualization, don't you find it funny that for something we don't have a clue about, we can be so certain when we're irrevocably in love?

Comments

[user-lain.livejournal.com]

I'm going to get beat down for this... soooo badly...

There are three things about standard romantic love that make it different from standard platonic love (or like, in my perspective):

1. Sex
2. Romance, which is Sex-Lite
2. Sense of possessiveness

[alexmegami]

But is sex necessarily a part of love? Understandably, you mean romantic love, but does that mean altruistic love is any less love? Especially since it only (theoretically) has, at best, #2 out of that list?

I personally like the six-pronged theory of love described in the link. Obviously, some of the prongs are more idealized in our culture (romantic, altruistic), while some are probably not considered 'love' (egotistic = lust, pragmatic = ...not love, whatever it is, companionate = like), and some are accepted as 'love', but a really demonized version of it (manic). It's all really a matter of perspective, I think.

[user-lain.livejournal.com]

No, of course not. Sex is not necessarily part of love. Platonic and altruistic love are just as powerful as romantic love. Those elements are only what makes romantic and platonic/altruistic love different.

I'm not going to argue about the others (egotistic, pragmatic, etc...)

[alexmegami]

*nodnod*

Don't worry, someone else will. ;)