Philosophy Perfect Love

Discuss.

Personally I feel it's a little dark but there's a disturbing level of truth to it.

 

I'd be interested in finding out what this person thinks love is. Priests can't be "lovers" in a sexual way, but they still love. And they can still suffer because of relationships and friendships that have gone wrong.

I also wonder who this "perfect love" would be. I don't think there can be a perfect love, anyways. You can't expect someone who has had the exact same experiences and interests as you to come along, to whom you would never have even one argument with.

I learned in psych the other day that the marriages and relationships that are most likely to end up in divorce and heart break are romantic ones: Relationships where people go into it with poetry and song, and think that they are meant for each other and nothing can go wrong. Successful relationships are ones where the couple or group realizes that conflict will be inevitable and when it happens they'll be prepared to deal with it.

 

You read the article right?

Edit: And as far as the priest bit goes, the point of that was to illustrate that god is essentially a pacifier; the mythical perfect love and they are addicted to it.

 

The language is just confusing, and I'm sure to others it is as well. Try to summarize or explain things that you quote.


I was just interpreting this person's cynicism towards human love as a bitter cry that his or her relationship did not work or perhaps he or she has had bad past experiences with relationships, maybe leading to divorce - Which would not be surprising considering how high the divorce rate is. And from that I gave advice on how to make human relationships not fail. Of course, after rereading, it goes beyond that.

Yeah, I guess that this perfect love is not possible among humans. Perhaps God's love is a model of how true love should be, and we should strive for that among our relationships with humans and our lovers. Whether God was just created by humans for this purpose and to make us happy, that's a bit extreme.

 

ok thats just messed o_o ...sounds like this persons had lots of baaaaad experiences but is that supposed to mean that nothing can ever go right and stay right for anyone anywhere at anytime? thats naive in itself...

 

It was 1:30 AM when I posted this, about 5 minutes after I read it. I'm wondering if I should be depressed that only I seem to understand it.

You missed the point again. The point is that "Gods love/Perfect love" doesnt survive when you actually interact with a person.

Ok, summary time.

Perfect love - that is, love without risk of that person finding someone else and never thinking less of you, that fabled "fairy tale love", does not exist in the real world. The only way it exists is when you and your lover aren't actually meeting each other, thus bypassing (or ignoring) flaws. It's basically fooling yourself into happiness.

God is in essence taking this concept to the extreme, because fervent believers think God will always love you no matter what, that he will never abandon you.

Consider Belldandy in Ah My Goddess. She seems pretty perfect, no? She has total trust for her love; sees no flaws in him, has eternal patience and is always sweet and tender and never gets frustrated with him. Problem is in the real world nobody is like that. It'd be interesting to analyze AMG as Keichis hallucination.

No matter if it's spoken or not; everyone has things they wish they could change about their lovers. Some just move on and accept things as they are; others cheat.

I do not view this as depressing or niave. I see it as liberating; coming to terms with reality does not necessarily mean happy feelings all around. However knowing reality does make you more prepared to deal with certain issues that may or may not crop up later in life.

Edit:

You skimmed through it, didn't you?

 

no i read the whole thing and i still say its naive. the reality is that true love cant survive without interacting with another person. and whether its Gods love or romantic love or family love or love within a friendship its all the same. how can you possibly fully love someone without interacting with them? and as for the flaw bit, part of perfect/true love is seeing past peoples flaws and learning to accept them because everyone has flaws and no one is perfect. its stupid to think that anyone can find a perfect person with nothing wrong with them and people who think they can find such a person are gunna be alone forever. but even though people are flawed, love is far from. perfect love that is. hence why its called perfect love. people who cheat and run away for someone else...thats not love in the first place. so that cant even be used as proof. as for the physical bit...true or perfect love isnt based on physicality alone. if someone leaves someone else because theyre bored of the physical part then theyre not in love in the first place either. if someone has spent their entire life locked up in a dark cell does that mean theres no such thing as light? to them yes but thats cuz theyve never seen it before.

 

uh

That just really depressed me. I've never been in love, but I've had a lot of
b.f.s.who I thought I did for a while. You always get with somebody and then you think it couldn't get any better and then i'ts over, just like that. I wonder if there's really a perfect love.

 

Cherrygirl hit the nail on the head. Love is not what is described in the quote. What the author of that quote seems to be referring to, at least in my opinion, is lust or something called the "fairy tale love".

Now let me quote something...

"Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged. It is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance."
1 Corinthians 13: 4-7

It is my experience that true love is when you value the concerns, feelings, and self image of the other person more than your own. Your focus is on the other and not on yourself. You love and are attracted to who they are rather than how they look. It is a steady and constant feeling that grows continuously over time.

A common misconception about Love and marriage however, is that everything will always be perfect and you and your love will never have problems or arguments. TOTAL FAIRYTALE! It isn't a question of if you're going to have conflicts, it's a question of when. But it isn't a bad thing to have conflicts in a marriage, this excludes affairs and things of the serious nature, conflicts that a couple works through together only serve to strengthen a couple's relationship.

 

The argument isn't against true love; it's against wanktastic perfect love/ fairy tale love, as I said earlier and now as zealot said.

Consider a celebrity. Now consider a girl who likes that celebrity. She gets an idealized image of him. Then she meets him and he's a total jerk. Make any sense now?

The argument isn't against love; it's against "perfect love". How are you people missing this? Not once did I say it was against love in general; I even say it's against fairy tale love right in post 6.

Edit: wait how did cherrygirl get credit for something I had written earlier in the thread?

Secondary edit: Wait wait wait. Cherrygirl, haven't you ever heard of people falling out of love? It happens all the time. Of course you can use a woman who cheats as an example if she used to love her partner.

Tertiary edit: I'm starting to wonder about the varying levels of life experience belonging to the posters in this thread.

Quatrinary edit:

That's all well and good, but real world people are not always like that. Take my dad; he's horrible with patience; he's rude and extremely proud. He's a big fan of "my way or the highway", and he's something of a pessimist. Does that mean he can't love or his love is not genuine? Something tells me Corinthians itself is describing some fairy tale love right there.

 

thats not what it sounded like reading it..anyhoo a girl getting all giddy over a celebrity doesnt have anthing to do with love even 'fairytale love'. maybe you should define what 'fairy tale love' means to you because it can be interpreted differently for different people

can u really 'fall out of love' if you've found perfect love? i doubt it. cant be perfect love if you can fall out of it....

Edit: about your dad...the quote is LOVE is patient LOVE is kind....not PEOPLE are patient PEOPLE are kind....people are anything but lol your dad may be the farthest thing from patient but doesnt mean his love is and it doesnt mean he cant love

 

Well gee-willikers lets see, the entire quote talks about idealized images falling apart when you make actual contact-oh never mind.

Fairy tale love can mean that sort of ridiculous, oh so perfect idea of love you have for a person or someone who thinks love will turn out all peaches and cream.

Given that perfect love in this case is defined as an illusionary concept-... oh wait. People can become disillusioned.

Please go back to the first post and understand what was meant by perfect.

Guess what? I deal with people in the real world, not personified emotions. Consider a woman who falls in love with a man. Things are great. Later on their child is killed. She's ok but the man goes a little crazy and becomes abusive. If after time she falls out of love after years of abuse, was she never in love to begin with? People change, just like feelings.

 

"True love is not feelings of affection for someone, but rather, a desire for the continued well-being of said person." Quote - source unknown

If you fall out of love with someone, it couldn't have been true love, could it?

This, I agree with. Without meeting someone, you'll never know evereything, or even a lot about them. You'll always see nothing but the image of themselves they want you to see. Thus, they'll tend to hide their flaws, or make themselves sound better than they are, right? When you meet someone, these things are much easier to notice. Like the example that Neph gave.

I read the whole article, and I think that, although the person has some interesting things to say, I'd have to agree with Cherrygirl here. It does tend to sound very cynical, very like someone who has suffered a lot of heartache in their life.

Anyway, I can't think of anything else to say...

 

What if that person changes for some reason? People are not unchanging, static objects; they grow and if they grow in a direction that's not good, I think it's fine to fall out of love with them. Clinging to a memory of what you loved is obsession.

 

whoa whoa whoa i think your the one who doesnt understand what perfect love is...aside from what you claim it is in your previous posts and what this person said in their statement...

but my point is that that being a giddy girl over a hot celeb isnt even fairy tale love thats nothing thats being giddy and maybe obsessive...

i think you need to rethink what perfect means



i have nothing more to say....i have no intention of keeping this pointless arguement going on any further. no hard feelings have a good night

 

The concept of context is meaningless to you isn't it? Go back to post one and understand what the author means by perfect. Unless you think that complete and total doormat-like acceptance of you in your totality exists... and it doesn't. I guarantee that whoever you end up with will not find every single itty bitty flaw in you adorable or think you not weak when a huge flaw is discovered.

Example: My sister is very self centered in conversations and draws attention to herself. I love her as a sister alot, BUT I ABSOLUTELY CANNOT STAND THAT PART OF HER. Now, if it was perfect love, AS PER THE ARTICLE, I would find it a-ok and no bigdeal.

 

Of course, people do change. That's a given. But the ability to accept that change, good or bad, is what defines and differentiates love from true love.

Given what Neph said on MSN, and here, I'll admit that true love isn't blind, but, a big part of it comes with accepting someone, as they are, for who they are, accepting everything about them, good and bad.

(I'll probably stay mostly out of this discussion, I really have a lot of trouble trying to respond. (Time spent on this message, 18 minutes))

 

But what if a change is just too horrible to accept?

 

Then you either ignore it, pretend it never happened, or you deal with it, however you can. Obviously, no relationship is without it's fights, no love without it's disagreements, it's the ability to accept that you disagree, and the ability to return to someone, to sacrifice something, for the other, that's important.

Like Neph asked me, if you found out your loved one of many years was a drug-dealer, how would you react?

 

Depends on the drug and who she deals to. Is it pot to adults only? Fine, whatever. Is it LSD to little Timmy? I can't love someone like that. Give them an ultimatum:the drugs go or I do.