Chaudywogbaaga

An essay on what love is and is not.

Finding love is not about an individual finding the love of his or her life. It is about the human expression of a little understood emotion and feelings that are associated with it. There is so much written about love that labels it as confusing or ephemeral. Much of this is false. It mislabels feelings that are tied to love but are not love in and of themselves. It is popular to think of love as an indefinable blissful state that when true will last forever. Many of these attitudes in popular culture are misleading and confuse those that pay attention to them.

This essay debunks these popular ideas and points the reader towards the real emotion and how to find it in themselves. It will discuss why love is so misunderstood and how to clear away the cobwebs from an emotion that is often overlooked for the feelings that come from it. It will also give a language for delving deeper into thesubject and provide a way of enhancing the dialogue surrounding the subject.

Follow up:

Love is understandable. That is the first acieration that must be made. There are clear and simple ways of arriving at the destination that the reader wants to arrive at, but the destination has to be better understood.

The common view of love is not the lofty love that is often alluded to in songs and poetry. The common view of love focuses on what the Greeks called Eros. It is a romantic love that occurs in most relationships at the beginning. This is the kind of feeling that is felt most strongly by young courtiers that is associated with dating, and in it’s apex intercourse. This is the love that is most commonly referenced in popular culture. However this is not the love that is the timeless undying love that is the ideal goal for a couple. At the same time it is not counterproductive to the goal. What is important to recognize is that this romantic love can come and go and its absence does not spell doom for the Love of a couple.

Notice that I capitalized the ‘L” in love. I will use this format to identify the quality most commonly identified as true Love out of storybooks where the prince and the princess live happily ever after.

Romantic love is the most obvious feelings that are associated with love. Because of this, most people recognize it as love. However it is not love itself, and in some ways can hinder love. How can this be? To understand that we will have to examine one of the aspects of true Love.

Love is empathy that provokes positive action. Empathy is an understanding of another’s feelings. Love is an understanding of another person’s feelings that provokes action to benefit. That is not all Love is, but one of it’s aspects. It helps to identify the emotion and separate romantic feelings from Love. Romance can occur in the absence of Love. Romantic feeling can and often do stem from selfish interest. Even more to this point, romantic feeling often occurs without any empathy toward the involved parties.

So where does this lead us? Pursuit of romantic feeling that is common in dating scenes is indifferent to love. It may occur by accident but the unfortunate truth is that because both parties set out to find romantic feeling (not the same as Romance), as soon as that ebbs a couple feels that their Love is in danger. This is not the case. Their Romance (proper) may be sliding but it has no bearing on Love. This is most often directly cited in relationships by women in statements like “The romance in our relationship is gone, I don’t think he loves me anymore”. It is also stated by men in a slightly different way. Usually it is expressed as “She doesn’t turn me on anymore” which is usually reason enough for a man to end the relationship. In both instances the man and the woman are mistaking Love for romantic feeling.

If an individual is pursuing romantic feeling, then they are doomed to transitory relationships that will climax and then ebb, ending when the high of the feeling has faded. This is the same kind of pattern found in drug addiction. The user feels great pleasure as the high comes on but when it ebbs they seek more. When there is no more the user must move on. Romantic feeling produces this high and the crash that usually ends the relationship. The crash is the part that imperils any Love that may have existed in the relationship. The individual feels the ebb of the romantic feeling and attempts to find a reason for it. He or she begins to reason that the other person must be at fault and looses respect for them. They fail to realize that it is the very nature of human mental makeup that causes it. A loss of respect can cause a lack of that motivation to act on empathy because they reason “what have they done for me lately?” This has the potential to kill any Love that might have once been because as stated before Love is empathy that provokes positive action. Without the action you simply have empathy. As tensions mount because both parties want that high to return, even the empathy evaporates and both parties will usually assume the relationship to be lost.

The moral here is that there is no eternal high. There is no love that will result in an unending bliss. There is however unending Love that can result in periods of bliss.

So where does this lead us in finding Love? It should be stressed that Romance is not counterproductive or harmful to love as long as romantic feeling is understood, or at least kept in it’s place. Western culture has convinced many that romantic feeling is Love and that as soon as it is gone, Love is gone. This is untrue. It is common to have love portrayed as a romantic period followed by a humdrum coexistence. This may be the unfortunate reality for many, but it is not unavoidable.

Preventing this has much to do with understanding the ebb of romance and maintaining any Love that may have developed. One way to do this is to not fear the ebb of romantic feeling, but anticipate it and prepare for it. By this I do not mean that one must resign themselves to a mediocre existence but very much to the contrary. By preparing for this ebb you are better able to rebound in Romance, and in any event prevent a relationship from falling into drudgery.

The most important step in preparing for the ebb of romantic feelings is not to look at them as the end goal. The end goal is Love. This will allow the feelings to pass without the feeling that the relationship has failed. At this point it is crucial to develop any Love that already exists. At this point, when romantic feeling is ebbing, is one of the times that Love can be exposed for it’s true nature. By this I do not mean the love in the relationship but an individual may truly recognize what Love is stripped of romantic feelings. This state is not a sad or even lackluster stage in a relationship, but when appreciated as different but valuable, it’s true beauty shines through. This can be difficult to do as one has become accustomed to the high of romance. The loss of the high can make the individual spend more time morning the high, than to appreciate their mate.

It is because of misunderstanding this transition period and falling into the inevitable crash of romantic feelings that the crash is felt most acutely. Working with the transition can make it smooth and the period of time it occurs in, enjoyable and productive to the relationship.

Does this mean the end of Romance? No it does not have to. However the couple must continues to look to Love as the end goal. Romance can spring up at any time in a relationship where there is Love, it is simply a series of highs to be looked forward to rather than the extended high of the courtship process. Although this essay is not about finding Romance, finding Love and nurturing it can go a long way to engendering Romance.

So how does one make Love their end goal? There are some easily definable methods of doing so but they take small amounts of consistent effort to maintain. A simple illustration to draw this out goes as follows, Romance is a sprint, Love is a journey. You can sprint as hard as you like, you can even slow to a jog if you like, but you eventually have to rest. It does not mean that you didn’t get closer to your goal nor does it mean that you have to stop completely. But when you start walking the rest of the way, you may feel that you will never make your goal. The important thing is don’t quit the journey. Run when you can walk when you must and never quit.

How do you find love? Respecting your potential mate is vital. If that respect engenders a desire to do good for another person to the point that you are motivated, then that is in essence Love. The second half is if that desire to benefit reciprocated? Does your potential mate do good for you? This doesn’t mean following your commands, thats a slave. It means that they look for ways of helping you, perhaps in ways you are not aware you need help in yourself. This is most often heard in statements as “he/she completes me".

This misinterperated thought that an individual needs someone to complete them is sometimes thought of as being degrading because it is thought to imply that the individual is incomplete by them self. This is where the vernacular and the misunderstanding about love and it’s nature has caused confusion. The person saying it does not mean that they were incomplete before, at least in most cases. They are using a word picture to imply that the person they are now is more than what they were before. Before any more negative connotation is read into that, it is important to be pragmatic about the subject. When two people work together, they are automatically more than the one. No matter how great one person is on their own, having someone else added to the situation is going to make them able to do more. The proper way of expressing the idea should be “I would feel incomplete without them". Even this would be open to misunderstanding but it is closer to reality as with Love the partners become part of each other.

This reciprocation of motivation to do good for each other cannot be enforced by counting who is doing more for the other. There is no score sheet, no counter of good deeds. The focus must be on the intentions of each party not the actual deed.

To conclude, to find Love. . .
Find someone that you respect and respects you.
See if that respect motivates you to do good for that person
See if they reciprocate in doing good for you

If you can do that then you’ve found Love. Weather that means you’ve found a potential mate or not is up to you.