Does true love really exist ?

I think true love is mostly like you get along very well with the person and both of you complement each other. Compatibility.

 

I think a practical question is whether it's born or made, if you will. The idea that ones soul mate is already there somewhere is the born idea, "made for each other", and I would say the "made" idea is not so much a lot of work but a co-creative process. Unfortunately a lot of people do not see it as a creative process but rather a kind of make it work thing, more like a machine than a living entity.

 

Humans evolved the ability to become attached to each other — that is, the ability to love each other — because it helped us survive. This isn’t exactly romantic or sexy, but it’s true. We didn’t evolve big fangs or huge claws or insane gorilla strength. Instead, we evolved the ability to emotionally bond into communities and families where we became largely inclined to cooperate with one another. These communities and families turned out to be far more effective than any claw or any fang. Humanity soon dominated the planet.

As humans, we instinctively develop a loyalty and affection for those who show us the most loyalty and affection. This is all love really is: an irrational degree of loyalty and affection for another person — to the point that we’d come to harm or even die for that person. It may sound insane, but it’s these symbiotic warm fuzzies that kept the species relying on one another long enough to survive the savannas and populate the planet.

For most of human history, romantic love was looked upon as a kind of sickness. And if you think about it, it’s not hard to figure out why: romantic love causes people (especially young people) to do some stupid shit. It’s this sort of poor decision making that made the ancients skeptical of romantic love’s utility. Instead, many cultures treated it as some sort of unfortunate disease we all have to go through and get over in our lives, kind of like chickenpox. In fact, classic stories like The Iliad or Romeo and Juliet weren’t celebrations of love. They were warnings against the potential negative consequences of love, of how romantic love can potentially ruin everything.

Romance and all of the weight we tend to put on it is a modern invention, and primarily promoted and marketed by a bunch of businessmen who realized it will get you to pay for movie tickets and/or a new piece of jewelry. Industrialism and agriculture caused longer life spans and thus more freedom and safety to explore other things like romance. It's a luxury.

The painful truth about love is that the real work of a relationship begins after the curtain closes and the credits roll. The real work of a relationship is all the boring, dreary, unsexy things that nobody else sees or appreciates. Like most things in the media, the portrayal of love in pop culture is limited to the highlight reel. All the nuance and complexities of actual living through a relationship is swept away to make room for the exciting headline, the unjust separation, the crazy plot twist, and of course everyone’s favorite happy ending.

Most of us have been so inundated by these messages throughout our entire lives that we have come to mistake the excitement and drama of romance for the whole relationship itself. When we’re swept up by romance, we can’t imagine anything could possibly go wrong between us and our partner. We can’t see their faults or failures, all we see is their limitless potential and possibility.

This is not love. This is a delusion. And like most delusions, things usually don’t end well.

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So romantic love is an invention.

Love can also be chemicals in the brain that causes an extreme form of neediness or attachment.

That being said, I also believe love exists. Maybe it's more accurate to call it something like "I really really really like having this person in my life". Romance is a luxury, but it's also fun and can spice up a relationship.

A high degree of interest / attachment / admiration / gratitude towards someone can all be love.

 

See true love where there's only one guy/girl out there for you is so not true. But ive wondered this alot, and if you're asking does "love" exist, yes. But love is such a subjective meaning

 

Who’s this “us” you’re speaking of?

 

True love as in Fairytale stories, one and true love. There's only one person out there for true love, then definitely not.

Love, then yes imo love exists. I don't have this feeling of "love," I don't think, but I would say yes it exists.

 

Love is often misinterpreted. Alot of people say I love this person, but alot of times they do not. They aren't lying, people don't know what love really means.

 

It's fucked tbh. Love is a sketchy thing to dive into

 

Love is a joke.
All people's want is sex once and move on with their life.I met couple's and marriage going down the drain,that's why i don't get why people's date or trying find "love".But that's my opinion.

 

Someone mentioned an author that talks about a tension between the desire for security/domestication on the one hand and freedom on the other. In terms of this question about true love, what are peoples ideas about what love is in the first place? Is it the security idea, or is it more of a free "in the wild" expression?

In the first case you don't live in a totally isolated bubble with the dyad, and outside influences may always affect the bond. If it starts out as a chance thing and the two peoples natural way of being in the second case, lets say they are both pretty unique and sort of eccentric even - maybe it isn't about finding true love in a relationship as it is finding relationship in true love. And by that I mean true love as more of a relationship with the world/nature, and the relationship with that natural fit person is found as a part of that larger relationship?

Of course, natural though it may be there's no guarantee that's likely or common - the way humans are domesticated as their own pet, as one German philosopher says may mean the security oriented relationship is far more common. Not that people are strictly one or the other in practice of course, but it's interesting to think about those two tendencies/inclinations.

 

BTW, I just have to point out that these subtle little narratives we have about love, whether it's learned through Hollywood cliche plots or whatever cultural pattern is effectively a context of domestication. It may be indirect but there's a kind of downstream effect.

 

Tenzin Palmo Jetsunma explains it way better than I ever could. I share her view of what love is:



That said, I think the most consistent, sincerest and deepest expression of love is platonic love (friends and family) and is also the sort of love you need to sustain a long term relationship once the romantic "love" (aka infatuation) simmers down. You have to have a foundation of friendship underneath if any relationship in your life (including friends and family) can work long term. That's my opinion anyway and is also why I'd never date or be in a relationship with someone who can't first and foremost be my friend.

 

No. Love is just a chemical cocktail in the brain that releases dopamine. We can synthasize it, and for comparison, Cocaine stimulates three to five times more dopamine than sex. Maybe instead of NoFap, I should get into Cocaine.

But absent those things, Love is an emotion that's... capricious. People fall in and out of love all the time. It could be based on years of commitment and support and then tone minute... that's it. They fuck around, or walk out on you. Or worse, maybe they come back, pretending that nothing occurred.

So no. No one exists for anyone, even seemingly stable and happy relationships can crumble with no warning, and those that don't are based on years of hard work. And even those aren't immune.

 

True love exists if you want it to. Because true love that endures is not passive, it's an action. You choose to love, it doesn't just happen. If you want to love, you need to choose to love, every day.

True love takes work. If it's worth it to you, then you'll have it, because you'll work for it.

 

true love, say it how it is. Jokes aside, yes love is real and every one can find that person who just does it for them. makes them feel complete. others feel complete already and don't need somebody, I think it's also to do with the individual and how they respond to love. but overall id say it's a wonderful feeling to feel and would consider it somewhat of a miracle in nature to have this feeling, instead of just an instinct, a programming to 'be fruitful and multiply'

 

I recommend to listen to the full album "The miseducation of Ms. Laurynn Hill". It'll clear things up for you

 

My grandma and grandpa were married for 56 years, she had food on the table the second he came home every day until he retired, and he took care of her for over a decade when her health failed until her death, he refused to put her in a nursing home despite the extremely heavy toll it put on him because she belonged in her home.

 

It will?