I Wanna Know What Love Is!

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Love...Can it be defined?...What are your favourite definitions?...Should we even bother defining it, if not why not?...Sorry, two questions in one day, is that allowed?...

― james e l, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Love is what you feel for a dog or a pussycat", of course!
BTW I fuckin' hate dogs. Shit and saliva generators.

― tarden, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Some kind of mental disorder, isn't it?

― Nick, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Love is jealous and petty. It is selfless and giving. It's a million contradictions reflected in special smile.

Love comes quickly in whatever you do, you can't stop falling...

― Dan Perry, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I believe Love Is A Battlefield.

― Pete, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Love, love, love is a dangerous drug. And it *is* the drug, believe me.

Fave definitions? When you go around for days with a giddy, warm feeling in your head and chest and everything seems a little more glazed and happy in the world = love. Having been there myself.

― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Love is deep. Love is dark. Love is empty. Love is unforgiving. Love will not take you out for breakfast when you are coming down off bad acid at the 24 Hour Technicolour Dream...

Oh wait, no, sorry, that's not love, that's SPACE. Back into the cupboard, Hawkwind records!!!

― masonic boom, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Oh, Christ. Some art-damaged puppetry major (Robert Smith face paint; slept in a coffin; went in his birthday suit for halloween) did this spoken word thing entitled "Love Is..." - just a list of silliness, topped off by that Pat Benatar quote. Insufferable. Or maybe I'm cranky.

Love...ah, shit, I'm not going to say anything on this topic that won't make me seem like a curmudgeony grump in a burn ward. When it happens, it happens. You really can't fight it, though you can beat yourself up trying to. Hopefully, it grows & becomes something greater than the two+ individuals involved. And that's that.

― David Raposa, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

A bottle of gin is like love... but love is not like a bottle of gin!

(yes, I know that's the wrong way around, but I think it's better that way.)

― masonic boom, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Oh, I forgot to mention; all you need is love. And water. And food. And oxygen. And probably some rudimentary form of shelter.

Empty platitudes suck my ass; it's why I like them so much. (rimshot)

― Dan Perry, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Love is more than the sum of two parts. It is everything that makes those two parts feel like they are one.

It also sucks, sometimes.

― michele, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Did someone say Gin? Gin is love (as it should say in The Bible). Especially Gordon's gin. I almost married a fella called Gordon because of that. As soon as they started playing that wedding march though I soon came to my senses.

Still got the Bombay Sapphire engagement ring though.

― Tanya, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Love is all around, apparently. Conceivably, love is contagious.

― Tim, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Love is unrequited.

― christopher, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I belive the children are our future. Hang on, have I got the wrong platitudes section?

― Nick, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Of course! How could I have forgotten? The surprisingly complex answer is given here

― Nick, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

You got the right section. Because love is a whole bunch of egotistical musicians gathering around singing "We are the World"

― michele, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Love is a wonderful thing, makes you smile in the pourin' rain...

Damn, that Michael Bolton was a philosopher.

― Nicole, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

What is love? Baby, don't hurt me!

― Dan Perry, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I'm avoiding this thread from now on to many catchy tunes implanted in my brain.

― Ed Lynch-Bell, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Ed, I did warn you about the contagious thing.

― Tim, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

love is: "i'd be the shadow of the shadow of your dog if it might have kept you by my side."

― Geoff, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Love is like an open hand; stings a little when it lands...

― Dan Perry, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Love is...not quite as much fun as hate.

― DG, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

There hasn't been a single serious reponse to this. Sorry James. Probably cause :

(a) We're all sick of thinking about this question
(b) 'Love' covers so many different things that no single definition is possible

The best pragmatic (funtionalist?) definition I've heard is 'wanting to be with someone'

― Nick, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The fact that my first answer turned into a PSB quote doesn't mean that it wasn't serious. Quite the contrary.

― Dan Perry, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The fuck I'm not serious! Hot damn it, if I were more serious, I'd be a snoozing bore! Look at how serious I am! Look!

― David Raposa, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Hmmm..."there is no true love, just a finally tuned jealousy"...surprised no one picked that one out!...but anyhows, the best definition of love I've read is:

"I think of love as being a bond between two people, a force transcending space and time, a cosmic glue, if you're not glued to me then it follows that I am not glued to you either. However, it is certainly easy enough to feel sick and tortured over someone who does not love you. You can delude yourself into imagining a bond exists between you when one does not but you can't take much feeling sick and tortured before your delusions of love twist into hate"...From a James Kochalka comic strip, in which Magic Boy is explaining love to his pet cat, in Small Press Expo 1998.

― james e l, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Roland Barthes, _A Lover's Discourse_ is the best book on the subject. I mean it's two hundred fairly dense pages but unlike Stephin Merritt's version you can at least lift it.

― Tom, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

You mean the love between a man and a woman? Or love between a man and a fine Cuban cigar??

― JM, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Damn, Tom. Are you so weak that you can't cart around a 3-CD box set? You really should get out more.

Love ... exciting and new ...

― David Raposa, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Love is in the air, everywhere I look around. Love is in the air - every sight and every sound.

Now, I don't know if I'm being foolish, I don't know if I'm being wise, but it's something that I must believe in, every time that I look. In. Your. Eyes.

...

I don't know WHAT made me say that!

― DavidM, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Love's the only engine of survival.

― Johnathan, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Love is like oxygen: you get too much, you get too high. Not enough and you're going to die. Love gets you high.

― Tim, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

That's funny, I heard Love is the air that supports the ego.

― masonic boom, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

love is contagious

when it's alright.

― Richard Tunnicliffe, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

When I was 36 and no days, I discovered something I had no idea was there to be discovered: that the phrase "falling in love" is NOT A METAPHOR. That [xXx] does or in my case says something ("What nice people," as it somewhat unpoetically happens) and the soul of you drops into free fucking tumble through the being of you. Yeah, sure, hormonal rush after subtle psychic trigger blah blah blah blah blah: the physiology of it was like bunjee-jumping inside your own body. ("Like being hit by a train from behind," my dad had told me, 20 years before: being a know-it-all, I had straightaway filed it under The Funny Things They Say...)

― mark s, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

They say that people want to fill the world with silly love songs, and what's wrong with that?

― Robin Carmody, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

love is drowning in a deep well, fingers too numb to tell, squeeze my handle, blow out the candle, love is blind.

― Geoff, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

A Serious Answer - It happens in the air above the bed. No really, it does. It happens while you look into the other persons eyes, and see that they have pupils so infinitely black and deep, and that something is *in* there, staring back at you, and you get that freaked out feeling (just the same as that one time when you mirror gazed too hardlong into your own eyes), and then you get scared and leap out of bed, running out the bedroom door and slamming it behind you so as to punctuate your desperate and sudden need to spend a few minutes huddled up in the john, alone redefining yourself. Yeah, that's it.

― Kim, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Or it's Pinketron. Who can say?

― Kim, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I don't know, I seem to have spent the first half of my life chasing that "free-fall" utterly dizzy, brain-numbing, can't breath, his fingers are around my heart sort of feeling of being "in love" only to find out that it is all nonsense. That was lust, that was infatuation, that was... I don't know what it was, but it wasn't love.

Love, when it finally did reach me, and it took its bloody time, was far more something which started like a little seedling, almost an irritation at first, and then grew slowly and spread, until one day I was almost surprised to wake up and find that I actually *loved* the person I was with. Not that dizzy, heady, crazy, trapped feeling which *always* boiled off, but something far deeper, more understanding, and with room for me to actually move around and live inside it, and the desire to *want* to live inside it for a long, long, time. Which had never struck me before.

So no, in my case, I didn't fall into love. I grew into love.

So maybe love is completely different for each person that experiences it.

― masonic boom, Thursday, 28 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

"I don't know what it was, but it wasn't love": no, I agree, I think. (So did [xXx]...) Going cold turkey off it is incredibly debilitating and horrible (good way to i. lose lots of wait ii. put lots of weight on...)

But it IS falling.

― mark s, Thursday, 28 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

er, wait = weight, says the professional sub-editor quickly

― mark s, Thursday, 28 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Yes, that free-fall thingey is very addictive. Hence how one can become a crush-junkie, as I have spent most of my life being. Very powerful chemicals are released in the brain, producing that drug-like sensation of being "in love". (Oxymytocin? I've already been told off for one scientific gaffe, so I'm not going to make another by naming the wrong neurotransmitter.)

I think, in the *proper* state of affairs, that crush free-fall feeling is a bonding tool, whereby, even though you are actually addicted to the brain chemical, you associate the brain chemical with your loved one, and crave to be around them more. This is good if the crush is mutual, and it leads to pair-bonding of deeper, more mutual, long-term partnership love. When the oxymytocin or whatever wears off, you have spent enough time with them to bond emotionally.

However, if free-fall crush is *not* mutual, it can be quite dangerous to the emotional state of health, because one becomes addicted to the *chemical* and not the other person, and one seeks eternal fix for the crush-junkie bug, in love with the feeling of being "in love" rather than in love with a person.

I could expound like this for hours, but it makes me depressed.

― masonic boom, Thursday, 28 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Love is not wanting to be with someone it is needing to be with someone.

So there.

― Emma, Thursday, 28 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Go see Brit flick Late Night Shopping for peerless use of the title song of this thread. That and CHine In Your Hands and These Dreams by Heart.

And Emma - I didn't know you cared.

― Pete, Thursday, 28 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Go see Brit flick Late Night Shopping for peerless use of the title song of this thread. That and China In Your Hands and These Dreams by Heart.

And Emma - I didn't know you cared.

― Pete, Thursday, 28 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Just spotted this. Kate... 'an irritation at first'?! Well, really! ;)

I dunno. Love is just something that happened when I least expected it, I think. And it's the slow realisation that you care more about someone else's well-being than your own. If that makes sense.

― Paul Strange, Thursday, 28 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

God, this is turning into some horrible kind of love-in. Can we go back to flippant lyric quotations, please?

― Nick, Thursday, 28 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Could always have love is remembering the person's name when you wake up with them...

― Paul Strange, Thursday, 28 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The emotion was the irritation, not you, you dumbass! Except of course, when you're telling me every 30 seconds, and SQUEEZING me. Can't there be a kind of love which doesn't involve being squeezed?

Oh, sorry, we're getting gushy.

Love is when you will sacrifice a night seeing one of your favourite bands on earth in order to go see Belle and Suckasstian. So there you go.

I'm not sure about the love=needing someone, tho. That idea kinda scares me.

― masonic boom, Thursday, 28 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Love could also be agreeing to book your other half's favourite artist, too... Although I admit he's very good in his own right.

Don't think everyone needed to know about the squeezing. You'll be telling them about the chains and the whipped cream next. Doh.

― Paul Strange, Thursday, 28 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Sod off Pete.

I think I actually defined stalking, not love, but there's a thin line.

― Emma, Thursday, 28 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Chains and whipped cream? Who have YOU been sleeping with? I mean, honestly. I could tell them about the frozen oranges. Or the chocolate body paint... D'OH!!!

― masonic boom, Thursday, 28 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

You could both tell them about me and how you both use me as your sex toy. Except it's not true at all, so I'm sorry I even brought it up. No, really.

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 28 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Cum stains on my pillow remind me of you

― Geoff, Friday, 29 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Love is anathema to logic, Love is lateral and wild. Love is aimles revolution, Love is 9 to 5 reviled. Love will cure the phobia but give us sweaty palms; and though instils a sense of peace is yet a call to arms. Love will form a laughter line from every troubled frown, Love is nature's Prozac without the coming down. Love is an umbrella when there isn't any rain, an aromatic massage when there isn't any pain. Love is weeping eye to eye, love is double glazing, love is a vicious hellcat fight and sycophantic praising. Love is as stubborn as the stain that even Persil can't remove, Love is a scratchy Motown track, the dirty needle in the groove. Love makes a mug of tea in bed the morning after boozing, Love is setting lovers free while subliminally accusing. Love is late for work again, Love is looking glam; the best thing in the universe and a good-for- nothing-sham. Love is kissing under moonlight, Love is sex on a train; Love connects the bleeding heart to the throbbing vein. Love is life's lubricant, Love is four legs in a bath; Love makes two individuals a a single psychopath. Love is a triple figure phone bill, Love will strike us dumb; it leads to lavish poetry to which we all succumb. Love is very complicated, Love is black and white, it might be paradoxical but always Love is right. Love is bloodyminded, Love is strong and true, Love is unafraid of cliche and Love is me and you.

Well, you did ask. Fools.

― Ally C, Sunday, 8 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

one month passes...

"take a bath, I'll drink the water that you leave" or "If you should die before me, ask if you can bring a friend."

Love (i'm assuming) defined by Scot Weiland

― Scott, Tuesday, 14 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Love is something that can only happen a couple of times .. after that your ass is permanently jaded, so enjoy it if you have it :P

― Scott, Tuesday, 14 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Scott, I think what you've done there is confused love with violent anal sex.

― Nick, Wednesday, 15 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Well, Scott Weiland did some time in the Big House, didn't he?

― dave q, Wednesday, 15 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

two months pass...

It's the way that you move, it's the way that you smile your skin on my skin it's that look in your eyes. The promise of you in the heat of the night. When you open your door, it's the way that you bring me inside. It's the rythm of you with your hips on my hips, it's the things that you do with your mouth and your lips, The caress of your hair, your sensual kiss, it's the way that we share in the moment that goes on forever... This is love, and I'm in your world.( CdeB) Gale

― Gale Deslongchamps, Tuesday, 30 October 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

four weeks pass...

I have a question, its a bit off the subject but, how do you know when your in love?

― Mona, Wednesday, 28 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

it's this thing.

― jess, Wednesday, 28 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Your eyes move closer together.

― Ronan, Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Hi Mona, I think that you know your in love when your heart chooses the one for you. I said in another thread that I had a hard time with feelings, since I had not experienced emotional & sexual feelings together until mid 30's. Before that, unknowing, it was just a matter of time. Unfortunately it would never happen with my husband. It wouldn't have ever happened with an abusive person. Gale

― Gale Deslongchamps, Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

six months pass...

um...God is love.

heh...sorry, no one had said it yet...

― Lyssa Colson, Saturday, 1 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

*I will always love you* AH BULLSHIT i like nicks answer its a mental disorder! the dead boys have a song called What Love Is but i can't understand what stiv is singing does anyone know the lyrics to this song then we can all know what love is! it goes.. ride your face in.....then he loses me can't understand a word. I WANT YOU TO KNOW WHAT LOVE IS

― jean, Saturday, 1 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

two years pass...

The people in my office do not love me.
The people in the diner across the street do love me.
Perhaps I should become a waiter?
"Love Is Strange"
So sang Mickey & Sylvia.
Were they ever wrong?

― adam. (nordicskilla), Thursday, 16 September 2004 21:51 (twenty-one years ago)

it is indeed strange

― Towelette Pettatucci (Homosexual II), Thursday, 16 September 2004 21:56 (twenty-one years ago)

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