Poll: Do you believe in love? - Page 2

King B

Yeah. I'm pretty sure I love my family, and think they're more precious than anything.

Ainsworth

Some of y'all are so depressing

Yes, I believe in love.

MaRy

Quote:

Social psychologists today would have you think that they've placed love in the lab and analyzed it. They'll say that they've discover that it exists in almost eerie accordance folk notions of it. But is this true?

Psychological models of love usually divide it into passionate love and companiate love. Passionate love is rich with dopamine injections. It starts off heated and lusty but quickly quiets down after about six months. This is when most people wake up one morning, look over at their lover, and can't quite help but find a bunch of faults with them that they didn't notice before.

Companiate love is something that grows over time -- a long time too. It has little to do with dopamine and more to do with security. One doesn't get a rush of good feelings when they think about their house or job (sometimes it is the exact opposite) but to take those things away from them would be devastating. Those things are securities -- lasting bases from which activities that do create dopamine flares can originate. So instead of a lover becoming an activity, they become a part of your life.

In countries where arranged marriages are the norm, divorces are relatively low. These young people aren't fed myths about passionate love that lasts forever. Their cultures stress the importance of monogamy for rearing families and living generally happy lives. A newly-wed couple simply grow to love one another. They must change themselves to do this.

Our culture doesn't like the idea of changing or compromising our inner constitutions for somebody else (and, perhaps, rightfully so). So we've stigmatized the idea of everlasting passionate love. Name one love story in a movie or book that introduces a couple long after they've already fallen in love. The exceptional stories that do probably tell a tale of how a couple fall back in love again and "reignite their passions" for one another. (They also probably star Meryl Streep.) But is this real? It's always assumed that live happily ever after -- that companiate love will begin to commence and that we won't have to worry about them getting a divorce. But chances are they will.

Psychologists seem very apologetic with their concept of companiate love. To me, that just sounds like friends with (exclusive) benefits. This doesn't fit with our popular myth of true love. No one in our culture thinks that this is the ideal relationship.

So I ask, who's at fault here: psychologists who gerrymander a scientific theory of true love, a culture that feeds us unhealthy definitions of true love, or are such institutions just obsolete now that we live off of the savanna and on the grid?

http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewt...?f=15&t=172399

Interesting...

RomaZzzRoma

i wanna believe but

Retro

Yes, of course I do, and I don't subscribe to the oversimplification of emotion and abstract thought as mere chemical processes. That might be the underlying cause of it all, but the human mind is far more complicated than that.

Lambo.

No. I don't want to anymore, nothing ever works out and it sucks.

Rick

Love never lasts, but it's worth it.

BlondeAmbitionxX

It's good while it lasts, but there's no such a things as everlasting love, it fades over time...

Ties

Quote:

Originally posted by Ressti

Pain is an illusion also. Sadness is a sickness. Nothing is real tbh.

While I certainly understand where you're coming from biologically, I believe that you're conflating the biology of psychology more so than the actual external factors in play here. While chemicals and hormones are the reason as to why we feel the emotion, that doesn't mean the emotion itself is something we can voluntarily forestall from occurring and affecting the situations we involve ourselves in everyday. Emotions are pivotal in shaping our perceptions, honestly.

I don't know, that's just me though.

Retro

I think it can work out in the long run - that's how some people stay happily together for decades until they die. It might not be the exact same feelings as earlier on, but it's still love and it can last.

Sunderland 4ever

I do, but in order to be a long-term relationship a lot of communication and commitment is required.

Quote:

Originally posted by J03Y

you must be real fun at parties, huh?

Kade

paulyyyozd

I want to

Androgyne

I wanna know what love is... I want you to show me

Fireman25

Actually, no. I aspire to it but I don't believe in people, so I can't say I believe in love. Look at the divorce rate and look at the myriad things that contribute to it; how narcissistic our culture is. One may believe in the ideal of love, but you'd have to refrain from critical thinking, at least a little bit,