Aren't there two types of love?

[alwayson4]

There is regular love.


Then there is romantic love.

[orygbus]

2 type,Yes.
but I think it's either Unconditional or Conditional (I think regular and romantic falls in this category)

[ButterflyWoman]

What about platonic love, such as you would have for a close (but not romantic) friend? What about the love between a parent and a child, or between siblings? Surely if we're going to make categories, we can think of more than just two... ;)

[Tom]

Platonic love is when you don't really mean it.

[CFTraveler]

Frankly, I think there's only one kind of love. Love is wanting the best for someone else (or for ourselves)- anything else is something else entirely, and we can call it a 'type' of love, but it really isn't.
Just my opinion, obviously.

[boris]

apparently the ancient greeks had 12 (or so) different names for the different types of love...

(I knew one day Id be able to offload that interesting fact) 8)

[ButterflyWoman]

apparently the ancient greeks had 12 (or so) different names for the different types of love...

(I knew one day Id be able to offload that interesting fact) 8)
I was thinking about that, too. The Bible uses at least three that I'm aware of. But, in fact, most of those words are not actually about love, per se, but about human relationships.

I'm with CFT on this one. Love is love. It may be complicated by material relationship, but it's still love. The notion of "romantic love" is mostly hormonal and biological, and in a lot of cases, when the initial attraction and giddy "in love" stage passes, the relationship ends because it's based more on the attraction than on anything else. ;)

[alwayson4]

Just my opinion, but I have been in romantic love....hard.

It is awesome, but when it ended, I could not believe the pain, and I could not stop it :(

I think romantic love is a disease

Real unconditional love for all sentient beings is where it is at :D

[orygbus]

Real unconditional love for all sentient beings is where it is at :D
Amen to that!

[ButterflyWoman]

Just my opinion, but I have been in romantic love....hard.
So have I, and many times.


It is awesome, but when it ended, I could not believe the pain, and I could not stop it :(
It's partly an ego thing, but I'm personally convinced that it's at least partly hormonal/biological.


I think romantic love is a disease
I think it's just overrated.


Real unconditional love for all sentient beings is where it is at :D
Well, some people would say that's available to anyone, just not so much from other human beings. ;)

[ButterflyWoman]

Alternatively in the Red Dwarf universe, love is actually a virus that wears off after a while... :)
I think that's not far from the truth. If there's something else there by the time it wears off (friendship, partnership, shared goals and interests, etc.) then you keep going together. If there isn't, the relationship falls apart. ALL romantic love eventually sputters and dies, though it might flare up again now and then (it's not uncommon to repeatedly "fall in love" with a longterm partner). The thing that REALLY lasts is the love that is NOT fueled by "romance" and sexual attraction (not that I'm knocking sexual attraction *ahem*).


I would say there is universal love, then there is a different class of emotions surrounding various objects such as people, animals and material possessions that have a potentially infinite range of classifications. It depends on how granular you want to get.
*nodnod* Yup. That makes good sense, at least to me. The thing about poeple is that everything we do is filtered by our human ego (no matter how much we wish it were otherwise), so no relationship is going to be "pure love" all the time.

[Gemma]

As far as I'm concerned, there is only Love. There aren't any "types" of Love. The energy of Love is the same. The Unconditional Love I feel for a partner, my relatives and my friends is basically the same. I just express it in different ways, depending on the person and my relationship with them. Conditional love is not Love. It comes from the ego. Unconditional Love has nothing to do with the ego.

[CFTraveler]

As far as I'm concerned, there is only Love. There aren't any "types" of Love. The energy of Love is the same. The Unconditional Love I feel for a partner, my relatives and my friends is basically the same. I just express it in different ways, depending on the person and my relationship with them. Conditional love is not Love. It comes from the ego. Unconditional Love has nothing to do with the ego. Which is what I was trying to say way up there.

[yortyort]

Real unconditional love for all sentient beings is where it is at :D
Yes it is! The sad part is very few people feel this way...

Frankly, I think there's only one kind of love. Love is wanting the best for someone else (or for ourselves)- anything else is something else entirely, and we can call it a 'type' of love, but it really isn't.
Just my opinion, obviously.
I agree with CFT

[heliac]

As far as I'm concerned, there is only Love. There aren't any "types" of Love. The energy of Love is the same. The Unconditional Love I feel for a partner, my relatives and my friends is basically the same. I just express it in different ways, depending on the person and my relationship with them. Conditional love is not Love. It comes from the ego. Unconditional Love has nothing to do with the ego.

Probably, right.You can combine emotions too. Love and confusion, a very strange combo. Love and joy, love and ecstasy, love and happiness, love and greed. When combined the combo kind of takes on its own unique quality.

Unconditional love, another one of those words that sounds nice but makes me irky, you can't define it with just one word, love is defined better through by experience. From my experience love doesn't just happen unconditionally. For example if you are preoccupied so much with greed or fear or confusion that you just can't tear yourself away from them, the amount of space you have for giving and receiving love can be pretty limited. The negative emotions themselves aren't bad, it is letting the negative emotions encompass you that can prevent you from experiencing love.This leads me to think that there are conditions to experiencing love.

What are some conditions for experiencing pure love? Some say a mind that is clear and clean and accepting of yourself and others, the good and the bad.

Try this out for yourself. Compare how your capacity to give and receive love is when you are stressed and preoccupied versus when you are not.

[Korpo]

What are some conditions for experiencing pure love? Some say a mind that is clear and clean and accepting of yourself and others, the good and the bad.

Unconditioned love then. ;) :D

Cheers,
Oliver

[heliac]

lol, i knew i was going to see that response at some point. :lol:


It's fun and rewarding exploring the conditions for experiencing love. I have found that my understanding has changed or evolved over time by examining what the conditions are.