I didn't read the replies yet because I don't want my opinion influenced, but I'll share my thoughts.
Love is an inherently irrational reason to date someone because you are choosing to date someone based on an emotion and not on reason.
All love is conditional. For some people, like your mother, the bar may be really low. Your mother may be satisfied with you calling once every couple of weeks, visiting her a few times a year and giving her birthday and holiday gifts. While for other people, like your spouse, the bar may be high. For your spouse, you may have to maintain a certain look, have a certain job and have certain personality traits in order to get love.
Love is a very overrated reason to be in a romantic relationship with someone. I rather be able to trust my wife than to love her. I rather have a wife who cooks, cleans and sleeps with me without loving me than have a wife who "loves" me and do none of those things.
Love is a choice. Before you know anything about a person you date, you look at that person and decide whether you will allow yourself to like or love that person. A large part of what determines whether we allow ourselves to love a person is if we consider that person to be genetically fit for reproduction.
Because love is a choice, you can allow yourself to love a person over time. This is how Indian arranged marriages work. Also, you can choose not to love a person over time. This is why American women get bored and divorce their husbands. Because love is a choice, it is wise for couple to stick with each other than to divorce.
Love is an evolutionary tool to keep men from straying and sleeping with other women and prevent women from sleeping with a bunch a men.
I have never been in love and when I see couples that are in love, I feel that I am missing out on something.
I have been infatuated before. Infatuation seems to occur before you start dating/sleeping with that person. In large part, infatuation is based on the ideal image you have of a person rather than how that person really is. That, however, does not mean that infatuation is an invalid emotion.
Unrequited love is one of the worst feelings in the world. To me, it is comparable to being tortured or the death of a loved one.
A lot of romantic rejection and pain can limit one's capacity to love. Love required vulnerability. And when the vulnerability has been abused it is difficult to be vulnerable in the future.
You are not meant to love only one person. There is no one. I always thought the idea of "the one" being stupid. You are telling me out of the 7 billion people on earth that there is only one person that is right for you? That you and your "one of of 7 billion" just so happen to be in the same geographical area and around the same age? What are the odds of that?
Love is a tool that can help to break down a lot of hatred and mistrust among various groups. It is a biological tool of cooperation among competing groups.
You can feel romantic love for different people for different reasons. While there may be qualities in a mate that will totally disqualify her for you, there are a lot of different traits that you may find attractive. Hence, there is not a definite type that people are attracted to, but that are certain types that people definitely are not attracted to.
That is everything I can think of at the moment. I'll read some of the other replies now.
Love is an inherently irrational reason to date someone because you are choosing to date someone based on an emotion and not on reason.
All love is conditional. For some people, like your mother, the bar may be really low. Your mother may be satisfied with you calling once every couple of weeks, visiting her a few times a year and giving her birthday and holiday gifts. While for other people, like your spouse, the bar may be high. For your spouse, you may have to maintain a certain look, have a certain job and have certain personality traits in order to get love.
Love is a very overrated reason to be in a romantic relationship with someone. I rather be able to trust my wife than to love her. I rather have a wife who cooks, cleans and sleeps with me without loving me than have a wife who "loves" me and do none of those things.
Love is a choice. Before you know anything about a person you date, you look at that person and decide whether you will allow yourself to like or love that person. A large part of what determines whether we allow ourselves to love a person is if we consider that person to be genetically fit for reproduction.
Because love is a choice, you can allow yourself to love a person over time. This is how Indian arranged marriages work. Also, you can choose not to love a person over time. This is why American women get bored and divorce their husbands. Because love is a choice, it is wise for couple to stick with each other than to divorce.
Love is an evolutionary tool to keep men from straying and sleeping with other women and prevent women from sleeping with a bunch a men.
I have never been in love and when I see couples that are in love, I feel that I am missing out on something.
I have been infatuated before. Infatuation seems to occur before you start dating/sleeping with that person. In large part, infatuation is based on the ideal image you have of a person rather than how that person really is. That, however, does not mean that infatuation is an invalid emotion.
Unrequited love is one of the worst feelings in the world. To me, it is comparable to being tortured or the death of a loved one.
A lot of romantic rejection and pain can limit one's capacity to love. Love required vulnerability. And when the vulnerability has been abused it is difficult to be vulnerable in the future.
You are not meant to love only one person. There is no one. I always thought the idea of "the one" being stupid. You are telling me out of the 7 billion people on earth that there is only one person that is right for you? That you and your "one of of 7 billion" just so happen to be in the same geographical area and around the same age? What are the odds of that?
Love is a tool that can help to break down a lot of hatred and mistrust among various groups. It is a biological tool of cooperation among competing groups.
You can feel romantic love for different people for different reasons. While there may be qualities in a mate that will totally disqualify her for you, there are a lot of different traits that you may find attractive. Hence, there is not a definite type that people are attracted to, but that are certain types that people definitely are not attracted to.
That is everything I can think of at the moment. I'll read some of the other replies now.