You guys all sound like a bunch of men who got p1ssed off over a woman who really hurt you or multiple women who hurt you and have become all defensive as a result. Especially bigneil and Nismo's responses... I mean, come on guys. bigneil, you think you can define a concept like love in terms of some sterilized title like Mutual High Interest Level???
This is the only response that makes any sense so far:
Zekko said:
I think that if you're the kind of person who can appreciate the simple things in life, like the sunrise, as an incredible thing, then I think you'd have to say that love is an incredible thing.
The problem is that it doesn't always end well. In fact, it usually doesn't, especially these days. Which means you have to appreciate it all the more while it's going well. Kind of like treasure each moment of your life, because you're going to run out of days sooner or later.
As Nismo alluded to, there is some vagina overvaluing going on here but not in the way he described. Not
all women are crazy BDPs, they're not all irrational, and they're not all out to get us as guys. But when a guy starts out with an overinflated since of what it is that he's after in a woman (ie, he has put her or women in general on a pedestal), should the crap ever hit the fan, the pain the guy experiences is likely to drive him to want to reframe the very painful problem in terms that make it easier for him to deal with... like I've said before, people generally take the easiest road available to them, even when it's not in the best long term strategy or solution.
When a boy grows up wanting to find "love" in a girl and upon growing up, realizes he's been summarily disappointed because he was either a huge AFC and didn't know what in the world he was doing or happened to chose very poor women, the easiest thing for him to do to help ameliorate the pain is to create a straw man argument: The problem isn't that I have bad skills with women, that I don't take care of myself, that I choose low quality women, or that I don't have the perseverance to search diligently, even in the face of failure, to find this love I want - the problem is that love actually doesn't exist! Or maybe the problem is that love does exist in theory, but it can't be functionally applied anymore because all women are absolutely worthless creatures and way too crazy to invest in... besides, you can't even trust them! Those self centered little things will only ever love their children, after all.
The problem can't possibly be that I, as a *man*, somehow at some point in time in my relationship journey, could have done something to mess things up because I haven't really been
the man. Oh no, of course not! And the problem certainly couldn't be that I've expected tremendously more out of my relationships than have been reasonable to expect... never...
Guys.
I have never advocated that the Disney version of love where two people kiss, instantly fall in love, and fireworks spontaneously start going off in a background behind a castle exists. That's foolish and not even a sane description of anything human. And I really don't even think it would be all that bad if it weren't for the pervasive footholds that feminism and male shaming have achieved in society. Boys grow up pretending to be soldiers, people of power, and superhumans (at least those with imaginations). What is so wrong with a girl growing up pretending to be a princess waiting for a
manly prince to come rescue her (provided she can maintain a grounded view of reality)?
But that isn't the point. True love between a man and a woman exists, but like Zekko said, if you can't appreciate the beauty around you in a given moment, you're certainly never going to be able to experience a concept like love. Love requires certain conditions that are not easy to meet. You have to search very diligently for it, if that's what you want. You can't have some expectation that if you do 100 cold approaches you'll find someone worthy of that level of comradery. What in the world kind of expectations do you all have?? Floyd started to hit on some of the evolutionary psychology explanations for love, like how we don't love because we actually love, instead, we love because of how that person makes us feel. Let's get a little deeper in to science for a moment - given how fundamentally unique each of you are from every us person on the earth (consider the genetic and environmental implications), how in the h*ll do you think finding someone to fall in love with and share a long or maybe even the rest of your life with is going to be a quick thing, even in the realm of a few years???
I have said it at least 2 times now, but I'll say it again... you guys all sound bitter because you've been disappointed. Pain can blind a person's senses just as much as ignorance and it sounds like you all are operating from a position of past hurt. I think every does to an extent. The difference is that some people are able to manage the pain and hurt they experience and some don't. And your pain either defines you or challenges you to higher planes in your life. Too many of you sound like you've been defined by your pain.
And btw, there is a component of love that is an emotion, but there is also a component of love that transcends emotion. It's a commitment to a higher purpose. It occurs when you have found someone whose company you enjoy so much that they are a compliment to your life more so than they are a liability. The good significantly outweighs the bad. But that doesn't mean there isn't any bad. The commitment to a higher purpose occurs during the bad, when you can identify that you may not necessarily feel "in love", but you don't just jump ship because you are intelligent enough to understand that nothing in life is perfect and everything has its ups and downs. AFC's misunderstand things like this and use it to justify and rationalize staying in a lousy relationship even when their good/bad "calculus" would indicate that not only are they not really in love, but their relationship is more of a liability than it is an enhancement. And that's stupid.
I would venture to say that you guys got bitter and discouraged out of a hurt(s) and just gave up. That doesn't mean love doesn't exist. It just means it doesn't exist for you because you didn't have the tenacity to seek after it until you found it.