Argonaut said:
Love is just a state of mind.
I don't think people have the right frame of mind for analysing the concept of love sometimes. They are too hurt or too emotionally crippled. They also don't have the requisite scientific grounding (even if it's merely a rudimentary view gained from newspapers!).
Firstly, everything you feel or experience is really just the result of finely tuned chemicals anyway. So be pessimistic about that.
But. You do go through several stages to get to "real love" - that being, the sort of love you'd "expect" say a husband a wife with two children to have. Not the shit in the movies which we'll call "romantic love".
So say we start off from the beginning right? We'll start off with just physical attraction. E.g. "that girl is hot" "that boy is hot". That's obviously hormones and also your socially conditioned views of beauty. Socially conditioned meaning the impact of the opinions of popular culture, your parents and your social groups.
Sometimes, however, say if you pick up a boy/girl at this stage the following may happen "god, I don't like this person due to"
If the result is a) physical. Then it's obviously hormonal and social conditioning.
If the result is b) mental/personality. It's probably closer to social and also, happily, your own free thought and free will.
We'll call the previous stage "like". There is of course "like" involving personality and mental features, but if that's to develop into anything, it's probably closer to the next stage because it's not just based on raw physical urges.
Now if that progresses. You get to the sort of "in love" stage. This can also equate to "romantic love". We're all aware of the aspect of it portrayed in the movies. Two hotties get together, the man buys the woman everything she ever wants, she falls in love with him, they have a lot of sex and get married. Or in real life, the guy might buy the girl some things, they have a lot of sex and claim they love each other. Better yet, they fall in love because of personality blah blah. Another aspect of being in love is that you might "love" the person because they "love" you. It's not real love, you love them for making you feel loved, it's to do with covering up your own insecurities as opposed to anything real or lasting.
You might ask why I'm focusing on this personality, opinion, mental aspect. It's important because it's the only way any of this can become real love.
My theory is that you can only get to the real love stage with a proper understanding of the other person, in effect, you actually have to LIKE your partner, accept their flaws and not just want to fuck their brains out (of course, fucking their brains out is a good part of it and is neccesarry!). So you have real love, mature love, which stems from actually loving your partner, not just being in love with them.
What does that mean? Getting to real love is hard. You might be in love, but you find out you don't really like your partner over time for various reasons. You find them less attractive, you don't like the way they think, you don't like the way they act. Of course, this is all within reason, there might be flaws that you can tolerate or even love in real love. So basically, it might take you a very long time to find someone you actually love. But that's alright, you're fucking YOUNG.
My advice, try, experience, enjoy. Don't mope, just enjoy it. Have a lot of sex, be in love with a lot of partners, and eventually something will come a long. If not, just enjoy the hedonism of it all.
