Love Is A Rose

For me Tom, commitment is remaining ACTIVELY engaged in the relationship building process.

We are nurturing the relationship regularly ie celebrating the good in each other, talking and working through conflict, having fun together,working towards joint goals, and giving moral support to each others individual pursuits and pains
.

Romantic feelings are great, and I love them, but if the things I mentioned above aren't happening, the feeling is reduced to a hollow sensation as you alluded to in your post

I think it is all the above. You can't just say it.

"Love Is A Rose" (Lyrics by Neil Youn

Love is a rose
but you better not pick it
It only grows when it's on the vine.
A handful of thorns and
you'll know you've missed it
You lose your love
when you say the word "mine".

I wanna see what's never been seen,
I wanna live that age old dream.
Come on, lads, we can go together
Let's take the best right now,
Take the best right now.

I wanna go to an old hoe-down
Long ago in a western town.
Pick me up cause my feet are draggin'
Give me a lift and I'll hay your wagon.

Love is a rose
but you better not pick it
It only grows when it's on the vine.
A handful of thorns and
you'll know you've missed it
You lose your love
when you say the word "mine".
Mine, mine.

Love is a rose, love is a rose.
Love is a rose, love is a rose.

Beautiful song Waterloosunset, Seems like Neil young defines love as an action and a way of thinking .

Thanks so much for sharing :)

Some of us agree on that yellow rose and some dont :)

I guess it depends on people's values perhaps

Exactly but we know opinions will be questioned and debated here

Oh boy do I know it

hahahaha pretty funny you know

Love is like a Ghost everybody is talking about but only few have seen it you know

Hi sookie! I think a lot of people have seen it but few of us have been able to see it last. Welcome to the forum! :)

Love is a commitment Your Heart Makes to love the person completely everyday.. then love is a choice our minds make.. to let our heart love the person completely.. everyday..
Love is an obligation.. to give ourselves mind body and spirit over to the person everyday..

You have things out of order, relative to what I was talking about. Anyone who wants to, can try to control who they love, by running a series of tests during dating, and summing up all the various touchstones of desire and upset. The thing is, that doesn't CAUSE LOVE. And the more you cater to it, the less likely you are to have actual love.

The difference between hiring a lover, and finding someone to love and build a life with may be subtle, but the differences are really there, and they do make a difference.



Again. If you are running CALCULATIONS in order to decide if you are pleased or not, that MEANS that it isn't love. It's SERVICE.



Again, sort of. If what you mean by this is, that you build up an ideal of what you think you SHOULD BE, and try to command yourself to act that way, then you will not be a real you. You will be acting out your life, not living it.

One simple test, so to speak: if your "standards" are really what you, in your soul or heart actually live by and who you ARE, then how THEY behave in response wont be anything you apply calculations to. For example, if you believe in comforting your mate every day, you will do so, whether they do so in return or not. If instead, you think of your actions as "buying" or "trading" actions by them, then you actually DON'T have comforting your mate as a "standard." It's just a form of currency to you.



By simply not doing it. You live your life. Your simple, actual, moment to moment life. You don't check the tote board, and decide how long to kiss your mate next time you see them. You kiss them because that's how you want to live.

Something I am convinced of to my core, which you might simply not believe, is that love must be TRUSTED, if it is to exist at all. By trust, I mean that you put down the lists, turn off the calculator, put away the expert books about having the best lover, and just be here now, with the person you think you love.

That does NOT mean that you play the delusional love game, where you completely ignore your mate, and then go through the motions of being their love slave. It means you remain immediately engaged with them and interactive with them, for good and for ill. And if it isn't working, because they are intolerable to be with, then you take yourself elsewhere. What you DON'T do, is fall into the modern commoditization format that everyone is being encouraged to adopt these days, and tell your mate that they are hired help who can be fired if they don't measure up.




Actually, it can't thrive any other way. Measuring love, pushes it away. The operative way to live, is not to count how many times your hoped for mate empties the trash, or is late picking you up. It is to recognize where your boundaries are. If they cross them, and you tell them they have, and they cross them again, you end things. No complicated calculations required or desired.

If you do as some have done, and count how many small mistakes your mate makes, and then put them in a pile and try to get them to become someone else when you show the heap to them, love is already off the menu for the two of you.

I agree Doc. I would just maybe change the word "obigation" to an "unselfish commitment "

its not a feeling.. true love is a bond.. of the deepest kind..physical is just that.. physical.. but the mental bond is what make it love.. real love.. true love.

very well said !

I think I understand why you are concerned about the concept of qualifying love Igor, and your outlook makes sense to me. :)

If I am understanding correctly, I think you are viewing the defining of love as a regimental assessment of quotas submitted by both partners daily. I never believed love was exacting like that, but I can understand why it might have come across that way.

How I see it, in every relationship, there are rules of engagement that are mutually agreed upon by both partners in terms of how they both desire to be treated or not to be treated.

I call those "rules" standards. You call them boundaries. I dont see a major difference between the two. One is saying, I expect you to treat me in the following desirable ways. The other is saying I expect you to NOT treat me in the following undesirable ways.

In both cases, parameters are being mutually drawn that both parties are requiring each other to live within or up to.

What protects that process from being exacting, regimental and clinical, is the love you have for the person, which hopefully makes it a fulfilling experience to mutually serve and nurture each other.

When I spoke about having a standard for how you will treat your mate, I never suggested that you had to become someone you are not. I look at it as learning to speak someone's language, If I speak English but learn to speak spanish so a special someone will understand me, it doesnt mean I have changed my native tongue. It means Ive expanded my vocabulary.

If my partner better understands love with specific acts of service, as opposed to the language of gifts which is my native tongue, then I will try to perform more acts of service as an expression of my love. That's just one small example of setting a standard for myself in terms of how I treat my mate.

The ongoing challenge is that we are human, and sometimes one person or both parties get lazy , distracted or confused about the other person's needs. And its when feelings of dissatisfaction in either or both parties become palpable, that you realise the one or both parties are not meeting those needs or standards, and communication is required and inevitably new behaviors can be attempted on both sides accordingly.

And even in some cases if the person does not change, sometimes love allows you to embrace some flaws or incompatabilities about the person according to value systems and tolerance level. Because lets face it . Everyone is flawed and all couples are incompatible in certain ways.

Some understand that. Some make it out to be something else

But that is it.. in its core. That is the base.

your "mental bond" expression made me think a lot
because it is so true
and it is what i have been thinking about for months and months..
mental bond..
hearing it from someone else made it clearer in my mind. thank you.

I love the word you used greeneyes

This is how oxford defines the word bond :-

"A force or feeling that unites people; a shared emotion or interest"

In the context of love, I would adjust it slightly to read :-

"A shared feeling,interest and goal that unites people, that is expressed through ongoing acts of nurturing/service, and anchored by commitment.

Ofcourse this is not a correct definition . It's merely one of many ways of viwing love :)

Hi B!

I love the word bond too! I would just add for me that it is a mental, emotional and physical bond.

But as you can see from this thread, everyone has their own view of it :)