What love is?

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I was reading the post about "can you actually feel love coming from others?". I always used to think to myself "no-one loves me", and I guess, in retrospect, that is because my aspie behaviour was infuriating and impossible for my large family. I was the youngest by far and they just couldn't get me up to speed, literally.

I think now, the aspect that was lacking, and still is, is *curiosity*. To me, if you love someone, you will be curious about them, and if they do something you don't like, you will want to know why that is, instead of just cutting them off. No-one in my family has ever, ever, expressed curiosity about my odd behaviours.

But I am ready now and willing to do this for others. I have an old lady that I visit, because she is a shut-in and she is as desperate for company as I am.* That's a real find, as they said on Shallow Hal. She didn't want to buy a mobility scooter, so as gently as I could, I kept asking her different questions until she gave an answer that I could understand - namely, that a scooter would remind her of the car she had had to give up. I could then see, that she wasn't feeling able to deal with the grief of losing her driving license, and until she could do that, she wouldnt want a scooter. Case closed. I don't know whether the process was pleasant or unpleasant for her, but I made sure she could tell once I had understood her answer that I accepted and respected it.

* I've seen her four times and this time, again, it is her "turn" to invite me around instead of me inviting myself. If she doesn't, then she doesn't like my kind of "love"

Anyway after 47 years of wondering, what is love, this is my answer. Love is respectful curiosity. By my definition, no, my family never loved me and still don't, and nor do my children or my ex. But my husband does.

Your turn now, I await your response with respect and interest lol

I'll appeal to famous authors for this one.

Robert Heinlein:
"Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own."

Ayn Rand:
"Love is the expression of one’s values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another."
...and also...
"Romantic love...is an emotion possible only to the man (or woman) of unbreached self-esteem: it is his response to his own highest values in the person of another—an integrated response of mind and body, of love and sexual desire. Such a man (or woman) is incapable of experiencing a sexual desire divorced from spiritual values."


Love is what I feel for my wife. I'm not good at explaining it, but I think the two authors above probably describe my experience with love.

love means having to say you're sorry [notwithstanding the writings of erich segal]

1. Love is suspicious, love is needy. Love is fearful, love is greedy
2. Love is a synonym for tolerate
3. Love is the most impure emotion on earth, the most pure is anger

Love is a kind of drug addiction.