what is love anyway

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i'm not sure what it really is nor do i believe i have the capasity to love anyone or anything besides my computer.
like for example i have a family and a friend i enjoy hanging out with my friend and care if something goes wrong, and i like my family most of the time and talk with them and sometimes enjoy their company (i'm not the most socal person out there and perfer to be left alone) but i don't love them and i'm not talking about romantic love either.
but when my computer gets a virus or someone tries to hack into it i get so worried about it that i will stay up all night and moniter it till it's ok again. once i thought my compy had a virus and i reset the whole thing (i was a nervous wreak from the point i saw the virus warning come up till a week or more then i finally settled down) well when i put all my stuff back on that i had backed up on a external hard drive i noticed that 4 kingdom hearts music videos that i spend 16 days making were gone when i saw this i was devistated this was super bowl sunday mind you first off sundays are horrible and football sucks i'm not trying to offend anyone i just don't like either, but anyway i've never been more upset then when that happened i lost a few other music vids that i was able to retrive but those kingdom hearts ones was a big deal, it didn't matter that i had them on a dvd i wanted them on my desktop likely i was able to retrive the videos from the dvd but i had to replace all the sound and music and the videos have these little dots in them and in some places the screen goes completely black also at the end of the 4th one when riku and sora close the door to darkness the screen gets real dark for about 20 seconds sorry if i sound like i'm ungrateful but i'm a perfectionist when it comes to my videos.
like for example on "i have no soul" i mispell the word friends and i can't fix it and it drives me crazy when i see it.
and "cloud's strife" at the very end when seph talks i used the wrong font it was suppose to be pyprus not arail.
and i remixed the summons 3 times first one didn't have good use of the tornberry and didn't have cautar or ifrit at all and over use of balamont and knights of the round. the second the summons didn't go with the beat of the song, third is still not perfect the summons do go with the beat most of the time and the slow part where balamont fights alexander is perfect but no cautar, bad use of ifrit a 5 second blank space during one of the leviathen summons and you get the idea.
i have no complaints about nelibelum though it's pure gold.
but what i'm getting at here is i care more about my videos, compy, pda, gamecube, ps2, my pics that i've collected over the years then people who are my friends or family. do i have no heart is there something seriously wrong with me or is this a symptom of AS or some other mental illness?

I feel that I'm incapable of loving anything, but my Dog and my Die-Cast Buses. In my case, it has to do with my AS.

For a while, I thought that I was incapable of loving anyone.

I also thought that in order to love anyone else, I must first love myself, which I still have not managed to do.


However, I have recently realized how much I love my family and the few friends that I have.



AS does not make it impossible, just difficult.

I've always believed that you don't know love until you find something or someone that is more important to you than life itself, and I mean that literally.

Love is a word I avoid, because it seems to vary vastly in meaning and interpretation, and when I use a word I like to know what I'm doing.

By some definitions I'm not sure I've experienced it or am capable of it.
In family settings, though, I have a strong sense of duty, which seems to cover much of the same territory. I can do care and commitment, which appears to be not quite the same thing.

If I knew what love was, I could tell you if I love myself.
I supect not, though.

Last edited by Emettman on 27 Jun 2006, 12:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I have no use for the phrase "I love you" except for where it seems to make other people happy, in which case it seems redundant and un-necessary.

To me, as near as I can tell "I love you" can mean either one of two things to most other people - "you are a member of my family", or "let's have sex". The first seems stupid to have to say out loud without a highly unusual reason, the other seems like a grotesquely crass way to communicate that request. Both senses of saying "I love you" are absurd or unnatural to me, and neither is exactly compatible with the other.

What I mean about that first sense, "you are my family", is this: having to constantly re-assure members of my own family that I care about them and regard them as my family feels a little like raising my voice so a deaf person can hear, or having to warn a blind person there is a big white elephant in the room because he can't see anything so obvious himself. In fact, that's it exactly: whenever I realize something has just gone wrong because I didn't say "I love you", it feels like being the only one who can see in a world of the blind; my failure to say "I love you" at the right time has often prompted an angry "you never think of anyone but yourself", in the tone of someone who has just walked into a wall because I failed to warn them it was there. But, the thought never occurred to me that I'm the only one who can see it!

And my problem with the phrase is largely the word "love". I think the only context I ever use the word "love" in where it really means anything to me would be to say "I love chili, it's my favorite food". I prefer chili, but I can easily live with a lesser substitute without giving it a second thought. It seems alien to me to talk about members of my family that way (even if it does make them happy)

I don't know if I "have" Asperger's or not, but in my case, my difficulty with "love" is in part one where... well, I guess I'm almost obsessively precise with language, and what most other people regard as "love" jars sloppily against my definition? And in part that is complicated further by a difference in my emotional, social, and communications wiring?


my first message here,
y.

My theory: Love is the emotional equivalent of an audio feedback loop. You know how when you hold a microphone close to its own speaker and the ambient noise cycles through and get amplified into that high-pitched painful whine? Well I think love is when being around a specific person makes you happy, and being around you makes them happy.

I used to only think this could apply to romantic relations, but after recently getting back in contact with my sister I'd never met, I've realized it can be nonromantic too. It may actually be better.

i sometimes think that modern ideas of love are largely misconceptions. true, perhaps i have difficulties in understanding the subtleties of it, but largely i think that the many in modern societies use the notion of love to placate personal insecurity and vulnerability. they like to be told often that they are loved, to fill a void in themselves. and it seems to me there is a very selfish aspect involved in it. it must also be remembered also that notions of romantic love are often dictated by the media, films, tv etc.

I agree, also remember that english has only one word for love to try and cover a broad spectrum of feelings that are quite different. The ancient greeks had many terms for different types of love:

Eros-- erotic love; sometimes portrayed as romantic love. More characterized by passion to a singular person and sexual desire.
Platonic-- love between friends, or love where sexual desires are not present (sometimes is referred to under philos instead)
Storge-- a friendly, affectionate type of love. Sometimes has been portrayed as parental or familial love.
Philos-- a pluralistic type of "love"; also sometimes written as a friendship type of love.
Agape-- selfless, giving love, the love one has for all of humanity or for others simply because of their human nature.
Mania-- obsessive love. (a minor type of love)
source wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love

The love of family is quite different from love of a romantic partner, and even that will probably change over time from the initial burst of overwhelming feeling into a more sedate but long term type bond, one that is less intense but ultimately stronger, (or else it might burn out altogether as happens just as often).

I used to be a bit obssesed with objects, however I have lost or had them destroyed, stolen or just plain lost so many times that I have learned to care less about them. I know exactly how you feel once you realise you have lost all the data or objects though, worst feeling in the world, or so it seems at the time anyway. In fact after a while it feels quite good, in a way, to lose everything and start again, like a whole massive weight is lifted from our shoulders when you realise that in fact it doesn't mean squat in the grand scheme of things and you can stop worrying so much about this stuff. This is a much different kind of 'love' than what you are probably thinking of, in Greek terms it would probably be described under the Mania definition..

I don't yet know if I am capable of love. I think about it, then get depressed... I really wish I knew... I care about people, but I don't know if it is love...

Love is the most un-Ictylan of all emotions.>_<

I very rarely use the words 'i love you' too. They seem so false and have to many random meanings these days. I think i do love members of my family and friends, but to use those words just doesn't make sense to me. They should just know i love them by the way they act. I assume they love me, because they seem to act like they do and i have no reason to think otherwise. I think the love thing is a bigger problem with relationships, not saying 'i love you' to the person your with can be a BIG problem, annoyingly.
Obviously if i didn't love them i wouldn't be with them. Do they really need me to spell it out?
Apparantly yes!!

My family only said...."we love you"...right before I got in trouble for something and about to be punished so it had kind of had a bad association for me.When I was younger most of my "love" was more obssession then real love of the individual....I might think they were a good person, but the "love" was really a selfish need to feel valued and the chemical seretonan released when we first feel "love", as soon as the chemical abated I would abandon the relationship....leaving them confused and me guilty.Also disliked the elememt of "love" where in I was made to feel obligated to change who I am....the price is to high..."if you love me you would/wouldnt...bla,bla,bla..."Finally reached the place were the person I am with knows and accepts my rule....."If you love me...you will accept the good and bad...the end....and I will do the same for you" I guess I know that I am capable of love now because my life would have less value to me if this person was not a part of it.They are not the only valueable thing in my life but truely inhance it.

As far as wither it is difficult for you to know if you feel love...there is a DX of "attachment disorder" that would probably technically apply, but I was given the label in the past and no longer think it applies, so, perhaps I just hadnt found a person who could meet my criteria for love, at that time.I dont blame anyone for shying away from love though,it can be overwhelmingly confussing,painful and draining when you open yourself up to the wrong people...."sponges" and "parasites" , who either suck youu dry with their needs or try and change you.....cat love is much more rewarding(not beastiality!)but some humans can be worth the effort....

hmm you all have made some really good points but i guess it's one of those things you have to figure out on your own mostly.
but as long as i avoid it i'm happy.

I don't know what love is because love never seems to come to me.