No Such Thing as Love

[tenni]

From Madmen

Don says
She won't get married because she has never been in love. I think that I wrote that to sell nylons.

To a lot of people love is not a slogan. (woman says)

Don says
Ah, you mean by love big lightening bolts to the heart and you can't eat and you can't work. You run off and make babies. Love doesn't exist. There is no such thing as love. You're born alone and you die alone and this world just dumps a lot of rules on top of you to forget those facts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwE8AmXFXGs&feature=player_embedded

Does love really exist?

[darkeyes]

Am not gonna dignify that question wiv an ansa, Tenni darlin'....

[tenni]

Darkeyes
Really?
hmm
Well, you may or not know but "Madmen" is a television series about an ad agency in the early 1960's. Don is a main character whose is a little dark and I believe has gone through a marriage break up when he makes this statement.

This was raised on another site as a question challenge. I think that sometimes men and probably women too to some extent feel the disillusionment over their lives to the point of questioning life and love itself. Denying their emotions and just dealing with the physical pleasure of sex. I believe that life can get dark to the point of giving up on relationships all together. "What is it all about?" point of view. Denying that there really is anything like love or even reason to live. Don seems to be questioning his own existence and purpose to living with these words. He has put all of his efforts into his career to build it up so that he is successful. He has ignored many things outside of that effort.

Some people set up impossible expectations so that no one may meet them . Perhaps like the woman who won't marry because she has not fallen in love. Some like Don lose their way and turn their efforts to materialistic things over emotional things.

There are many ways of looking at the question of love's existence.

[Maggot]

Yes, love exists.

[Caaveman]

Love is not unlike an onion... There are sooo many layers to it, and to get to the heart of it one layer at a time can bring you to tears. ;)

[Realist]

I think it exists....it does for me, at least. I've been in love (my description of love, anyway) I've even categorized it in stages, i.e., caring, loving, and finally being IN LOVE!

I'm IN LOVE with a lady, presently. She is magnificent, the light of my life!

I have been IN LOVE with two males and probably four times as many ladies.

I have loved others.

I have cared for more.

Life's been good to me!

[Diva667]

Emotions (like love) are intangible. But like thoughts, and other abstracts, they do exist.


One persons' sacrifice for another is proof of love. Art is proof of love. The world around us abounds with proof of love, if you are aware of it.

Have you ever seen a mother care for a child?

Have you never seen one person go out of their way to help another?


Yes, we are born alone, and we die alone. However the time in between doesn't have to be alone, locked in our own hearts. Life, in my opinion, need not be a drudgery.

To quote R.A.Heinlein " Love is that state of being where another persons' happiness is essential to your own."

[RockGardener]

Yes, love exists!!!

I feel it every moment of every day! Both giving and receiving.
Twice before in my life, I would have told you I was "in love", but I didn't know what it meant to truly be in love until I met my present partner. This is true love, to the core of my being, deep in my heart, can't imagine life without her. I didn't know I had a Marie sized, shaped hole in my heart til we got together. She filled that hole and made me complete. She loves me the way I am, and I love her the way she is, not the way she was, not the way she will be, not the way she may be, but just the way she is!!! :tong::tong:

Yes, love exists!!!! I have experienced it!!! :girl::nrrdgrrl:

[cornholejoe]

yes it does but when you lose it you dont look for it anymore

[elian]

Love is the divine, compassion is the only thing that matters. We are born knowing how to love, it is only time, tide and experience that teach us any different.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9pu_tg9RAY

[jem_is_bi]

There are different kinds of love. I probably have experienced most all of them. I am presently in love in some of those ways to love another person. But, I can not experience all of those ways to love someone anymore.

[darkeyes]

"Without love, we are as the wildest of beasts, and with hate we do not become those wild beasts, we become something much less."

The above is something a teaher told us during a lesson in history I attended at high school when we were discussing the holocaust. It is something that has stuck with me ever since and is one the principal reasons I find it so difficult to hate and so very easy to love.

[dafydd]

love is a chemical reaction in the brain and brings out the best and worst in people. cant wait for it to happen to me, though im sure it will be heaven and hell

d

[Annika L]

I dunno, Tenni...seems like a pointless question to me...kinda like asking if the world exists. We believe the world exists because we see/hear/feel/smell/taste it...someone who doesn't might rationally disagree...and even someone who does experience the world might be skeptical enough to wonder if we're all just deluded and hallucinating the world.

If you've experienced love, then you say it exists. If you haven't, you might have doubts, and you might think those who say it does exist are deluded. I'm sure there are even some who once thought they were in love, but then became embittered and decided they themselves were deluded and there is no such thing...and therefore everyone else is deluded too.

There is of course no way to prove it one way or the other, unless you're willing to accept a purely chemical definition of love, as Dafydd suggests. If you are, then the question has already been settled: love exists (unless we're all hallucinating the world :tong:).

[tristancir]

It's not a bad question. Great philosophers have been asking this question for thousands of years. Love does exist. The Greeks defined three different types of love. Love is irrational and shows up in unusual places. Shakespeare once wrote "Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind thus is winged cupid painted blind" Love is in the mind and takes us on an irrational journey.

[Canticle]

Yes, love does exist. It is amazing and terrinle, it is joyous and painful, it heals and it can also hurt. Always, it is wonderful, from the first smile, until the last tear.

Below, something I wrote, for a text message to someone. It expressed how I felt, at that precise moment.

''Love as light and light is love, tho' heavy the burden be. To carry such, doth tax the soul, tis sent to weary me. Yet weariness is my reward, in loving, so am I loved. Love found, be as love won, thru trial and adversity.''

[Bisexualnewbie]

Yes there is.
I recently split with my girlfriend of 5 years Jenn, some of you may know her as gfofabiguy, I still consider her my best friend and will love her till the day I die. If she ever needs a friend, I'll be there. If she ever needs a shoulder to cry on, I'll be there. She understood my bi side and accepted me as I am, the only reason we split is all my doing and I can't fix it, although I wish I could so whoever say's there is no such thing as love has not been looking in the right place.