What is love?
Breaking down the hype about L-O-V-E. Is there only one kind of love? Is love different for different people? Is love everything?
One kind of love?
Family love ‘They drive me crazy.’ (But you probably love them anyway.)
Pet love ‘I love all my pets, but I love Sparky best.’ (It’s usually easier to love a dog than a fish. Why is that?)
Friendship ‘I love my friends.’ (Until they’re not your friends any more)
Fair-weather friendship ‘Some of my friends only seem to love me when they need something.’ (So not really friends then.)
Attraction ‘Hmmm, he’s cuuuuuuute. I don’t even know his name. Am I blushing? I’m blushing.’
Celebrity crush ‘Oh my GOD. I’m cutting a picture out of a magazine.’
Unrequited love ‘I love you, but you don’t love me.’ (Or the other way round. Bummer.)
Romantic love ‘I’m so happy I could SING it from the rooftop. But that would be weird. But I don’t CARE.’
Lust ‘I really want to do things with this person when the lights are off. Or on. I’m not interesting in lighting.’
Relationship love ‘We’ve been together six months. I don’t know if we’ll be together forever, but right now we want to be with each other and we have heaps of fun.’
Lasting love ‘I’ve loved this person for years. We get along well and have similar ideas about some important things, and we’re comfortable together and I never seem to want anyone else.’
This information was taken from the book ‘Girl Stuff: Your Full On Guide to the Teen Years’ by Kaz Cooke, published by Penguin Australia, and is currently waiting on permission.
What does love mean to you?
He meets me at my locker every morning, with a “hey beautiful”. When i get pushed around in the halls because of my small stature, he holds me tight. When his guy friends are harassing me, he kisses me unexpectedly. Needless to say, the guys back off. He calls me every single night, and actually listens and talks to me.
Read the rest of this story, Too good to be true, on Somazone’s website
What kinds of love you want to have around you? What does a good relationship look like? What’s important and what are your ‘dealbreakers’?
In some families, yelling is an ordinary part of expressing anger. In others, it’s seen as over the top.
Where do get your ideas about love and relationships?
- Your family?
- Mates?
- School?
- Movies, games and books ?
- All of the above?
Which ideas could you
- keep
- chuck
- talk about with your partner?
Write your ideas down in Dear Diary: Who am I?
Love is everything… isn’t it?
When you ask most people what is most important in a relationship, ‘love’ usually tops the list.
When it comes down to it, we don’t always break up with people because we stop loving them.
Often it’s because:
- our lives are moving in different directions
- we don’t bring out the best in each other or,
- we don’t like the way they treat us.
You hear about making sacrifices for love.
Some things, like your safety or your self-respect, aren’t worth sacrificing.
Sometimes you have to put love to one side and take a long hard look at whether your relationship is hurting you.
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Some of these are things are not necessarily exactly love, such as lust, attraction, and celebrity crush.
Personally I don’t believe in “relationship love”, but apparently some people develop “lasting love” from “relationship love”. “Relationship love” (the description given here, anyway) sounds more like “casual dating for fun” and (at least in my opinion) probably shouldn’t be called “love” unless the people are developing a really close attachment and are feeling like they at least want to be FRIENDS forever or for a really long time.
Some people define love as friendship and emotional closeness, others define love as romance/relationships/dating/etc. Some things that are love and are (usually) not romance are on this list (love of friends, family, pets). Some things that are about romance more than about love are on this list. And some things on this list are about both. It’s good to have a good mix of different things like that, but maybe a note should be added about how there are differences of opinion regarding whether or not some of these things are love.
“Love is the most important thing” does not mean “sacrifice your safety or your self-respect for it”.
(The only kind of love that’s the most important thing…is so important BECAUSE it’s [a particularly special kind of] genuine love, and is part of what keeps you safe and protects you and things like that.)
(Caring about one’s abuser is NOT that kind of love…and being attracted to one’s abuser CERTAINLY isn’t.)
Being fond of someone who isn’t always particularly nice to you is one kind of love, and the kind of love you should make sacrifices for is (usually) another kind.
(Being infatuated with someone who treats you really horribly…ISN’T love, and is just plain dangerous.)
If you really, REALLY love someone who can’t help having a genuine problem, that’s a different situation and is NOT the same as the infatuation that some people at this site are talking about. Feeling like you are “in love with” some guy who isn’t even just basically nice to you as if he were plain ordinary friends with you, and who usually treats you like you are nothing, that has very little to do with love. That’s usually more about infatuation and insecurity combined.
Love IS the most important thing or one of the most important things, but real love is genuinely caring and does not treat you like you don’t matter. You might genuinely love a basically good but not especially loving person, but you still need to seriously consider whether to stay with them or not. And if you are infatuated with some jerk who was never nice to you in the first place, then you still have a lot to learn about love. Because that’s not love.