What is Love?
in true love infinite dreams come alive
Many have said; ‘I love you…’ when what they mean is; ‘I want you, I desire you, I need you…..’ and yet, perhaps is that not also a manifestation of love. Perhaps wanting, desiring, needing, sexual lust….. are all but facets of love. Or perhaps not, because one can love a fellow human being without it being sexual or physical. Sex is not love.
The Ancient Greek philosophers recognised six types of love, and being philosophers they may have been correct.
- Eros ~ sexual passion
- Philia ~ deep friendship
- Ludus ~ playful love
- Agape ~ love for everyone
- Pragma ~ long lasting love
- Philautia ~ love of self
Nothing being perfect, there was later #7 Storge ~ love of the child.
The author Mary McMahon outlined a round dozen different types of love; New Love, Routine Love, Disgusting Love, Infatuation Love, Friend Love, Fake Love, They’re ‘It’ Love, In It To Win It Love, Tragic Love, Parental Love, Unhealthy Love, Old People Love. As it goes; I will firmly state that none of those is a decent description or explanation of real love.
In high chivalric romance, the most perfect form of love was Courtly Love; which describes the relationship between a Knight Errant and a married noblewoman ~ his unattainable Lady Fair. This unconsummated passion was thought to be ennobling and righteous. Like most of chivalry there are numerous impossible rules surrounding Courtly Love.
Courtly Love differs immensely from the commonest form of love of them all Unrequited Love. Which, is just one step away from infatuation and stalking.
At the other end of the scale, and on the other side of the coin is Unconditional Love, which is just as dangerous and one-sided as unrequited love.
According to modern neuroscience there are 10 signs or symptoms of being in love; addiction, obsession, recklessness, lust, focus, heightened memory, eye contact, euphoria, touching, lack of judgement. Possibly, and who am I to argue with the women in white coats.
For men, I could add another sign when it comes to being in love; loss of interest in other women. I have no idea if the converse is true for women ~ I suspect not.
All of the above would seem to have elements of truth in them, which would lead one to suspect that love is a very complicated emotion, set of feelings, group of actions, slew of hormones….
I think not. I firmly believe that true love means one thing, and if you ain’t got it you’re not in love.
True love means wanting your beloved to be safe and happy, no matter what.
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jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
not courtly love at all
more Lancelot and Guinevere
Random Jottings #6
she’s always so good when she’s so bad, she can be cruel
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you can judge the promise of a mature bitch by the quality of the blood it’s written in
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she has something very much darker than ice-water in her veins
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she did that silently dismissive thing older women do with their eyes
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some women are pretty
some older women are pretty exciting
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jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
she can’t rely on stockings and stiletto heels forever
but it’s working pretty well right now
Tunes on Tuesday ~ Sussudio
a woman you think about a lot, but who seems to be utterly unavailable
Phil Collins; drummer, singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, one time member of the iconic rock band Genesis. Reminds me a lot of Bill Murray, except I don’t think he can sing.
I have this on vinyl, the album No Jacket Required. It sounds more than a tad better than this digital version, although I think the video is cool. Over the years I have ‘enjoyed’ that kind of strange distant relationship with an unobtainable woman. It’s not quite as painful as some might believe.
Please listen responsibly.
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jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
mysterious, alluring, unobtainable
Distant Love
it hurts not having her close
it would hurt worse not having her at all
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and I loved her
she wasn’t here
yet I adored her
even from afar
and I desired her
wide oceans apart
distant yearning
to possess her
I still love her
enchanted amour
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jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
dancing to tunes of love and hope
Tunes on Tuesday ~ Leo Sayer
he loved her against all reason, against all hope, against happiness
I remember when Leo Sayer used to sing wearing a Pierrot costume. I thought that was pretty cool, at the time. But have you ever been in love…..?
I know all there is to know about unrequited love. It hurts.
Please listen with compassion.
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jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
the tears of a clown
The Danger of Expectations
I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,
and you’re not in this world to live up to mine
I didn’t expect her to do that at the dinner table
One of the reasons my life was such a mess was that I had some expectations from a relationship that were no longer being met. I was and am far too attached to a woman, and being in love with a woman always leads to expectations, and in my experience expectations always leads to bitter disappointments. Those disappointments were making me very confused, is it infatuation, lust, desire, love, an emotional need, or a dysfunctional friendship? And how does a normal guy find a way through that Dionysian maze?
Expectation is the root of all heartache. ~ Shakespeare
No matter how hard I tried I could not free myself of the expectation that I deserved an emotional, sensual and sexual friendship where the love I thought I felt was returned freely and fully. That is the big danger of having expectations, often they are unrealistic, often they lead us to believe that we deserve something or someone, and quite often our expectations are a million miles from the reality of any given situation.
Also expectations are passive, we don’t need to actually do anything to have huge expectations. Expectations are the result of feelings, and I should know that feelings are often false and the result of twisted programming hard wired into our subconscious mind before we were seven years of age. Feelings are not real, and our feelings often have fuck all to do with what’s going on in the real world.
We should never blame people for disappointing us, we should blame ourselves for expecting too much from them, or expecting things from them that they can’t give to us, or don’t want to give us. We should never blame others for our own negative feelings of anger, jealousy, misery, resentment, sadness….. Our feelings belong only to ourselves, we should own them, and if our feelings are distressing us don’t try to change the world, that’s too difficult, we should change ourselves instead.
Expectations can be as trivial as expecting a nice day, as important as expecting a pay rise at work, or as destructive as thinking you love someone who doesn’t love you. Unrequited love is incredibly painful, trust me, I know.
We always want what we can’t have, life is so cruel that way.
Some say that if we don’t expect the good things from life then all we will ever get is dross. And that we have a right to expect to get what we want the most. All I know is that I’m still trying to find a way to stop loving someone. You’d think a man would know.
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jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
and I expected a great beach-front hotel
Friends Without Benefits
she spoke to him with words, he looked at her with feelings
~
can you just be friends with me?
was the question she asked him
since I get no choice I guess yes
are you really sure about that?
she asked, very sweetly smiling
twisting the knife a little more
he’s only a second-best friend
it’s a real shame he’s in love
even worse that it had to be her
but love has no common sense
it’s just the road to Hell
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jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
love and desire going nowhere
Scenes on Sunday ~ Where was Love?
love is not something you feel, it’s something you do
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jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
it seems that she wanted a lover
and a regular guy wouldn’t do
nothing but you
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lust passion desire ardour whimsy fantasy
love adoration truth verity intimacy vagary
eccentricity unpredictability Emerald City
yearning romance cherish sympathy reality
hard pain heartache heartbreak actuality
unrequited love’s misery, if I can’t have you
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words and pictures by jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
unrequited love
No matter how much you love someone, you cannot make them love you.
If you don’t receive love from the ones who are meant to love you, you will never stop looking for it. ~ Robert Goolrick
It’s worse than that. No matter how much you like someone you cannot make them like you, and no matter how much you desire someone, you cannot make them desire you. No matter what you do, no matter the money, time, effort, hope, prayer, and love you expend, no matter how many sleepless nights you suffer, you cannot change the way someone feels about you.
Often unrequited love is the desperate feeling of being hopelessly, completely, head over heels in love with and infatuated with someone, all the while knowing that your feelings will never reach their heart and will never be returned. Unrequited love can exist when the object of your love is hardly even aware of your existence. You may love someone and yet know you will never make love with them or wake up next to them in the morning. You may even know that you will never get to spend time with the object of your love. And yet, you will go on loving them forever, no matter the pain and heartache it causes. You will go on loving even when you know they love another.
A person doesn’t know true hurt and suffering until they’ve felt the pain of falling in love with someone whose affections lie elsewhere. ~ Rose Gordon
Unrequited love also exists within relationships, when one person may love the other deeply and tenderly, but the object of your affections just thinks you’re someone to hang out with when there is nothing better happening. Unrequited love even exists inside marriage, when one partner truly, madly, deeply and unconditionally loves the other, who merely regards them as a convenience.
Sadly, unrequited love can sometimes turn into obsessive love, which is an extreme form of infatuation and does not allow for failure, imperfection, or rejection. Obsessive love is a dangerous mental disorder which can lead to extreme behaviour, up to and including boiling the pet rabbit. If you have ever flirted with a real bunny-boiler, then you will know exactly how bad obsessive love can become.
The difference between a dysfunction love and real, true love is reciprocity. Does the object of your desire return your affections? Or, are you doing all the work and throwing your love away, just like throwing a rock into a bottomless pit? Ask yourself if the one you love is anything more than an empty vessel, are they someone who can and will return your love with their own, or are you just feeding money into a crooked slot machine in the vain hope of a jackpot?
Unrequited and obsessive love can be a masochistic addiction. It hurts and it costs, but if you have it, you will wait around for the big payoff, no matter what.
The really bad news for someone who is going through the misery of unrequited love is that there will never be a big payoff. You will never hit the jackpot, they will never return your love, and they will forget you in a New York second. Whatever you have right now is as good as it’s ever going to get, and the chances are it will get worse ~ addictions always get worse over time, no matter what. Some people are incapable of real love, that’s called Emotional Deprivation Disorder, and if you are unlucky enough to love someone suffering from that, you may as well pack your bags and go home.
It’s no good putting the object of your desire on a pedestal, and it’s no good thinking that you can change him or her. No matter how much time, effort, money, love, and heartache you have invested, you will most likely have just thrown it all away. It’s like feeding a slot machine in Las Vegas, where you will probably never see a penny of that money ever again, and deep down you know you have wasted everything.
Often those who suffer the agony of unrequited love and / or obsessive love have other mental problems ~ Drug addiction, Alcoholism, Borderline Personality Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, or just plain Emotional Hunger.
Just like drug addiction or alcoholism, the only way out of the misery of unrequited love, or the sick dangers of an obsessive love, is to quit.
There comes a time in your life when you have to choose to turn the page, write another book or simply close it. ~ Shannon L. Alder
It’s much easier to write it than it is to do it, but if what you have is a relationship where you are giving a lot and getting little in return, then you have to walk away. Walk away, don’t look back, and don’t try to keep in touch. It’s going to hurt, but it’s like a bad tooth. It will hurt a lot for a short while when you’re having it extracted, but that’s much better than living with months or years of dull misery.
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these opinions are mine and mine alone
Jack Collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
