But can you hold those views and not be depressed?
of course------
Prove it.
There are more kinds of love than just one–there’s maternal, paternal, parental, Platonic, erotic–and more. They are all freely given and, except for erotic love, expect nothing in return. There are times when love can be freely given without being erotic, either through disease or accident–and there is love between people and pets, imm.
A person can become an individual through love–a child becomes an individual through parental love–or the lack of it. A man and a woman can realize their individuality through mutual love. But that may only come about if they examine their feeling for each other and that examination may come about because of conflict. Erotic love is usually ephemeral because it’s based on things that change, looks being a primary–to me.
There’s a part of mutual love–‘true’ love, if you will–that I don’t think anyone has yet mentioned–acceptance. I don’t mean acceptance of wrong-doing, I mean self-acceptance. If you’re loved and you don’t understand why, aren’t you lacking in self-acceptance? “S/he can’t possible love me because…” Maybe, s/he can see beyond your ‘because’ and into your core being? Think that’s possible?–I do. Again, I don’t mean, “But officer, s/he’s a good person and wouldn’t do anything like that!” That’s delusional. I mean how love can result in “being yourself”–truly yourself, not what you’ve believed yourself to be. This isn’t accomplished through words, necessarily. I think it comes about more so through perceived actions.
There is a common misconception of love that it is constant, directed and an effort.
That would be a tired revelling in martyrdom. This self-diminishment is a source of pride, endangered by anything passionate, causing one to bitterly defame it by calling it merely “lust”.
It is a testament of man that he can identify both monogamy and polygamy in other species - it shows him to know both within himself. Marriage is both honest and dishonest, as both man and woman desire to possess but also to be free. To diminish oneself to the point of unquestioned faithfulness honours marriage but dishonours love, and can only feign solve this by redefining love as devoted commitment.
This requires one to turn their desire to possess inward, against oneself. This is more accurately fear of the unpredictability of love, and lack of faith that it will always right itself if only let free (regardless of whether you end up with the same person or not). People commonly end up doing this anyway, but only in bad conscience because they are dishonouring the life in love. One can forgive this easily though, as heartbreak is acutely crippling - and devotion only chronically so.
You have to ask yourself what you want and how much of life you can handle - if you want to answer your question for yourself.
If you have spirit and strength, you can let your love flow freely.
If you are old and tired, I recommend the mediocrity of love as selfless caring.
love-----------
people are starved for love…not sex…
Sex is a symptom of fully sublimated love.
Sex can be other things too, but “love” without sex is only… fondness really, smothered in devoted submissive care. A nice lukewarm feeling, but nothing compared to love - which will happen elsewhere to someone in such a position, regardless of whether or not they tie themselves to a single person on the strength of this loveless “nice feeling” and the fear of heartbreak. To do this is an understandable great tragedy.
I’ve been starved of sex before in my life, yet I didn’t feel starved of love. Perhaps you speak for yourself. I’ve also been starved of love while having plenty of sex.
When sexless people feel starved of love and not sex, they will find they have been starved of sex all along as soon as they fall in love. Unless of course it is not love they were after, but security, devotion, close affection and care… - which is symptomatic of somebody starved of life. The unhealthy need to convalesce before they can love, else they find only dependence in a partner. They need to learn to have fun (to live) and then they will find love just by being healthy.
things are out of balance…
too much concentration on sex and not enough on love…
Mr. Saint:
As a human being, I experience my self-imposed separateness and enjoy it. It nourishes/nurtures me…I thrive on it. And even the unwanted separateness, which, truth be told, in a sense, may unconsciously also be self-imposed, when not imposed by other, causes me to grow and to become. I may not enjoy that experience but I realize it is there for my good. It isn’t that I love it but that I do it out of a sense of self-love, which means to struggle against laziness and inertia, for my growth. Do you not enjoy your aloneness and separateness at times and even realize that when you do not desire it, it is still there to teach you, to speak to you? We just have to listen and feel it.
Most definitely. And it is natural to want to give into such! At the same time, we cannot do this all of the time as love does need discernment and balance.
Well, we can AT LEAST say that they are a reflection of certain aspects of us or what we are experiencing in certain moments. Is the tree the FOREST?
Yes, but we must take care and at times examine those ‘perceived hopes” no?
Yes, Love does mean action and will – without it, it is not Love, but simply desire, but we need to be aware of what it is exactly we want to continue and Why.
Sometimes our ‘hope’ has to die, don’t you think? Is there always a place for it?
I don’t actually see ‘perceived hope’ as love? Hope is an ingredient and necessary for love to flourish and continue but it isn’t love. Unless I misunderstood your words here.
That’s not hard to grasp at all. But don’t you mean to say… began as a love for some part of ourselves within which is either known or unknown by us which we are reaching for?
Maybe that’s just what you said.
And sometimes what we desire to love is a part of ourself that we do not see or feel within.
Though I do see what you’re saying here…on another side of that coin, why do we allow that hope and desire for love to sometimes come close to destroying us instead of nurturing/nourishing and adding to our continuation, our growth and becoming?
Well, first, it would have to be shown that there was love there in the first place. Why would someone who loved have to sublimate that love with sex? That makes no sense at all, at least not to me. I might say that sex, by itself without love, is a symptom of uncaring and a fear of commitment. Though also sort of human.
Well, then you are only speaking of emotions here - desire and dependency. That is NOT love. Real love is much more than just instinctual or JUST affection. Perhaps it would have helped you had you met Mother Theresa before she died. She truly loved…do you think she had sex with everyone she met? 
Love is NOT submissive nor smothering- dependency most often is though. That kind of love only gives out of self-need…and the person only allows him/herself to become a doormat.
Carl Jung had a quote that I can’t remember now but the gist of it was that men think that sex is love and that they possess a woman when they have had sex with her – that they actually possess a woman ‘less’ at that time. That is paraphrasing – I have felt more love, real love, at certain times, coming from men who I have not had sex with – who actually knew the true meaning of the word.
So define love for me.
Are you still starving or are you in perfect harmony now?
Falling in love is not Love but may be the beginning of it. And what they may have really been starved for, albeit it might also be sex, 
since we are all human animals with needs, is spiritual intimacy, a sense of strong spiritual connection.(not meant religious-wise). Many people who indulge in it, sex that is, do it from a sense of unawareness, unconsciousness, not realizing that it is really the human intimacy that they are after, not the sex itself. This is why after the act many feel just as unsatisfied as before it…and continue on to the next one…because what they really needed to have touched, to be touched, was within them, and a whole lot deeper than sex can reach. Though they might not admit this since they can’t ‘see’ it.
Do you think that it is only the so-called unhealthy which you speak of that need the above – a sense of security, devotion, close affection and care? We ALL need that in varying degress. That is not necessarily someone starved for life but it does describe a human being and his secondary needs. It even describes the animal in a sense. If my cat, Yoda, doesn’t experience this, he isn’t a happy camper in his own home.
Love is not necessarily ALL about emotion, though it is too, but don’t take the emotion out of the human equation or you lose the human.
You have answered your own question.
When the separateness is the “good” and hope, then it is what is loved. When what is loved is seen far away, a discernment and balance must be reached. Which is loved more at that moment?
But don’t forget that some people love the Devil regardless of consequences.
We can rightfully say that that PHT is the very guide for every seed and spirit of that forest.
No. “We” must ALWAYS take care to examine those “perceived hopes”;
Clarify, Verify, and Remember the Hopes and Threats that Inspire the Maximum Momentum of Self-Harmony.
It is the understanding, the “why” that has been lacking.
There is always “a place”. All hopes must give their proper weight to the final balance. They never die, they merely must wait their turn (which might never come).
Perceived Hope is the inspiration in Love, not the act of Love itself really.
Seems to be. 
If you do not see or feel it, you will not Love it (intentionally anyway).
Because we are “insane” and destine to stay that way as long as we authorize passion over rationality.
Are you suggesting that we set all this up like a scientific experiment with “it would have to be shown that there was love there in the first place”?
Whilst I appreciate all your s towards me, I’ll endeavour not to return them. What I am saying is that if someone is in a fully sublimated love, their relationship will be sexual - but just because someone is in a sexual relationship that does not mean they are in love.
It’s not that they HAVE to have sex in the former case, they just will have sex if they are fully sublimating love. Love is an incredibly open, giving feeling with regard to one’s “will” (“giving” in distinction from acquiring tokens to give as presents) - and the maximum way in which you can sublimate this is with sex: the most open, giving physical act possible.
If you feel like you have to have sex then it’s not a very full love, if there is any love at all. Just like if you feel you want to physically sublimate something of yourself through sex, it might not be a very full love, if love at all.
How does this not make sense?!
No I don’t think she had sex with everyone she met - because I do not count her feeling as love due to its symptoms. Compulsive overwhelming pity might be more apt.
First of all, love is particularly discriminate. Just like you don’t fall in love with literally anyone you meet, you don’t care for the poor, sick, orphaned and dying out of love. You might feel an overwhelming compulsion to care for them, to feel sorry for them, to feel emotionally obligated for them - through or not through duty… but just like any indiscriminate Christian pity, this is far from love. Even if the pity feels extremely intense as a feeling. She just comes across as a frustrated childless mother - hence the title given to those like her, I guess.
Desire and dependency aren’t love, I never said they were.
Nor is just instinct or just affection. Way to reduce my argument.
And what else is anything physical, if not driven by emotion? Love is necessarily an emotion, though not all emotions are love.
Platonic “love” isn’t fully love either. It can be an extremely bonding fondness and limited closeness, but love is limitless and requires the maximum sublimation in all ways. If that’s not what you feel, it’s not love. Feelings of dependency can mimic this limitless openness, but they will be felt by any receiver of such a feeling as dependency. If it is not felt as love by all parties, it is not love. If it is, then a kind of fully continuous reciprocal feeling of giving and receiving opens up and it cries out to be sublimated in all ways possible. This is also different from lust in that the “openness” that demands to be unleashed is limited to the brain and the erogenous zones.
I can hint at love through descriptions such as what I have just written, above. As for defining love, this is pretty naïve. As has been hinted through my shaping rather than particular descriptions, love is not a checklist: only calling it “being an absolute openness” or subjecting it to the reduction and ascertaining of definition cannot encompass it. This is highly Romantic I know, but it’s the only way I can do it proper justice.
I’ve been free of starvation for a while now. I am not in perfect harmony now either, though I have felt it before (since my starvation though not because of it).
What you mean by spiritual intimacy is in all probability what I mean by a full openness. Though love is not inspired by prior starvation. It is out of a richness in spirit.
I don’t need security, devotion and care from another or sometimes at all. I often find care can be inhibiting and sickening, I often find lack of security exciting, and I find devotion something particularly easy to feel toward something or someone or other. I can provide those things for myself, which is a great deal of what richness in spirit is. As for affection, I cannot feel that with another when on my own - by definition. So I can be starved of that though I have not been for a long while now.
Someone starved for life may lack this spiritual richness, needing these things out of desperation. But it is living - a lack of that same malignant fear that I see in so many - that cures this spiritual poverty. Fear is useful, but it can consume you. However, the greater you have felt this consumption, the more you will be able to feel your freedom from it. This is why a terrible experience of spiritual poverty in your life can be your greatest asset once you have broken free from it and gotten used to your freedom - as long as this happens at all… and it never feels like it will when you’re “trapped” within it.
A desire for possession, or to be possessed can overtake one with a lack of spiritual richness. It often accompanies times when love is in its periodic waning stage - and as I said before love is not eternal, though it can repeat eternally.
This desperation for exclusivity, and rules, is a lack of faith that love will repeatedly return if you just let it. This obviously requires the right conditions, usually a particular presence of the right person or people. If love is something you feel without certain people present then it cannot be fully sublimated since sex will not be possible or wanted with whoever is (or isn’t) there. It can only fully become love when the right people/person is there, so that you can fully express yourself physically through sex.
You have defined love as romantic, sexual love. The word ‘love’, as commonly used, covers a broader range of experience than that. Love can exist between parent and child, siblings, close friends, a man and his dog. We use the same word because we recognize the same dominant emotion. Love involves an intense desire for someone’s welfare and a willingness to sacrifice for another. I think that what Mother Theresa was doing qualifies as love.
As I explicitly pointed out, I am aware that my description is highly Romantic.
But I have separated this from the broader, more vulgar usage of the word for a reason.
Other words are sufficient for describing and defining these different types of “love” (in its commonly thrown around sense). For the love I describe, only the word love is sufficient.
What word would you use to describe a child’s ‘love’ for his grandmother?
Siblings?
Mother or father and child?
Some combination of words like honour, respect, devotion, closeness, commitment, loyalty, trust, fondness, gratefulness, dependency, admiration, reliance, selflessness, willingness to sacrifice oneself, pity, longing etc. tends to cover it.
Y’know, all the words that people come up with when failing to adequately describe love - no matter what quantity or quality of the words are meant and in whatever combination.
a presence in mind is an absence in real
Not necessarily.
One may be fully present, paying attention, listening, focusing their whole being - mind/heart/spirit on the person they are with.
They are BOTH present in mind and physically present.
Sadly, many people ONLY find others present in mind when they ARE absent in real.
“Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going.” Tennessee Williams
Lost, yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered for they are gone forever."
Horace Mann
These days man knows the price of everything, but the value of nothing.”
Oscar Wilde
You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land, there is no other life but this.
– Henry David Thoreau
"We had to learn…that it did not really matter what we expected from life but rather what life expected from us."Victor Frankl Man’s Search For Meaning © 1946
Familial love - that is, in a nutshell.
So you don’t buy my more discriminate interpretation?