is unrequited love possible…
love is one of those ontological entities that often elude definition altogether. i want to propose that maybe unrequited love isn’t possible…despite what all of us bleeding hearts think.
maybe love is a thing that requires two…a relational entity, a unity, a reciprocity, a mutuality, etc.
what about self love?
why, but isn’t that narcissism?
what about love for a child or relative no matter “how they treat you”…thats kinda tricky. maybe if a family member literally doesn’t love you you can’t love them due to lack of mutuality.
can a child know enough to love back?
well, who says love has anything to do with knowledge?
how about love from afar?
i’d venture to say you can’t love a person you know nothing about. here enters the problem of “knowing enough” again. i think at the baby level there is an intimacy that is a type of knowledge. a baby knows its mama.
does this mutuality require a symmetry?
i want to suggest…yes. but our ability to know this symmetry i think is more than limited. just as limited as knowing what another person is every specifically thinking.
implications?
well, if a person doesn’t want you/love you, well then…lucky for you it was never meant to be. you don’t actually love them, you can’t, because they literally won’t let you. to love is to have someone receive you’re love. and vice versa.
i don’t know any specific philosophers who deal with this…otherwise i’d refer to them. does anybody know any philosophers or philosophies that talk about love? and if not…why is this topic abandoned?–and i doubt it is. i admitt ignorance. often.
happy corporate holiday.
thanks
"what about self love?
why, but isn’t that narcissism?â€
I think it depends to what degree you’re talking about. Having a certain amount of self love or healthy self esteem is essential and is really the foundation needed to love another person. Too much self love or self absorption is counter productive when you consider loving outside yourself. But self absorption is not always self love- it can also be self hate. I’m at work right now or I’d spend more time explaining.
"what about love for a child or relative no matter “how they treat you”…thats kinda tricky. maybe if a family member literally doesn’t love you you can’t love them due to lack of mutuality.â€
This is the dream of “unconditional love†which I just don’t think is possible. The alcoholic family member you try to love will eventually push you over the edge. Even if you were to completely love them unconditionally it would become absurd at some point and you’d probably fall into some diagnostic category, like co-dependency for example.
"i’d venture to say you can’t love a person you know nothing about. here enters the problem of “knowing enough” again.â€
Then what about “love at first sight� I think that it’s purely sexual, but then again isn’t all romantic love purely sexual? Then by definition a certain type of love is just physical. If you have a companion that you feel “romantic love†for, if this is real love- I guess you aught to start asking yourself questions like: if this person needs money, will I give it to them? If this person loses their job and apartment, will I take them in? If this person were sick and dying, would I give my life in exchange for theirs? …I guess to figure out how deep the love is, although maybe providing for a mate isn’t a measure of love, but maybe it is. A mother would probably give her life to save her child.
"well, if a person doesn’t want you/love you, well then…lucky for you it was never meant to be. you don’t actually love them, you can’t, because they literally won’t let you. to love is to have someone receive you’re love. and vice versa.â€
You could love them because even when the other person does love you, they’re not inside your head really. It’s happening in your head and in theirs differently, perhaps infinitely differently. There is no such thing as a person not letting you love them. They may not “let you inâ€, open their heart or whatever- but they can’t make you stop loving them. What about when a spouse dies, does the partner who is still alive stop loving them just because they have died? Does this mean that they are no longer able to have that love, to sustain it? It’s all an internal, very personal thing that’s created by the individual and maintained within them, with or without external stimuli, until the person themselves decides to let it go.
So I say “yes”.
Vortical’s right. I myself have loved in an unrequited way and ultimately came to see it as profound and important. That my love was not returned did nothing to minimize the fact that it was love that I was experiencing, made even more profound, perhaps, by the fact that I was willing to experience it knowing full well that it was never to be returned. That didn’t matter to me, at least not after awhile. The love was mine. The feelings were real. And nobody, not even the object of it, could take that away from me. Only time did that, as it so often does. But I think I’m the better man for having had the experience of that love in my life.
Romantic love:
Alexistentialism, aren’t you mistaking between unrequited love and unconditional love? Unrequited love is love that is not returned even though the expectation and hope is there. Unconditional love is one that the person gives without expecting any in return.
By the way, unrequited love is universal, it’s everywhere. See all the broken hearts? Ouch!
Other loves:
As for unconditional love, personally I don’t think any such thing can exist for long. If love is not returned, it will start to wane or change into sympathy, kindness or just friendship. You can say, then how can a mother love her infant when the infant does not show any love. The fact is that the infant needs his mom to an extent that makes the mother feel loved. And later, when the child grows up, if this child does not show his love then the mother can actually stop loving the child because love is a two-way street, love can never be a one-way street. It’s true that if a mother loves her child then she can never really stop loving her child but this love will be more like kindness, sympathy, just caring in general, but it won’t be love anymore as it is not returned. That’s why a mother can look after her handicapped children for years and years and years without seeing any love in return.
Is it necessary to make time a factor, though? Is unconditional love any less significant because (arguably) it may not last as long as, presumably, other kinds of love?
Unrequited love is more of an infatuation/obsession. What about “love” for artists? I’ve had people claim to be “in love” with me because they saw me in a play…are they in love with the actor or the character the actor plays? Even in life, do people fall in love with the actual person or the mask the person wears? With who the person is or the role they play?
it’s all about definition. i’ve asked this question many times and gotten both sides of the issue thrust in my face. what it boils down to is whether you personally think that there’s love and unrequited love, or love and mutual love. most people i’ve asked tend to think the latter, although the former is growing more popular for some reason.
I think it may be more a matter of what one thinks the source of love is. Is love created or is love discovered? If people mutually love, then have they created love, or have they just tapped into the concept “love†which is here for us to discover. And if the latter, then I don’t see any reason why a single individual couldn’t tap into that as well with his or her feelings of unrequited love for another.
Alexistentialism, if you have never read Dante’s “La vita Nuova” I think you would enjoy it. The whole theme is his unrequited love for Beatrice. He loves her from afar for years never speaking more than briefly with her. Whether or not his love is actual is up to interpretation. I am of the opinion that it is.
I enjoyed all these replies, thanks.
one idea repeated was that of unconditional love vs. unrequited love:
Beenajain wrote:
isn’t love unconditional? I mean, real true love? What is love if it isn’t unconditional? I thought love being unconditional was a necessary condition to love, no?
So when I say “I love you”…I don’t necessary mean unconditionally? I have to say “I unconditionally love you” to communicate this?
concordant: i just read dante for the first time. good suggestion, I’ll keep it in mind.
shyster: Do you love the artist in that situation or the art? I mean, I love hermann hesse. what an author. I’ve read almost everything written by him. I love his work, but i’ve never met him. I still don’t think you can love someone you don’t know. i love tomatoes too…but this isn’t what i mean either.
I think the alcoholic relative/loved one situation brings up a good point. i forgot who wrote it. when a person losses control perhaps that loss of control isn’t really who they are? love the person, not the vice?
wow, i never thought i’d quote a saint (or who ever it was). I’ve been reading too much Augustine today.
thanks again.
My 2 new turkish lira (worth about a dollar these days)…
(pre-sex)
Stage 1: You see someone - it’s pure sexual attraction. No love involved.
Stage 2: You get to know eachother, or rather you don’t, “oh I love that film” “Oh yes, so do I” (subtitles) ‘I agree with you, sleep with me’. Pure learned technique No love involved.
(after as much sexual contact as is allowed in relationship in current social climate)
Stage 3: Really get to know eachother - actually a reverse learning process - as first you have to unlearn all the bullshit you’ve formed in your head and projected onto them. Love begins (or dies) here.
Stage 4: You love someone, warts and all. Love has arrived…Awww 
Of course some relationships jump in at stage 2 (internet chat/letters etc.) Some at stage 3: arranged marriages for example.
Stage 3 is the problem. Here, if it isn’t mutual, one person loves with open eyes ie: real love, the other pisses off out of there creating the classic imbalance of unrequited love.
So, yes, real unrequited love is possible, after the earlier stages have been passed, real love from afar (pop-stars etc.) is pure projection.
Jon Koca XXX (but no love involved !!!)
I find myself uneasy discussing love like it’s a science. Maybe that’s my shortcoming. I think all the answers to Alexis’s questions are subjective to a degree that makes me, as I said, uneasy. First off the definition for love is extremely sketchy, and the idea of assigning necessary properties or limits to the definition makes me nervous, and the seeking of such a concensus, if that’s what this is, makes me even more uneasy. I suppose love, like any emotion, can be and do anything, no matter what we say. The minute we say you can’t love unless it’s returned…do you stop loving your brother the second of his death? Of course not. That’s because love is an emotion. You can love an animal, an inanimate object, a stranger, or a person who died hundreds of years ago. Would we ask if sadness can truly be sadness if there isn’t a given, specific thing to be sad about, say Alexis’s mom giving away her little stuffed bunny? Can there be such a thing as sadness without a missing bunny? Boy we’re cooking here on ILP. I’ve known a man to fall in love with cheap corn whisky, or a car or a song. But don’t believe it just cause I say so. In the end, I’ll stick with all’s fair in love and war.
Hello again -
quick addition, not all love moves onto stage 4 - stage 3 can be extended for as long as the people involved wish to maintain their illusions (this can tend to require much money !!!)
On defining ‘love’ I think in English we run up against semantics and use love as a general catch all for a large group of distinct emotions. For example in Turkish there’s ‘sevgi’ (roughly equates to affection but not quite) which is applied to everything - rocks included. ‘Aşk’ which is the powerful love between entities of the same species. Dostluk - the sometimes equally powerful bonds of friendship between very good friends as opposed to ‘arkadaşlik’ a general phrase for friendship…
We use the word love far too casually these days - I would say love is a dynamic that requires imput from both sides, any other relationship must fall under a different catagory, fondness, obsession, crush, imprinting, etc.
Of course you don’t stop loving your brother when he dies - your love switches from the physical prescence to your internal memory of him, still implying mutuality as you will always remember that your bro loved you back.
Ultimately isn’t all love unrequited? In an existential sense, we can at best hope to understand our own feelings; we can never know another’s “heart.”
Never is pretty strong. I think that we can know another’s heart if we know our own heart. I think that love recognises love. That when we fall in love with someone, the love inside of either recognises the love that the other has for us or it doesn’t.
i think love is like belief. Sometimes a belief is true and justified, sometimes it is just one or none of those things. But the belief can be persistent either way. Hence, I don’t see unrequited love as an oxymoron, any more than false belief is an oxymoron. The “love” takes place as an emotional state in the “lover.” If I am running in a dream, am I running? In one sense, yes. It doesn’t matter that it takes place in the theater of the mind. If I love something that only exists in my mind (which is everything, as far as we know) it’s still love in a sense. I think the more species of love we create, in terms of labeling for communication, the better. Saying love without an adjective attached such as unrequited, platonic, etc., is far too vague. I like mania, storge, eros, agape, etc. These are a bit more specific.
Or - maybe love is a concept that is a real part of the universe and the different descriptions we give it are mere mortal attempts at trying to process it in a way that makes sense to us.
(Just throwing the idea out there, Gamer).
There can certainly be unrequited Erotic Love. Else there would be less use for pornography.
Unrequited Platonic Love? I would say very possible. We all have all at one point or another probably have a friend who treated us poorly.
Unrequited Universal love? Absolutely. The universal compassion of the Christ or the Buddha must be given without anticipation of return from everyone.
Unrequited familial love? Uncommon but possible. How often has a parent loved a child who the rest of the world regards as a monster? Or how often does a child love a parent even when the parent treats the child abysmally?
Jerry said: (Just throwing the idea out there, Gamer).
Throwing the idea out sounds like a fine plan to me, Jerry.
there, Funny man. Throwing the idea out there…