Love and modern dating

[Birlow17]

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of love. To be exact, TRUE love. I find myself looking at couples on social media, television, people I know personally and psychoanalyzing them. I pay attention to how they speak of their partners, how they view love, sex etc. And a lot of the times it really upsets me at what I see. I see lots of ego in relationships and entitlement. It confuses me when something is so transparently shallow and yet people call it love. If you ask people, ‘’do you believe in love at first sight’’ I know a lot of people who will say yes! This confuses me because I think it’s just attraction at first sight. You can’t really love someone. You may be infatuated with their appearance and lust after them, but that WANT for them doesn’t mean you love them. I’m starting to think that’s how a lot of people view love though. I see so many guys who only date girls they find attractive. I’m not saying it’s wrong because I understand we all unconsciously gravitate towards attractive people. But we have other reasons for wanting to date someone like their character, their beliefs, how they treat people, their quirks etc. But for some people it’s solely just about dating an attractive person and I can tell they don’t really have respect for their partners so how can they claim its love?

 

When I say they didn’t really have respect for that person I’m referring to times when people are angry and are emotionally/physically abusive. They are extremely petty and hurtful towards the person they claimed to love. For example how can you love someone, and just because the relationship has ended try to ruin their life? For me that just means that you never really loved them even when things were good between you two, because if you did, you would never do that to them.

 

Things like this make me question people a lot. And it’s so common that it confuses me. I start thinking to myself that it’s so rare for me to see true love. I may not be able to experience it but I’m pretty sure I know true love because I’ve seen it. It seems these days I see it more in older couples and majority of younger couples are maybe too immature or conceited to grasp the concept.

I wish there were a lot more healthy relationships because these days I see really toxic ones and it clouds my view on love. Despite me being aromantic asexual, I actually love romance and love so when I see these things in relationships it really clouds my judgement. I never want to be one of those people that say they don't believe in love because that's ridiculous. I've seen it!  I’m curious about anyone’s thoughts on love in modern dating?

[Janus the Fox]

It’s feels like a rather foreign concept to me dating in general to me, romantic love as well.  I’ve had my own way of dating my current BF, like being friends and doing a few things together that’s about it.  Looking into it from the outside, it looks like this regimented song and dance with 50 questions that has similarities to job interviews to me.

 

Weather it’s my Aromantic orientation or to do with my autism or a bit of both, dating with or without love is still a foreign concept in its traditional ways in my culture. 

[Birlow17]

11 minutes ago, Janus DarkFox said:

It’s feels like a rather foreign concept to me dating in general to me, romantic love as well.  I’ve had my own way of dating my current BF, like being friends and doing a few things together that’s about it.  Looking into it from the outside, it looks like this regimented song and dance with 50 questions that has similarities to job interviews to me.

 

Weather it’s my Aromantic orientation or to do with my autism or a bit of both, dating with or without love is still a foreign concept in its traditional ways in my culture. 

I can understand your view on it too. A series of questions and conversation with your friend. And I actually like that because it feels very selfless and pure.

[Memento1]

I got rid of the notion of true love.  This idea that love comes without any hurt is false.  Love that is abusive / hurtful is still love, though I completely agree it's not healthy.  I have absolutely loved people (like family members) and deeply hurt them.  I didn't WANT to, I didn't consciously try to hurt them.  Part of it came from my own hurt: thoughtless defensive reactions I didn't feel I could control.  Part of it came from accidentally hurting someone, saying something I honestly didn't think was hurtful.  Love comes with hurt - it's how it is dealt with that makes it healthy or unhealthy.

 

When someone torments their ex who broke it off, that's not from false love, or a lack of love.  It's people who have deep pain and abandonment issues and haven't learned healthy ways of expressing / dealing with them.  Likewise people who stay in abusive relationships don't do it because of lust and physical/sexual attraction, they stay because they grew up in an abusive family and that feels like love to them.

 

Maybe when you say "true love" you mean "healthy love", but healthy love takes work.  Older couples with a healthy relationship may appear to have true love, but they have learned how to handle their own hurt, how to be sensitive to their partner's hurt, how to roll with the ups and downs.  These are learned skills perfected over time.  People who had a healthy upbringing with good models will have a head start, but that doesn't mean the person who didn't has false love.  I'm not saying someone should stay in a deeply unhealthy relationship in hopes of working it out, but at the same time I'm no longer chasing an individual of selfless love as seen in the movies.  Healthy love is not selfless.  If anything, it takes more effort on the self than on the other.

 

Just my thoughts, I'm not necessarily right.

[Alawyn-Aebt]

1 hour ago, Birlow17 said:

I see so many guys who only date girls they find attractive. I’m not saying it’s wrong because I understand we all unconsciously gravitate towards attractive people. But we have other reasons for wanting to date someone like their character, their beliefs, how they treat people, their quirks etc.

There are two reasons for this I think:

First is that few people are attracted to people they find ugly. Usually in stable, true love situations you will find that they people involve do match up in character and beliefs, etc. But finding out such things about someone can be hard. If one is inclined to date it might be more effective to find someone they find not-ugly and try to date them hoping there might be some further connection.

 

Secondly is that humans judge books by their covers. Is it right or wrong is irrelevant in this instance because the fact is we do. One reason why we do this is because you can tell things by judging people. Even people who struggle to read body language can look at people and can realize things about them off of dress, speech, actions, etc. This makes it so wanting to date someone based off appearance is not solely a stab in the dark as with the first explanation, but rather a measured calculation based on known, albeit limited, information.

 

Back more on topic:

 

I think what you mean by true love is long-term healthy romantic love, but many people do not reach either of those preconditions. Love is a mystifying thing, and I say that as a heteromantic. For me the truest forms of romantic love I see tend to be where the love is one of friendship intermixed with romantic love, especially because long-term romance effectively becomes friendship even if it did not originally start that way (although many start that way too). 

[Birlow17]

 

 

@Memento1 Actually I find this interesting.  That there is not one ''true love'' and that there are other kinds that are hurtful etc. But if I go with that thought then I'm going to start dissecting the idea of love itself and that it's just selfish. I think unconsciously hurting the people we love is different from intentionally doing so. Abusive love is about ego, it stems from insecurities. I don't think anything that operates from the ego is love. 

 

Maybe you're right about people who lash out because they don't know how to handle abandonment. And the idea of being mature after a breakup has something to do with high emotional intelligence which not lots of people have. But the idea of hurting someone just because they are no longer with you makes me question the notion of love.  For example, can we only respect and care for someone as a person when were with them? 

 

Personally I can compare this to my old friendships. If I'm no longer friends with someone I don't start looking for ways to vilify them in my head just because they're not in my life anymore. Because to me if I really valued them as friends and cared for them, I would never be able to wish them misery or act maliciously towards them. I guess when I look at people acting out like that it seems really selfish to me to treat someone like that because they no longer benefit you. It makes me question the persons heart and whether their feelings were truly genuine. 

 

I can't help but feel that maybe (going by your notion of love) that there isn't such thing as hurtful love or good love, but only love and something that isn't love. Those stories you hear where guys kill their ex girlfriends because they don't want them to be with someone else? I think they never loved them to begin with. Because love is freedom and not selfish. You can't not love someone anymore just because they don't want to be with you right? That saying ''If you love them let them go''. If you really love someone you just want them to be happy whether it's with you or not. 

 

That was me kind of breaking down your concept. I'm curious what you think

[Birlow17]

On 12/14/2019 at 6:22 PM, Aebt-Ætheling said:

There are two reasons for this I think:

First is that few people are attracted to people they find ugly. Usually in stable, true love situations you will find that they people involve do match up in character and beliefs, etc. But finding out such things about someone can be hard. If one is inclined to date it might be more effective to find someone they find not-ugly and try to date them hoping there might be some further connection.

 

Secondly is that humans judge books by their covers. Is it right or wrong is irrelevant in this instance because the fact is we do. One reason why we do this is because you can tell things by judging people. Even people who struggle to read body language can look at people and can realize things about them off of dress, speech, actions, etc. This makes it so wanting to date someone based off appearance is not solely a stab in the dark as with the first explanation, but rather a measured calculation based on known, albeit limited, information.

 

Back more on topic:

 

I think what you mean by true love is long-term healthy romantic love, but many people do not reach either of those preconditions. Love is a mystifying thing, and I say that as a heteromantic. For me the truest forms of romantic love I see tend to be where the love is one of friendship intermixed with romantic love, especially because long-term romance effectively becomes friendship even if it did not originally start that way (although many start that way too). 

 

I think that as well. It's easier for people to seek someone attractive, then look for the qualities and connection after the fact. But a question in this: Is it REAL love once the qualities are found? Because before then it's just lust right? So if you're with someone and are in constant fights because you just don't align, was the couple ever really in love? Or was it an illusion to mask the shallowness?

 

I agree with you. I think relationships starting out platonically and having first been friends have more qualities of ''true'' love because you were able to form a relationship that was selfless before it became selfish.

[Alawyn-Aebt]

2 hours ago, Birlow17 said:

Is it REAL love once the qualities are found? Because before then it's just lust right? So if you're with someone and are in constant fights because you just don't align, was the couple ever really in love? Or was it an illusion to mask the shallowness?

I think by asking it like this it excessively boxes love into some sort of easily-divisible boxes, which is what love is never like. All love is really just about caring, some show this by sex, romance, friendship, family ties, etc. Sometimes yes, people never really form any love before entering into a relationship, but many do and still fall out of it. Humans are complex creatures, we may yell and hurt people we care, and therefore love, deeply. Yet that does not mean the caring, and therefore love, is not or never there.

[Memento1]

3 hours ago, Birlow17 said:

Abusive love is about ego, it stems from insecurities. I don't think anything that operates from the ego is love. 

Well we all have an ego.  Judging other people's love is ego.  Trying to be a better person is ego.  Thinking ourselves selfless is ego.  Me trying to rationalize my words is ego.   We don't have smaller egos than abusive people, we just have developed different ways of dealing with them.  I would say abusive love is not love that stems from insecurity, it is love alongside insecurity, displayed in a certain way.  People can have more than one emotion at once: love and happiness, love and sadness.  Why not love and insecurity, love and anger?  Maybe you are saying "love" to mean behavior, when I say "love" to mean emotion.  Behavior can be judged selfless or selfish, but I don't think emotions are selfless or selfish.  Whether decisions are conscious or not I don't think changes the emotion.  Enough people have misjudged my emotions based on my actions that I'm hesitant to do it to others.

 

Sorry if I'm not making sense, or came off as invalidating.  This is a complex topic, and it's certainly stretching my ability to verbalize it.

[appleseedy]

I think we as humans try to recreate the relationships that formed our notions of what a relationship feels like, the relationships we saw as children

 

If our caregivers neglect or abuse us and each other we seem to seek out those relationships in later life

If our caregivers love and cherish us and each other we seem to seek out those relationships in later life

Tis my belief that those of the latter can not understand why the former find and stay in abusive relationships

While those of the former cannot find the people who could give them love without abuse

 

Understanding makes a powerful bond between two people, perhaps without understanding there can be no love?

[CelesteAdAstra]

I don't understand modern dating. I don't get how you can decide whether to swipe right or left just from a first impression. I tried to play that game and it doesn't work, I'm not attracted to anyone because of a photo.

It may just be me being a dreamer after all. But I don't want a mediocre relationship out of necessity. I don't want to be with a random person because they happened to be around. I don't want a provider or a short-term life partner. I see no point in those. What I want is to be with the one, I want true love that's  out of this world.

[Gnome.1]

Lots I can say on this topic.  Let's start with love at first sight.   Many people romanticize this.  In reality there was a strong pull of some sort of attraction that convinced them to interact.   On reflections back one sees this strong pull and growing feelings as the same thing and will retroact those feelings to the moment they met.  This would be our sense of "love at first sight".  

 

True love.  

On 12/14/2019 at 5:22 PM, Aebt-Ætheling said:

I think what you mean by true love is long-term healthy romantic love, but many people do not reach either of those preconditions. Love is a mystifying thing, and I say that as a heteromantic. For me the truest forms of romantic love I see tend to be where the love is one of friendship intermixed with romantic love, especially because long-term romance effectively becomes friendship even if it did not originally start that way (although many start that way too). 

This is why many on here have said they mostly see it in older couples.  It is years of patience, understanding, and compromising while you learn and grow as a couple.  The ego, selfishness, and fighting will still happen.  It's a matter of how you deal and express these that makes the difference. 

 

Lasting love

On 12/15/2019 at 7:22 PM, Birlow17 said:

 I agree with you. I think relationships starting out platonically and having first been friends have more qualities of ''true'' love because you were able to form a relationship that was selfless before it became selfish.

I will say that I am Demisexual and I have been with the same person for 20 years. Our meeting included romantic "love at first sight" as described above.  Much time spent together as friends getting to know each other resulted in more.  Lasting true love to me is simple 2 best friends with benefits. 

 

I do not believe that anything anyone does can be considered selfless and to think that there is a shift from a selfless friendship to a selfish love is something I just can't understand.  The amount someone gives to a relationship might change but there is always give and take.

[Janus the Fox]

Is it love when all the qualities are there?  I like that question... it’s like a yes and no question.  Yes as in all the qualities are there, the interests, circumstances etc.  And no as in there’s no attraction of any kind, in my relationship as an aroace anyway.

[Birlow17]

On 12/16/2019 at 1:48 AM, Memento1 said:

Well we all have an ego.  Judging other people's love is ego.  Trying to be a better person is ego.  Thinking ourselves selfless is ego.  Me trying to rationalize my words is ego.   We don't have smaller egos than abusive people, we just have developed different ways of dealing with them.  I would say abusive love is not love that stems from insecurity, it is love alongside insecurity, displayed in a certain way.  People can have more than one emotion at once: love and happiness, love and sadness.  Why not love and insecurity, love and anger?  Maybe you are saying "love" to mean behavior, when I say "love" to mean emotion.  Behavior can be judged selfless or selfish, but I don't think emotions are selfless or selfish.  Whether decisions are conscious or not I don't think changes the emotion.  Enough people have misjudged my emotions based on my actions that I'm hesitant to do it to others.

 

Sorry if I'm not making sense, or came off as invalidating.  This is a complex topic, and it's certainly stretching my ability to verbalize it.

I agree we all have ego. But ego doesn't exist once you have awareness of it. Analyzation of the ego eradicates it completely. The problem is not a lot of people are introspective and self reflect. Usually people catch themselves after and realize they were operating from the ego, some don't at all. The more they feed it the more dangerous it becomes hence abusers etc. I don't think wanting to be a good person stems from ego nor does being selfless. It's just being aware of the reality of the kind of people we are in this world/ the people we don't want to be. 

 

I just can't see abusers having love. They seem to be mistaken. You don't harm those you love. Even in human nature we are wired to protect those we care about. Their desires are selfish and don't stem from a loving place. 

 

Also crazy coincidence that I came across this while I was thinking about this recently. 

[Birlow17]

On 12/17/2019 at 1:06 PM, Gnome.1 said:

Lots I can say on this topic.  Let's start with love at first sight.   Many people romanticize this.  In reality there was a strong pull of some sort of attraction that convinced them to interact.   On reflections back one sees this strong pull and growing feelings as the same thing and will retroact those feelings to the moment they met.  This would be our sense of "love at first sight".  

 

True love.  

This is why many on here have said they mostly see it in older couples.  It is years of patience, understanding, and compromising while you learn and grow as a couple.  The ego, selfishness, and fighting will still happen.  It's a matter of how you deal and express these that makes the difference. 

 

Lasting love

I will say that I am Demisexual and I have been with the same person for 20 years. Our meeting included romantic "love at first sight" as described above.  Much time spent together as friends getting to know each other resulted in more.  Lasting true love to me is simple 2 best friends with benefits. 

 

I do not believe that anything anyone does can be considered selfless and to think that there is a shift from a selfless friendship to a selfish love is something I just can't understand.  The amount someone gives to a relationship might change but there is always give and take.

Rather than labelling love and dating in general selfish, I view true love as reciprocation between two people. I think of my family and the healthy relationships around me and I just don't see any ego. I guess when we look at love it really varies depending on the two people in the relationship. If it's someone who is selfish and they are stepping into a relationship, the relationship will be tainted by their ends. Reciprocation and understanding is what makes it feel real. 

[Birlow17]

On 12/17/2019 at 3:19 AM, CelesteAdAstra said:

I don't understand modern dating. I don't get how you can decide whether to swipe right or left just from a first impression. I tried to play that game and it doesn't work, I'm not attracted to anyone because of a photo.

It may just be me being a dreamer after all. But I don't want a mediocre relationship out of necessity. I don't want to be with a random person because they happened to be around. I don't want a provider or a short-term life partner. I see no point in those. What I want is to be with the one, I want true love that's  out of this world.

Same here to be honest. I'm not moved by ones appearance. I judge people by their actions, their appearance doesn't sway my judgement. 

 

''I don't want to be with a random person because they happened to be around''. I think about that all the time! I wonder how many people settle just for the sake of getting into a relationship. I think things like, ''Did you really have chemistry with that person? Or did you just date them because you shared the same environment''.

 

I'm sure many people do that and that's probably a reason for a lot of breakups after the honey moon phase. They bicker and argue because they realize they aren't compatible. 

 

Imagine if there was a machine in the world that showed you the ones you are most compatible with, and not just people in your environment that you have to consider as a potential partner

[Birlow17]

On 12/16/2019 at 4:35 AM, appleseedy said:

Understanding makes a powerful bond between two people, perhaps without understanding there can be no love?

This is powerful. I think understanding between two people is reciprocation which is love? For example if a man is beating his wife and she is scared of him. It is no longer love because not only is she being hurt by him, she doesn't WANT to be hurt by him. The man's mindset does not align with his wives. She wants a partner that is compassionate and caring while he does not give her the love she needs/wants. Other than abuse just being ethically wrong, I think there needs to be a level of respect for a relationship to qualify as true love 

[Memento1]

4 hours ago, Birlow17 said:

But ego doesn't exist once you have awareness of it. Analyzation of the ego eradicates it completely.

Well we'll just have to agree to disagree on that.  I wish you happiness and peace.