What does love really mean between a man and a woman

This is a question i have been thinking very hard about lately. i have had the same preconcieved idea of love in my mind that it seems everyone has. you know the one society, religeon, tv etc etc has taught us. so knowing no different i have followed this path time and time again, but it has nearly always ended in tears and pain, often with me hating and wanting to hurt the person i once thought i loved. now this has happened to me too many times for comfort and i have begun to wonder how many times i must bash my head up against the same wall before i try to find another way around it. or atleast start to search for a sledge hammer

so this morning i was lying here thinking very deeply about all this. and i realised the problem was that i had never alowed myself to just feel love in its simplest form. everytime i had loved i had always brought so much excess baggage with it that the love was completely hidden behind cr*p. i had let some idea of love create a cardboard cutout in my mind of the person i thought i loved, and evertime that person didnt fit into this cutout i felt betrayed and hurt. so i then decided the next step is to see what society has taught me love should be.

society has taught me that "love" is a commodity to be bartered with " I will love you, if you love me" is it truly love if it can traded and giving and taken back at whim. how many times have we tried to stop loving another person because we think they no longer love us

society has taught me that "love" is a way to control, it is the bars on a cage, the chains that bind " i will love you if you do this and that, if you act this way and never do that" is it trully love if we use it to force other people to do as we want, to be how we want them to be. is love really just another form of control

society has taught me that often "love" is lust. " i will love you only if i can sleep with you"

society has taught me that "love" is slavery. " i wil love you only if your body belongs to me. and me alone" often it is mutual slavery, but slavery none the less. we all know it is wrong to buy and own another person through money. yet we all try to buy and own another person with our "love"

society has taught me that "love " is often the precursor to hate. " i will love you untill you do somethig wrong, then i will hate you" can love really be transformed into hate so easily

thinking of all this and more i came to realise it is no wonder that " love" had left me hurting so many times before and left me wanting to hurt the person i once thought i loved. that "love" had often made me feel betrayed and left me hating. but most importantly i relised that alot of what i felt before wasnt really love. because though i still am unsure what love really is, i am now positive what it isnt.

i know what i have said here has been about love between a man and woman, but alot of it still applies to other types of love. like between perant and child. or friends.

now what do you all think about what i said. i only thought about most of this, this morning. so some arguement or more ideas is welcome

I dont think you were ramblng, what you said was interesting. and like i said this is all a new thought to me so i need some discussion and argument to better understand what i am thinking. it is also why i am trying to explain what i mean, because by having to explain i have to think about what i mean

i have been giving some thought as to where my idea of love became so convoluted. some of it has come from society and people around me, but alot of it i think i learned from my perants and close family. they are the first people we ever love and so consequently we apply alot of what we learn from them to future realationships. it was from them that i got the idea that love always came with certain conditions. i cant remember how many times they would say something along the lines of " if you really loved me you would help around the house" or " if you really loved me you wouldnt skip school" or " if you really love me you wouldnt smoke weed"etc etc. i know they were only trying to get me to do what they considered was the right thing. but they went around it in the completely wrong way. as i loved them and they loved me. but they tried to use that love as a stick and carrot. the carrot was love and the stick was anger. if i did everything they wanted me to do and acted how they expected, then there would only be love and everything would be fine, but as soon as i steped out of the mold they expected of me they would feel hurt and respond with anger. say how if i loved them i wouldnt hurt them. when i was younger i didnt understand how not doing what they wanted me to meant i didnt love them. as i did really love them even though i wanted to do my own thing. but they were older and suposedly wiser so i had little choice but to accept that this was just the way it was.and in the end i only ended up lying to them about who i was so as not to hurt them, which only hurt them more everytime they found i was lying to them. it is almost funny now that i come to think about it

now looking back, with all this in mind , i can see echoes of it in every relationship i have ever been in, yes sexual tension and lust only served to complicate things even more, but at heart it has always been scarily similiar. with every girl i have ever loved i have always had some card board cut out in my head of who they should be and how they should act. and i have used my "love" to try and force them into that picture. and when they wouldnt i have felt hurt and responded with anger( not physical but emotional) but then conversely they have done the exact same thing to me. i cant count the number of times that i have been told that if i loved them i woudnt do something, be it smoke weed, spend time with my friends, play so much computer games etc etc and when i wouldnt be who they expected me to be they have also got hurt and responded with anger. so to try keep our "love" alive we both ended up lying to each other because we didnt want to hurt each other. but sooner or later a lie was always found out and would result in a fight. always with one of us thinking the other didnt really love us, and the other one feeling guilty for lying and not being who they expected us to be. lookng back at this it is no wonder my realationships have always become complicated and usually ended up with us hating each other to some degree. even if we have tried to be friends afterwards.

and this isnt just me. i have seen the same thing , to a greater or lesser degree ,in every relationship around me

so now i realise i have never just simply loved another person before. and i wonder if any one who reads this can tell me honestly that they have. that they love another person with no expectation what so ever of anything in return, including that person loving us. that they have loved someone else with no desire to change them in the slightest. that they have loved someone with no desire to enslave that persons body in any way.

Thanx both of you. you have said some interesting things and are helping me to begin to understand this better.

"I'm not sure if you'll ever find someone who loves another without even a remote bit of expectation"
that is most likely true. i know i never have before. but that doent mean i believe it is right anymore. the problem with expectations is that they can be broken, or even wrongly percieved to be broken, and that brings about feelings of hurt. and feeling hurt brings out a sense of betrayal and sadness and anger. and also makes you fear being hurt again. so love + expectations = pain, anger , betrayal , sadness, and fear.i know this is overly simplified but i hope you get the idea. all these things only serve to complicate and confuse the original love.

Whoa. You guys really are poets :P you're both extremely deep like poets. Haha! But you've reeally made me think about that. I like this post. You both are right and complex :)

Sorry i havent replied lately but my computer broke.

britt "If you have an expectation that is unrealistic, then you will never be happy, and never find real love" i think we have a slight misunderstanding here. i am not talking about how someone else should act towards me nor am i the one looking for real love. i am talking about how i should act. what i should do. what other people think and do is there own problem. the only person i have controll over is myself. and maybe i am being too idealistic. but hey that is my problem. and what is wrong with idealism anyway

the reason for all this is that a while back i met someone i fell in love with. but things were complicated then and shortly after got even more complicated and have stayed that way ever since, except by maybe getting even more complicated still. lol. so i have found myself walking down the same path i have been down too many times before. where the scenery is boring and the destination is sad and depressing. but i am starting to realise that all the complications are nothing but smoke and mirrors. this love i feel dosnt have to be complicated unless i make it.

and as for "I expect Jason to be faithful to me, and I hold a certain expectation that he will love me back. If he stops loving me, or if he is unfaithful, yes, it would hurt, but I would move on and find someone else." so what you are saying is that you will only love him with certain strings attached. that if he broke on of those expectations you would simply find someone else to give your love to with strings attached. now i am not saying that you dont love him. as i know you do. but any expectations only complicate and confuse the true love you feel towards someone else. it is the major thing that has confused me about love for so long. that 2 people who obviously still love each other can do there level best to hurt, hate or ignore each other after some expectation has been broken. i have had love turn into hate on me before ,and the truth of why i hated them so much is because i still deeply loved them. lol sounds like an oxymoron dosnt it? reminds me of the last 2 lines of an old latin poem.
"I hate her and i love her
i hurt"
very simple but true

i think what i am trying to say is that any expectations only confuse and complicate love. that to give somone else my love only under certain conditions means i will always be the slave of love. that the other person will then always have the power over me to leave me hurt and depressed. but if i can bring myself to somehow love unconditionally then that love will no longer be able to hurt me in any way. it will simply be love and nothing else. i know unconditional love sounds impossible but give me one good reason why it has to be, except the fact that we are taught it is. that we are taught love is complicated and difficult and can only be giving with strings attached?