fine line.

dont get love confused with desire.. desire is an animal instinct of lust. People suffer from it and have no way of controlling it so they will not be able to love anyone purely.

It sure can hurt, but are you willing to fight for it. Are both people in the relationship who give equal halves into it willing to constantly fight for the end result of limited happiness.

Love is a change in lifestyle. You cant expect to live the same way as you do.

If you can't love yourself first off, you won't be able to love another.

love is the connection of two souls mentally and/or physically.

you will never experience the same type of love ever again.

Love... a most cruel master over my life.

I am and have always been emotionally vulnerable to those I care about... I can form extremely deep attachments to people, especially in relationships. When love goes wrong, it can be profoundly difficult for me to emotionally detach and move on.

For as long as I can remember, I've been carrying all the pieces of my broken heart around... searching for someone who can put it all back together and make me whole. Because it's something I can't seem to do for myself, despite years of effort towards that end. Rather than find my angel of mercy though, I tend to always find other angels with broken wings... and I try to mend them, at the cost of further breaking my own.

Ultimately, to feel in love, in only for a brief period... to feel that sense of completeness and healing, and happiness... even for only a time - makes the lifetime of painful memories that I have to deal with as a result, somehow worth that price I have to pay.

Someone remarked that they feel whoever said "it's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all", is a fool. I can understand 100% why anyone would feel that way, and I know I should feel that way myself. I have so many scars and eternally bleeding wounds in my soul... and every new time I care for someone, in the end it inevitably only adds to the already unbareable amount of inner torment I'm already dealing with.

I've learned truly, there is no limit to what we can endure emotionally and mentally. Multiple times I've been brought to the very edge of sheer madness, so devastating was my anguish within. And everytime I feel that the next broken heart will surely kill me... but somehow I always manage to survive anyway.

It seems that no matter how many pieces your heart breaks into, all those little pieces can themselves also break... and in turn, those pieces can break as well. So there are infinite parts of ourselves to be broken, infinite parts of ourselves that must eternally endure.

I truly envy those in life who always seem to have the upper hand in their relationships... the ones who leave instead of being left, the ones who break hearts instead of being broken themselves. They make life look so easy with how they always hold all the cards, they are the head dealer for their own lives and I can only admire them in amazement. I know I'll always just be a player at my table, and always holding a losing hand.

Yes, love sucks. No, I don't think it should hurt so much. But though I know I'm permanently damaged from the consequences of it, there will never be anything in life more beautiful to me, than to surrender to it... and to feel alive... for however the moment may last.

Jesus Christ, man. I may just have to give up on love.

Of course, that's easy to say until someone comes along and means the world to you. Nature is so very cruel.

The only one that can heal you is you. You won't be happy with someone until you're happy with yourself. I had many friends come into my life recently and show me that I AM worth it, and they have helped me to become content with myself. All of my friends have said that they have noticed a huge change in me. I am much calmer, and I don't have that nervous energy that I used to have.

I used to look for someone to put me back together, and to help me be happy. Now I know that until *I* am happy with who I am (which I've finally taken the hardest step towards) that person that will make me happiest won't stay. You have to be content and at peace with yourself to bring the person that will mean the most to you into your life, and get them to want to stay with you. I have finally been able to start to heal very old hurts, which is going to lead me to the next step in keeping that person that makes me happiest in my life, and letting me make them as happy as they make me.

Love is worth it, but you have to love yourself first. Love is nothing until you do.

That's been said a bazillion times by a bazillion different people and the words are still just as useless to anyone now as they were the first time someone ever said them. It's honestly the most abused and overused concept in the Universe. A very close second is "You'll find it when you stop looking for it".

If being happy with ourselves were all it took for someone else to be happy with us, then we'd all be joyfully living out the remainder of our lives in perfect, blissful harmony with our soul-mate. But the fact is, the greater majority of society is miserably unfulfilled when it comes to love and relationships.

This generic concept of learning to love yourself before anyone else can love you, really needs to be done away with. It's something that has been absolutely drug through the dirt and repeated indefinitely for many years, and it's never helped anyone in any way except to make them feel dysfunctional or inferior somehow.

I used to say the same things, only was a LOT more cynical than you. I recently found out that those words are true. I reached a point where I could accept myself finally, and it has changed a lot of things. I'm much calmer, and I have finally been able to forgive myself for things that happened when I was younger. Many people have approached me and commented on how much better I look, and how much happier I look. People can see much more than you think, I used to walk around joking and looking happy, but everyone could see that I was very unhappy underneath it.

reply to post by Zaphod58

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Pff, so arrogant...

I, along with many others, have already been through that stage you seem to be in of "I used to think like you do"... *and then I seen the light!*.

You'll grow out of it. Everyone does. Reality only allows you just so much time to think you're outrunning it, before it catches up to you in one bold stride and grabs you in a death grip.

Although your current state of supposed enlightenment does seem quite real to you, it is indeed temporary, as you will see. =)

Arrogant? Me? HAH! I'm the least arrogant person you will ever meet. I never said I "saw the light" or that I was "enlightened" and don't even get me STARTED on reality showing me the truth. I know all about that. I've had people ask me in all seriousness how I'm still here today with everything that has happened. But since I reached the point where I accepted myself, I have been much calmer about things, and it has given me even more strength than I had before to face things. Reality has already tried to beat me down since it happened, and I am much better prepared for it now.

It ain't about how hard you can hit; it's about how hard you can GET HIT and keep movin' forward!

Good ol' Rocky...thought I'd lighten things up a bit. It's kind of true, though. No matter who you are, you're gonna get hit. The people who can get back up time and again have a much better chance of being happy than those that stay down. Of course, some of us are hit harder than others, so I guess it's also about that.

As long as you assume the words are useless to you, they will be. This is the beauty of perspective, and how we use it. You're as right as you are wrong, we all are.



Being happy with yourself doesn't magically make others like you, it's just much easier for them to see who you actually are. One of the main points of the saying is that learning to be happy for, knowing, and loving yourself, is more important than receiving the love of others. Can you not tell the difference between people who are confident in themselves? Our minds can pick up on the little nervous tendencies and social oddities we create when we aren't comfortable in our own skin. And you made quite a stretch with assuming it would lead to everyone's eternal happiness. Part of that learning process is discovering there is no such thing, no end goal to happiness, it's something you experience in the moment, something you are, not a possession to be gained.



Won't argue that, but you can't correlate that to saying the advice doesn't work. It's not as if the philosophers and sages have failed us all.



I hope everything in your life is allright. I know you discussed this in posts after this one, but if you have not been able to know and love yourself then you aren't in the position to say it doesn't work. You can be loved, without loving yourself, but it is difficult to truly accept that love. You can call BS on me there, but you just may not have experienced that level of acceptance. I don't mean to be negative in that, I'm just saying the wise man knows there is much he doesn't.

I think when it hurts it's not love anymore.

Love in its many stages can turn into a lot of other things...especially when breaking up. But i wouldn't say that love hurts, because it's not anymore love at that point. So as soon you realize for yourself, lets say your or his love turned into hate (worst case), it's time to move on. Because that's the hate that hurts. And the time has come to find new love again.

They say that the best things in life are the things that are the hardest to get. What I think that means, is that if it is worth it to you, you'll be willing to do what it takes to make it happen. Love is hard, and perhaps the hardest of all things in life to get and to keep. For one thing, once you think you have it, most of the time you'll find you don't. With that, to find that soul mate, or perfect match will take a long time and you have to be willing to go to the mats for it. I wish you luck in finding love and hope that you can keep it once you find it.

reply to post by Benarius

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Thanks for the reply Benarious..but there is always a place between love and hate, the giving up on a dream..the growing in different directions..The idea that love should end up in hate is to sad.

thanks for all the amazing replys to this thread..
you all deserve the very best love has to offer..and may it be a lasting feeling..

reply to post by nuts!

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The giving up on dreams or growing in different directions indeed influnces love. But I beleive love is selfishlessness (english language hard language). So if it's true love, it will find a way to grow in the same direction realizing your dream. One (or the two of you) have to give before you get. If there was a scientific formula for it, maybe this is it.

LOVE = (HE + SHE) COMPROMISE squared.

I've learned after a year too long relationship that love should not hurt. But it was probably the most painful feeling I've ever felt in my life. When you really do LOVE someone and they break your heart it's devastating. Like.. when a girl cheats on you for the 2nd time and it literally physically feels like your heart muscle is going to explode. All topped off with a blanket of anxiety. So just be smart and don't let relationships or your mind get that bad. Be alert and know when to quit and love should be a beautiful thing

Yes i think that love should hurt it makes you think what u have lost, and reflect on what the whole ordeal was like. It is human emotions to make u feel like poo after somthing after loseing somthing that was very close to you. BUT of cource its UNFAIR! which is something you cant change.

I am going threw a very difficult situation right now that I wanted to share with fellow members.
I have two close friends whom are married to each other for a little over a year. They have a very dysfunctional marriage. My friend "Tom" verbally abuses his wife really bad and they get into huge fights about every other day.these fights have escalated into violence in the past. I really care about both of them and there well being. Over the years of friendship I have developed feelings for "Sarah." It's kinda been like there opposing magnets, but sarah and I are matched magnets. I should mention the only way tom agreed to marry Sarah is if they had an open marriage which she had never acted on. They have been trying to conceive for awhile, mostly because Sarah wants a child(which I think is the worst thing in the world to bring a child into that mess.) Seems like he could care less.
My intentions were never to act on these feelings for her but one night I was over at their house and he was drinking and past out. I was drinking as well. Sarah seduced me (she was not drinking) and we ended up sleeping with each other. She caught me off guard.
several weeks later she calls me to say she's pregnant. I started having an affair with her that developed out of us talking about the what ifs, if it turns out to be my baby. i have only ever wanted to see her happy in life.
We decided not to tell her husband about the chance her baby might be mine. Until we know the paternity.
I could not bare this cross however. It was tearing my soul out because I love Tom as well and could not live with myself and being around them still. I realized i needed to tell Tom for better or worse. I ended up betraying her trust in me by telling him and I broke his heart. I guess telling him was selfish on my part? They both do not want to have anything to do with me now. I do not blame them. No matter which way the cookie crumbles, it's going to really suck! If it's his baby I'm certain they will be miserable for the rest of their lives or go through an ugly divorce eventually. If it ends up being my baby, I worry that Sarah will never forgive me for betraying her trust. We had plans to get married if it's mine. Now i don't know. So now I got 7 months to sweat it out. My soul feels intact again but my heart is in a million pieces!