What is love?

[BlueBay]

I have been thinking about this for a while and don't really know how to start it - so here goes.......

How do you know if you're still 'in love' with your husband/partner? What is love and happiness in a marriage.

I have been married almost 30 years and for the past 20 we have had mother in law live with us and just recently only a momth ago we had to put her into a nursing home because of her dementia. So i don't really know what my life was like before the 20 years.

I am doubting my marriage, i am doubting my own self worth and I don't know how to solve this.

My husbnd and I have just started going away for weekends without the kids (they are all in their 20's) which is nice but the problem is there isn't much intimacy.

I quite often blame myself for this because of my sexual abuse as a child.  But recently I have no interest at all in being intimate with my husband or even sexually intimate.

I am so not happy with myself, my body image and I find that I have zero motivation or input into being intimate.  The thought of being sexually intimate makes my anxiety level rise so high that I feel sick.

I have explained this to my psychiatrist and we will be working on this.  I also have a therapist who knows of these issues.

But the problem still lies - what is love? I don't really know what to think anymore.  Tears are flowing as I am writing this because it's sad to know that a person is not even sure what love is anymore.

So much doubt in my life 😞

[DefiantPanda]

I wish I could tell you...

All I know is that when I feel bad about myself it's really hard to be intimate with someone else. Really really hard.

In any case I'm really sorry to hear about what you've been going through lately.

It's good that you have a psychiatrist and therapist to talk to about it.

[Chris]

I dont know what love is. Its been tainted wth sexual abuse, manipulation, pain rejection. But with all that for some reson my husband of forty odd years stands by me. Like you intimacy causes so much anxiety. I just cant go there even though i long to be held.

My mum lived with us for fourteen years and she had multiple health issues, but by far the worst was the separation anxiety (from me) which ment i couldnt go anywhere without her. Anyway eventual she went into a home. It took me many months to accept i had done the best i could.. Then it took me many months to realise i could go out whenever i wanted. I had to create a new life, but it took a long time.

I think we have to learn to love ourselves before we can truly love someone else.

It sounds like your on the right track,  having weekends away, its a good way to connect just take baby steps.

Wishing you well

[Appleblossom]

I dont have a clue about romantic love.

I have loved a few people, mostly dependants.  Trust is a huge issue for me.

I loved my parents as a kid.  Did not see much Hollywood as a child so not that effected by that style before I was travelling and studying and learning about anthropology, courtly love and religious concepts.

Perhaps it is unique to each person. We all get to have a say in what we think it means.

[BlueBay]

Hi @DefiantPanda @Chris @Appleblossom

Thank you so much for your replies.  It is different to each and every one of us.  I have a lot of work to do if I want things to work out.  And with the help of my psych and therapist I am hoping things will work out.

Slow baby steps - that's what I have to do.

[Shaz51]

It will take time @BlueBay and it is the little things that makes a difference

How are you today @BlueBay

Hello @DefiantPanda, @Chris

[Diya]

Hi ,
I know one thing that is till you are happy with urself none of the other things around will matter. But having said that you need to count your blessings you have a family a husband who cares that's why he is still with you..and you are a sensitive person.
Do you have hobbies interests..that u gave up for family ..please pursue them..
I am lonely .. Have no relationship for the last 10 years and now with people coming back from my past .. I'm having depressing thoughts..I have achieved so much education worked many years but personal happiness eludes me..I'm alone everywhere...inspite of all this I want to believe I will have that life I want..
I know it's easy to tell but hard when one experiences depression. I hope we can cope and God makes us look at the brighter side in ours lives.
Take care. Pls don't cry..all will be well.

[Silenus]

Hi @BlueBay.

Wow. What a question! Philosophers, poets, musicians, painters... they have laboured all of their lives to try and answer the question of what love is, and still it remains an elusive quality that seems to exist somewhere between the head and the heart...

One thing I know about love in my own life (and it closely mirrors what @Diya alluded to) is that we need to love ourselves before the love of others can truly touch us, and before we can extend the quality of that love outside ourselves to touch others.

I was forced to question my own definitions of love when my marriage of 10 years fell apart. Recently, the words of a philosopher called Jiddu Krishnamurti did much to help my understanding of what love is. I hope you don't mind me sharing a snippet of his thoughts on love. It embraces the concept of Mindfulness...

"In this torn desert world there is no love because pleasure and desire play the greatest roles, yet without love your daily life has no meaning. And you cannot have love if there is no beauty. Beauty is not something you see - not a beautiful tree, a beautiful picture, a beautiful building or a beautiful woman. There is beauty only when your heart and mind know what love is. Without love and that sense of beauty there is no virtue, and you know very well that, do what you will, improve society, feed the poor, you will only be creating more mischief, for without love there is only ugliness and poverty in your own heart and mind. But when there is love and beauty, whatever you do is right, whatever you do is in order. If you know how to love, then you can do what you like because it will solve all other problems. So we reach the point: can the mind come upon love without discipline, without thought, without enforcement, without any book, any teacher or leader - come upon it as one comes upon a lovely sunset? It seems to me that one thing is absolutely necessary and that is passion without motive - passion that is not the result of some commitment or attachment, passion that is not lust. A man who does not know what passion is will never know love because love can come into being only when there is total self-abandonment. A mind that is seeking is not a passionate mind and to come upon love without seeking it is the only way to find it - to come upon it unknowingly and not as the result of any effort or experience. Such a love, you will find, is not of time; such a love is both personal and impersonal, is both the one and the many. Like a flower that has perfume you can smell it or pass it by. That flower is for everybody and for the one who takes trouble to breathe it deeply and look at it with delight. Whether one is very near in the garden, or very far away, it is the same to the flower because it is full of that perfume and therefore it is sharing with everybody.

Love is something that is new, fresh, alive. It has no yesterday and no tomorrow. It is beyond the turmoil of thought. It is only the innocent mind which knows what love is, and the innocent mind can live in the world which is not innocent. To find this extraordinary thing which man has sought endlessly through sacrifice, through worship, through relationship, through sex, through every form of pleasure and pain, is only possible when thought comes to understand itself and comes naturally to an end. Then love has no opposite, then love has no conflict. You may ask, `If I find such a love, what happens to my wife, my children, my family? They must have security.' When you put such a question you have never been outside the field of thought, the field of consciousness. When once you have been outside that field you will never ask such a question because then you will know what love is in which there is no thought and therefore no time. You may read this mesmerized and enchanted, but actually to go beyond thought and time - which means going beyond sorrow - is to be aware that there is a different dimension called love. But you don't know how to come to this extraordinary fount - so what do you do? If you don't know what to do, you do nothing, don't you? Absolutely nothing. Then inwardly you are completely silent. Do you understand what that means? It means that you are not seeking, not wanting, not pursuing; there is no centre at all. Then there is love."

I hope that you find a way to rekindle or reconnect with your love. Love is a beautiful thing, a source of great strength and resilience, and the source of all that is right in life...

Hugs and happy vibes beaming to you.

[BlueBay]

Hi @Diya and @Silenus

Thank you for your replies.  Wow @Silenus I think I need to re-read your response as I need to absorb what you wrote.  But thank you.

It is interesting that tonight in my DBT session my therapist told me that I need to do some 'loving kindness to myself exercises.  I need to validate myself and learn to love myself.

You're right I think that when I am in love with myself, my body and just me being me I will be able to love others including my husband.

I need to learn to be kind to myself; for a long long time I have been so hard on myself, putting far too much pressure on myself; i need to learn to just be me and be okay with that.

Lots of work still to do, but I will give it a go.  It's hard to learn to love yourself when it has been tainted with child abuse, anxiety and rejection and abandonment by my own parents.  That's really painful.

[Former-Member]

Hello sadgirl,

You are asking the age old question - probably one of the most important questions we can ever ask ourselves honestly. 

I can only answer from my own life experience of love (and the lack of it) - to what it is and what it is not.  I have learned that true love is seeking and nurturing the welfare and happiness of another as much as our own. Love is nurtured and created through selfless acts - sacrificing for another expecting nothing in return but the common good. If there is a motive it is not real love.

These sacrifices can start off as small and are "choices" made along the journey of life, and depending on our capacity to give can lead to much bigger sacrifices (i.e. giving our life to save anothers - the ultimate sacrifice/growth - a higher love). It's an inner growth and all people are on different levels.

So what I have discovered is that true love can only be nourished devoid of self interest (not selfish). Love is not putting up with abuse. Love is valuing the other and being/feeling valued.

Being devalued as a child due to abuse does not limit your/our capacity to love - it has tainted "our perception of "our worthiness "to be loved". It can stunt our inner growth. (I was also a victim of horrific child abuse). It leaves us believing we have little value. So we don't always act in our own bests interest - (self harm). Or don't believe others truly love us. This can play out all of our lives leading to all kinds of mental anguish and relationship problems until we truly acknowledge who we are, our purpose, and our worth. 

Facing and overcoming our fears of rejection by allowing ourselves "to be loved intimately" is proactively learning to love ourselves (saying yes - we are worthy!! we do have value!! - it is the scars of hurts; the negatives of fearing rejection or expecting the worst to happen (not trusting others),  that is holding us mentally and emotionally back from loving ourselves I believe). So there is a need to take a "leap of faith", by starting to believe in ourselves being persons of value and to believe a little in the good of others. Taking that leap we are able to move on. Otherwise we our trapped in limbo emotionally.

Lack of intimacy in a marriage is not always an indication that we don't love the other - but it may be an indication that we are not valuing ourselves as worthy of it. Warm hugs