Common Western Idea Of Love

Love should be born and live in fields, just like wild flowers. Love needs to be nurtured by water, with no concern about where and when the next rainfall will take place. Love needs to allow nature to take its course and trust in the sustenance that its surrounding provides. However, love refuses to take the easy path. Instead, love decides to live in kitchens alongside irritated cooks, dirty walls and screaming infants with impatient mothers. Clearly, love would be better off without concerns, growing in a field like an iris, patiently waiting for the next rainfall. However, love chooses to exist in chaotic environments filled with discontent and discord.

Conformity and Love in 1984 The ability to love is possibly one of the most recurring aspects of humanity. Everyday people fall in and out of love with each other 's personalities, opinions and lifestyle choices. In his novel 1984, George Orwell depicts a dystopian, loveless society. The technology, newspeak, and doublethink force conformity on Oceania, the setting of the book. The lack of diversity in people creates a world, where there isn’t any reason to love anyone else. Family relationships that were formerly built with love, support, and loyalty are ripped away and replaced with distrust, anxiety and hostility. Sexual relationships no longer have love or pleasure, which makes them mean virtually nothing, except the hope of

In Marilyn Friedman’s essay “Romantic Love and Personal Autonomy” she defines the ideal of love as: “A strong, complex emotion or feeling causing one both to appreciate, delight in, or crave the presence or possession of another and to please or promote the welfare of another” (taken from the Funk and Wagnalls’ Standard Dictionary of the English Language). Romantic love is a special subset of this, which has an additional erotic component. Friedman writes in the context of autonomy and gender roles of heterosexual relationships, but this fails to encompass the complete reality of modern romantic love. I take it that Friedman’s purpose in her essay is not to define love, but with such a narrow conceptualization her arguments on the loss of autonomy in romantic partnerships cannot hold outside of the scope of monogamous, heterosexual relationships. My purpose here is not to defend or refute the arguments of her paper; my purpose is to expand upon the ideal of a romantic love in such a way that it includes all romantic partnerships and does not involve a sacrifice of autonomy from any individual involved.

Love, love, love; the only thing everybody talks about. Every movie, every series, every story talks about how two people fall in love and live happily ever after. All stories get to the conclusion that the love the couple shared was unique and that the two lovers matched perfectly together. But what happens when two lovers do not belong to the same social class? What happens when they don’t share common things they like? Are they not meant to be? “In love everything is possible”, someone once said. When someone is in love, he/she would make everything that he/she cans to make his/her lover happy and

Love exists in the short story “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” by Alice Munro and in the short story “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” by Raymond Carver. in Munro’s short story the plot is that of a mentally ill wife, Fiona, who falls in love

How has our perception of love changed throughout the centuries? In today’s media, our perception of romance has been distorted due to movies, tv shows, and songs. While in the Middle Ages, literature and ballads were how most people learned about romantic love. “Stories told through the ages to describe

‘Pride and Prejudice’ is a novel fixated on marriage: throughout, all the ‘action’ occurs within scenes devoted to either the talk of marriage or actual proposals. This cannot be expounded more than within the very first line: ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of

“Modern Love” 1862 England (Victorian Era) was somewhat of an uptight society, especially compared to today. The majority of people, especially those in the upper class, were expected to be utmostly prim and proper and follow societal norms at all times. This included love, or what love was defined as during the period. George Meredith, in his poem aptly titled “Modern Love”, sets a scene where a husband and wife are sleeping side by side, both reflecting sorrowfully on their melancholy marriage. Meredith argues in this poem that the institution of modern love is inherently flawed, by exposing to the reader that while the husband and wife still care for each other, they want to leave each other because they are both scared of “modern love”. By doing so, Meredith is able to justify his overarching message that applies to all: love is a feeling that cannot be artificially replicated, and attempting to do so is only a detriment.

Love is a special emotion that most individuals strives for. Part of a human’s nature is to love and long for another individual. This feeling has existed since the beginning and will continue to exist until the end. The term “love,” however, is very broad. To understand more easily what the term means, the Ancient Greeks came up with three terms to symbolize the three main types of love. The three classical types of love are very important to understand, as they will continue to exist until the world ends. The selected poems read reflect three classical types of love.

Once Jean Farris said, “And they lived happily (aside from a few normal disagreements, misunderstandings, pouts, silent treatments, and unexpected calamities) ever after”(Jean). Many can relate to Farris’s quote as falling in love is sometimes accidental, but staying in love is a choice that is made. A successful relationship may be the product of an almost fairy tale like romance. However, after tying the knot, hard work and commitment are needed from both sides to solidify the relationship in order to achieve the ‘happily ever after’. Throughout human civilization expressing love has generated countless literature and intellectual works in every language and culture known. While many of these works will come to rejoice love, others will address it with resentment and bitterness. In her poem “Cinderella”, Anne Sexton offers us a different version of the traditional Cinderella story. Sexton uses sarcasm and paradox through her poem arguing the sham of happily ever after as portrayed in certain fairy-tales stories and how it always has been represented through media. On the other hand, Lydia Davis’s short story, “Break It Down” narrates the dilemma of a man who is trying to break down the cost of eight days of love that costed him almost $1000 by the end of his affair, in a way, he was trying to question if love is a wise investment or if it is possible to put a price tag on love. Sexton’s “Cinderella” lays out a helpful framework for understanding instances of

In today’s world, it feels as if “true love” is only a myth, for most of us. That love at first sight is “impossible” to happen; because instead of “love at first sight” it becomes, “lust at first sight”. As living beings, crave for a “fairy tale romance.” Everyone wanting to have a happy ending just like the books people read, or the movies they watch. To find the “one”, fall in love, and become as one. In Apuleius' Cupid and Psyche and Disney's Beauty and the Beast, love becomes the most powerful tool that transforms one’s “inner monster” into something beautiful, as well as, to ease one’s pain and suffering.

Loyalty and devotion make up the base of a healthy loving relationship. Love can be a beautiful thing and in media today, we see it all around: music, books, movies, TV shows; anything at all can be traced back to the central idea of love. It’s all about happy endings, and we eat it up. Just as love is beautiful, it can be dangerous, even deadly. “Romeo and Juliet”, “Pyramus and Thisbe”, “Duty”, all of these love stories have but one thing in common: death. Love is blinding, and it often misleads people to make rash decisions that may end up being their last.

The human idea of love is quite possibly the most misunderstood in today’s society. Love can be between a man and woman, mother/father and their kids, or even really good friends. However, these relationships of love go through many interactions and stages to start and progress. Many psychological events must occur and be worked through in order to be successful. All relationships must endure the five perspectives of human behavior. These perspectives are biological, learning, social and cultural, cognitive, and psychodynamic influences.

While people are often able to identify when they feel the emotion love, love itself seems to defy definition.  In her polemic “Against Love”, Laura Kipnis argues that love cannot exist as traditional expressions of love such as marriage, monogamy, and mutuality.  However, in her argument, she defines love incorrectly by equating love to expressions of love. This definition lacks a component essential to understanding the abstract concept of love: emotion. Recognizing love as emotion helps us realize that, contrary to Kipnis’ argument love by nature transcends all expressions of love. Love is subjective and exists in any and all forms. In her argument that love cannot survive as conventional expressions of love, Kipnis ignores the nature of love as emotion in favor of equating love to different expressions of love. Love is a force which exists above expressions of love; a true understanding of love can only come from an assessment of how individuals, not societies, respond to the emotion.

Does True Love Exist?      “I love you.” These three little words might possibly be the most powerful statement one can make to another person. In life, most yearn for the intimate affection that a certain someone can provide them. Women dream of their Prince Charming to come and sweep them off their feet, while men search for the love of their life that sets their heart on fire. But what happens when love is thrown around without a second thought? Has this four letter word become an overused cliché? Has love been replaced with lust? Is there such a thing as true love? This last question has been asked throughout history, while many have argued and debated over the final answer. We, as a society, have become a loveless, sex crazed group