h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Aaah, bless...here, have a sugar lump...

Thanks... sugar. *munch* So if 'Love is', what isn't?

'sus

love is NOT ... completely failing to respect that when it is over it is over - love is NOT ... stalking - love is NOT ... trying to rekindle that totally extinguished, if it ever existed in the first place, months old ember, despite the wishes of the other person to never ever see you again, even as a friend - the old saying (or was it the old Michael Bolton song?) still stands you can't be lovers if you can't even be friends. love is especially NOT failing to respect other people's personal space, and deciding to make contact at what you KNOW are totally inappropriate times. boys suck, you really do, you just trample and try to make people feel guilty, insisting that they deal with your problems, that are completely and utterly nothing to do with you, at the least suitable time for them (ie with law EXAMS coming up you total and utter fool)

not that i'm speaking from personal experience at all sorry guys, i've just had a semi-brush with someone who does not know when it's over. and i can't spare the time or the emotional energy to disabuse them of the notion for a week or two.

grrrrrrrrrrrr.
span

which brings up a question, although i don't know if this is the right forum - how do you make love die? how do you stop loving? ie how do you stop yourself loving someone who doesn't love you, and how do you help other people to stop loving people who don't truely love them? (although i still agree that true love is reciprocal) when do you know/how can you tell someone that true love is never going to happen between these two people?

maybe people need to love (it is a drug after all),
and wont let one love rest (no matter how
un-recipricated) till another fix has arrived?

crude??

was it?
I just meant that people who wont let go, normally let go once
the next focus arrives..in reply to spanner girls question..

Ohh I see! I got totally the "wrong end of the stick" on that one...

you must tell me which stick shop you go to

Wait for it..............

"Sticks Are Us" !!!!

Sticks.

I found some nice ones at the base of a Willow tree at 2am. I had problems getting out though - I was drunk, and it was dark under the trees canopy. Two hours later, I made it the 100 yards to my house. I still have the sticks - they're special to me.

But people who need to go from one love to another don't really love, do they?

I think the best demonstration I can give of being in love is when you are both not 'morning' people and yet the first thing you do when you wake up together is look at each other and smile! Love just changes your whole outlook on life.

I'm not sure about your first point, as love means different things
to everyone, I'm sure they do 'love'
Though we spout on, none of us would presume to really be able
to define it.

It is perfectly possible to love two different people at once, but I think once (if) you initiate a relationship with one of the people then the love for the other with necessarily whither (romantic love being a function of attention towards the object).

Unless you're a special kind of person, I think the pressures of loving two people at once is too much to take for long - an inevitably unless you love two similarly special people - it's all going to end up in tears.

ps I've never been in such a situation, but I can see how it happens.

wait - does this mean that you'll deal with my problems if I don't love you? It's just that I've got this funny scaley skin rash and I was wondering ...

har har

it is at junctures like these that I think of the wisdom of my forefathers, who usually stole it from my foremothers ... know whence to say "f**k-off, you crawly little bottom-feeder". If they don't get the message - well, maybe that means they're the long lost twin of Goober Stu.

btw, love is NOT anything to do with Michael Bolton. bad, bad, bad ...

also btw, could we stamp out the "boy sucks" rampaging generalisation - it's beginning to get me down.

hey, that sounds like gossip about people I know. Whoohoo! Could you spill the beans in a place where you can mention names? Pretty please? I'll give ya a chocolate fish.

love is .... an enduring source of great gossip, and merriment for people who should know better (ie, all of us). Nothing seems quite as irrational as a relationship that you aren't in.

btw can someone tell me why we always pick up on the stupidest, most pointless and unnecessary things to argue about when we're in relationships? Is there just some irresistable human urge to fight with each other when in close proximity?

if love was there and one person does something completely unacceptable, is the the relationship irretreivably damaged? if it definitely was love before? is it possible for the other person to put the unacceptable behaviour in a locked box + blank it out after the initial hurt, shock, humiliation, anger has subsided? does the love continue after you've been badly hurt? can it recover? can it disappear immediately? ( oh, please no)

In response to lucan, I think that once one of you does something 'seriously damaging' to the relationship, then 'love' is over for both parties, no matter how much longer the relationship may continue for. As has been previously said, it is a matter of respect and trust. To do something outside the bounds of the relationship shows lack of respect for your partner, and once they have lost their faith in you it can never be completely restored.

But hey, it doesn't stop you turning the clock to zero for the next one...!

Love is...

...impossible to define!

'sus

even if your judgement was severely chemically impaired?
maybe there isn't a next one. maybe there was ever only One.

I don't think you can ever really zero the clock, 'Sus. We just have to try and learn from our mistakes (and not rest my cast on the keyboard!). Each relationship incorporates elements from both parties pasts, which can make it difficult sometimes.

H&K
Z