A LONG LONG time ago, I wrote Love Hurts?. I’d actually written it a few years before I posted it here.
I still believe it, though.
Just this weekend, I had the “love hurts” conversation with a group of people. One was my roomie. He is on the other side of the opinion than I am. This morning, I was treated to the song playing, and it reminded me.
I wanted to touch on it again.
love
ləv/
noun
- an intense feeling of deep affection.
So, this is a definition of love. Seems simple. Where is the hurt in that? What about that definition can make you feel hurt? At all?
Oh, I was given a lot of examples:
I loved this girl. She got married. I was hurting.
Ok. So why were you hurting? The reply, “All hope was gone.”
Ok. So you are hurting because you could not have her, not because you loved her.
But, he replies, “I wanted her because I loved her. I would not have hurt if I did not love.”
Ok. So, love wasn’t what hurt, the wanting to be a part of her life was what hurt when it didn’t happen, but love made thim want to be a part of her life. Sure. I’ll buy that.
However, you can love someone without being a part of their life. Right? And you can want something (a toy, when you’re five, for example) without loving.
“Maybe I was destined to forever fall in love with people I couldn’t have. Maybe there’s a whole assortment of impossible people waiting for me to find them. Waiting to make me feel the same impossibility over and over again.” ― Carol Rifka Brunt
See? She gets it. Its the impossibility of wanting and not having.
It’s like sex and love. Sure, they OFTEN go together. But one is not required for the other.
Only those you love can hurt you.
So, friends that you don’t love can’t hurt you? You HAVE to feel an intense feeling of deep affection before someone can hurt you?
Not me.
Sure, I understand the concept of being MORE affected by people you love. After all, when I love someone, I am more likely to want them to see me positively.
I want someone I love to love me back.
I want someone I love to find me beautiful.
I want someone I love to think I’m smart.
I want someone I love to think I’m a good person.
And so on.
I can, however, love them without those things. They are ADDITIONAL things I want.
And I want some of those things from people I don’t love.
I want the people I work with to think I’m smart.
I want the people in the community to think I’m a smart and a good person, through my writings, even if I don’t know them. Why do I care? Because I have a purpose of spreading thoughts, and that’s easier when people think I’m not a self-serving dumbass.
Has nothing to do with loving them.
My relative died and I hurt because I loved them.
I touched on this in the original writing. It is their loss in our life that we miss and hurt from. Not our love of them. That does not change.
Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal. —From an Irish headstone
THIS, this is how I see it.
The memories don’t hurt. The knowledge that no new memories will be created, and that those same things will never happen again is what hurts.
Loving and being in love: Same thing, or no?
I say no.
Loving someone is that feeling of affection. Wanting the best for someone one, etc.
Being “in love” is romantic (for one). It includes things like wanting to be together, share experiences, create deeper bonds, build futures together, etc.
The exact mix is likely different for everyone. And that’s cool. The thing is, that being “in love” adds to love things that are not a part of the concept intrinsically.
That is why we have the separate terms.
Love means change.
This, this is probably the closest thing to “love hurts” that I would agree with.
“Love hurts when it changes us.” ― Toba Beta
Change can be painful. Growth takes up resources. Resources can drain us. Cost us more to replace.
When we love, and respond to that love with change (become better people, or worse people), that can be hard. And it may hurt, because we know what we are doing and fears go with that…
But again, in that case, it is the change, even when self-directed, that hurts. Not the love. Love does not require change. The desire to be worthy of someone else’s love or to hold on to another’s love may require change…
So, I just don’t see it.
What I DO see, however, it that those who have decided love hurts are setting themselves up for misery and fear.
And THAT, in it’s own way, hurts me.
Not because I love them. But because I believe people deserve better than being the cause of their own misery.
I’m open to rebuttals, though… and would love to hear your thoughts, whether you agree or disagree.
