Maybe I'm missing something...

[mousme]

Y'know, I keep wondering if I'm not missing something essential that makes other human beings, well, human beings.

Someone just wrote in their LJ that they loved someone so much it hurt, especially when they're away from said object of their affection.

I've never felt this. Not even remotely. Sure, I've missed people before, and I miss Abi when I'm not around her, but I seem to be lacking that profound quality which everyone else seems to have. Other people seem to feel empty or ache when their love isn't around, and I don't. I miss them, I think of them occasionnally, but I never find myself in that particular state of anguish that characterises the act of loving.

Perhaps I'm just incapable of that particular human emotion.

In my world, love is only a stronger version of like, of friendship and mutual affection. Does that make me less human than others? I don't know. Maybe I'm just not built to love in that way. Maybe I'm not meant to ever feel that.

I suppose that might be why jealousy is always lurking on the edges of my friendships: I'm not jealous of my friends or the time they spend with other people, but I am jealous of the *intensity* of their relationships, the fact that other people can stir emotions in them that I'll never be able to experience.

Okay, enough pseudo-philosophising, back to work.

Comments

[delicatesilence.livejournal.com]

I think you've found the healthy way to love.

NO offense meant to others, but I found in my own life, that that "pain" and "ache" others feel when their partners aren't around is usually based upon something OTHER than love.....

I'm treading on toes already.........it doesn't mean anyone is a bad person...but I think it's okay to be in relationships with people and not NEED them in your life to be happy and content and secure.

:)

[sundancekid.livejournal.com]

If you're not human for feeling that way, I want in the club. That's how I feel too.

[palmir.livejournal.com]

What this one said. I've done the "loving someone so much it hurts" thing before. Before I realized that it isn't really love that makes you feel that need. It's healthier to approach relationships as just a supplemental thing to your already content, happy, secure life. Or something like that.

[ivyismygod.livejournal.com]

I think I'm missing that as well. I have never been able to love someone that much. I'm not even able to get a crush on another, but I agree with you. Perhaps certain people aren't meant to love that way. We wouldn't want the world full of iceberg people, but the thought of everyone having incredibly intense emotions is just as scary.

[kitten759.livejournal.com]

*sniffle* *sniffle* I feel the same way!

[delicatesilence.livejournal.com]

We all rock. :)

[djs-specs.livejournal.com]

Hon, when someone says that they 'love someone so much it hurts', there are either one of two things at work IMHO:

1) They're overstating the case just slightly. Y'know, they love someone, they miss them when they're gone, but they wanna dramatise it a bit ala romance novels.

2) They're experiencing the mad, passionate love that's common early in a relationship which rarely lasts. That sort of thing has an amazing tendency to burn out quickly even though it feels like it could last forever. Just look at the number of people that get divorced after only a few months :P

You're not strange or sub-human. A positive emotion like love isn't *supposed* to equate with a negative thing like pain.

*snuggles* You're just perfect the way you are.

[curtana.livejournal.com]

That all-consuming, passionate, painful emotion has a name - lust. It's a fun state to be in (especially to share), but it gets stale. If you don't have that more peaceful, comfortable emotion behind the lust, then the whole relationship dies with the lust (which is only ever a temporary phase).

The love that's "a stronger version of like" is, in my opinion, the mature kind of love. It's also the durable kind. How could anyone spend fifty years with a person they couldn't bear to be apart from? Gah.

[shenlo.livejournal.com]

I disagree. I think lust and the painful needy-love are different. For one thing, the ache in the 'love' thing is in a different place than the ache of lust. I've experienced that pain-love thing before and it sucks. It's more like...erm.... like an addiction that's so strong you get withdrawl symptoms. You just crave their company continuously while lust is just the desire to bonk your 'loved' one all the time.

[curtana.livejournal.com]

We seem to be operating under two different definitions of the word.

To me, lust is desire. Lust is wanting, craving, needing to have. Lust is not necessarily or only a desire for sex. It encompasses perfectly the clingy, needy, overwhelming desire to spend all your time with a person, to possess them, to monopolize their life. That emotion is clearly not love of any description, by my understanding of the term.

[angelovernh.livejournal.com]

Ok, I certainly need to respond here.. Um.
Firstly, I don't think you're less human than anyone. I think you may not have experienced being "In love" before. Loving someone, sure, but maybe not passionately "In love". They're very different. The intensity and the drama is both very good and very bad.

To those of your friends that think they know it all, well, they just don't. I felt rather attacked by reading the comments even though of course you didn't say it was me, we of course both know it was.

The feeling IS love, most definitely, but it is combined with an insecurity. This is because he and I have come so close to breaking up and yet there is such a strong desire to be together. I don't feel empty without him, far from it, but I miss him deeply like a homesickness. It is sort of like an addiction as one person commented.

[angelovernh.livejournal.com]

It is not OTHER than love, but it is insecurity on top of the love. I don't NEED Him. I WANT him very very much.

[angelovernh.livejournal.com]

Well, no. It's not an overstatement. I am really that intense. And Yes, it's still pretty early (6 months) though I think the NRE is going away. The issue is love + insecurity. :(

I am really shocked to hear anyone saying that love doesn't equate with a negative thing like pain. Yeah.. yeah, it does. And no, I'm not broken.

Re:

[djs-specs.livejournal.com]

*shrug* Its just my opinion, formed from what I've seen and done.

A much wiser and more worldly person than me said 'Love isn't supposed to hurt' and experience proved him right. They're two mutually exclusive emotions IMHO - love is uplifting and makes you feel great. Pain is, well, painful and can be debilitating when present in either the physical, emotional or spiritual forms.

Perhaps when things go sour (either the temporary or permanent kind) you may be able to say that loving someone hurts, but that's not the same as loving someone so much that it hurts. Its a whole other kettle of fish that doesn't bear discussing in the lovely Phnee's LJ.

Like I said, this is just what I think. You're quite free and more than welcome to think something else. And I never did say nor did I imply that you (whom I don't know) were broken. Different opinions come to different people based on their different experiences. 'Tis a fact of life.

[djs-specs.livejournal.com]

Whoah, hold on there a second. Everyone here is only sharing their opinions based on the information that Phnee gave us about a situation she only knew in part or total. We weren't attacking you - some of us don't know you from a bar of soap - just stating for the record what our thoughts on the topic of 'loving someone so much that it hurts'... and how we consider those who've never experienced a feeling like it aren't sub-human or abnormal. We dont' kneo everything, and we never claimed to know everything, since its impossible for a mere mortal *to* know everything.

[joane.livejournal.com]

At the risk of pissing off someone I've never met...

In my world, love is only a stronger version of like, of friendship and mutual affection. Does that make me less human than others? I don't know. Maybe I'm just not built to love in that way. Maybe I'm not meant to ever feel that.

I think it makes you mature and healthy, actually. :) I'm wired for devestating short-term crushes, at least I used to be, and now having found, after years of angst, "a stronger version of like, friendship and mutual affection", I'd never trade it in.

[mousme.livejournal.com]

*pets*

I didn't mean for you to feel attacked, sweetpea.

To be honest, I was just posting 'cause your post sounded kind of sweet, and I was a bit jealous at the thought that I'll probably never know that.

*huggles*

[joane.livejournal.com]

Addendum, since I had to run to catch my bus - there has to be *some* passionate physical and emotional attraction and desire in any relationship, otherwise you may just as well be roommates. But that Harlequin-romance dagger-to-the-soul kind of pain is not a sustainable way to live.

[shenlo.livejournal.com]

Ahhh... agreed.
It does my heart good to realize that sometimes there's a broader definition to a word. Thanks for that.