How do You know that you love somebody?

[Joeaksa]

Originally posted by livi
Joe,

I think maybe you have touched on one of my thoughts in previous post. Namely the possibility that at least some of our motivation is driven by a primitive subconscious drive to find a well chosen partner for reproduction.

In this regard,

A woman primarily needs a father for her children that is able to protect and take care of her and her offspring - financially and otherwise. It is only logical that the woman should chose by the economic status.

A man primarily seeks a mother for his children that is bodily healthy for bearing, having and taking care of his offspring. It is therefore only logical that he should chose by the looks.

This is perhaps a cynical and exaggerated reasoning but never the less logical in an evolutionary sense.

Marcus,

I have been told by many ladies that once they get to be in their 30's that they are not as worried by what a guy looks like (although its a bit important) but they want a guy who will take care of them (house, stable and so on) when they make the move to have children. Also important is stability and a sense of humour.

Lets face it, we all (most of us) like sex but the guys can walk away and the girl is preggy with a child. This lasts AT LEAST 18 years so its a big deal for the ladies.

Were both species to get preggy, bet that we would be wearing condoms a lot more often, or taking the birth control pill.

[Dennis Kalma]

Originally posted by Joeaksa
How can you tell this way? I pass out most of the time when this happens... blood loss you know!

Oh I just can't resist.....I guess your passing out is due to having a small heart?

Dennis

[charlesbahn]

Helen and I met at a small dinner party. Our eyes met across the table. We've been together ever since. Thirty-four years.

How do you know? There's magic.

[DavidI]

Love is one of the most difficult emotions to describe. For my kids, it is unconditional. There is nothing stronger. For my wife, it is not unconditional. We have been married for 17+ years, and have a great relationship. There have been great times and difficult times as well. It is a conscious decision of trust. I think the entire relationship is based upon trust. Without it, there is no relationship.

David

[billwagnon]

This whole, "she completes me" crap is just that...crap.

There are many lenses through which we can look at relationships.

"Imago" concepts state that we fall in love with someone who we think 1) can fix our childhood wounds and 2) possesses attributes of our selves that we have repressed.

Now if this works it should be awesome and would be like feeling "completed" because the relationship you have with your spouse would help you see hidden parts of your "self", and they would heal your residual trauma. When both partners are conscious of this dynamic they can start helping each other.

I'm currently separated from my wife of 15 years - the relationship was unconscious for so long that I don't know if we will recover - I am learning A LOT and one of the key things so far is that happiness comes from within me - it's in my power to become who I need to be. Once I get ME down, I may be able to be in a real relationship again.

[Brian Cameron]

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

Excerpted from a 1973 address by the late Robert Heinlein, to the Brigade of Midshipmen at his alma mater the United States Naval Academy:

...What you do have here is a tradition of service. Your most important classroom is Memorial Hall. Your most important lesson is the way you feel inside when you walk up those steps and see that shot-torn flag framed in the arch of the door: "Don't Give Up the Ship."

If you feel nothing, you don't belong here. But if it give you goose flesh just to see that old battle flag, then you are going to find that feeling increasing every time you return here over the years. . .until it reaches a crescendo the day you return and read the list of your own honored dead -- classmates, shipmates, friends -- read them with grief and pride while you try to keep your tears silent.

... I said that "Patriotism" is a way of saying "Women and children first." And that no one can force a man to feel this way. Instead he must embrace it freely. I want to tell about one such man. He wore no uniform and no one knows his name, or where he came from; all we know is what he did.

In my home town sixty years ago when I was a child, my mother and father used to take me and my brothers and sisters out to Swope Park on Sunday afternoons. It was a wonderful place for kids, with picnic grounds and lakes and a zoo. But a railroad line cut straight through it.

One Sunday afternoon a young married couple were crossing these tracks. She apparently did not watch her step, for she managed to catch her foot in the frog of a switch to a siding and could not pull it free. Her husband stopped to help her.

But try as they might they could not get her foot loose. While they were working at it, a tramp showed up, walking the ties. He joined the husband in trying to pull the young woman's foot loose. No luck --

Out of sight around the curve a train whistled. Perhaps there would have been time to run and flag it down, perhaps not. In any case both men went right ahead trying to pull her free. . .and the train hit them.

The wife was killed, the husband was mortally injured and did later, the tramp was killed -- and testimony showed that neither man made the slightest effort to save himself.

The husband's behavior was heroic. . .but what we expect of a husband toward his wife: his right, and his proud privilege, to die for his woman. But what of this nameless stranger? Up to the very last second he could have jumped clear. He did not. He was still trying to save this woman he had never seen before in his life, right up to the very instant the train killed him. And that's all we'll ever know about him.

THIS is how a man dies.

This is how a MAN. . .lives!

"They shall not grow old as we that are left grow old age shall not wither them nor the years condemn; As the going down of the sun and in the morning, we shall remember them..."

-Tomb of the Scottish Unknown Soldier, Edinburgh