Do you understand love?

Being in love makes you an expert on love the same way getting run over by a car makes you a mechanic.

Tru

Baby don't hurt me

What is love? Baby don't hurt me, dont hurt me, no more...

(Would you please clarify the question as the song plays?)

Honestly I have my suspicions I don't quite right; maybe it's something biological, or maybe it's my childhood. But, I try to be a good person anyway, and help people who have or would help me. They seem impressed, even when I admit this.

There are different forms of love. We've known this for millennia. There are also different kinds of understanding.

It might be hard to express in words those feelings that otherwise come naturally, and conversely, it might be easy for a person to provide an excellent description of a certain form of love but be completely unable to feel or express it when a suitable situation arises.

The most common one of these, I think, is those people who struggle to see certain others (variable as per preference) as anything other than potential sexual (or romantic) partners, despite likely being able to understand the dictionary definition of Platonic love.

For my understanding of it, in the dictionary sense, at least, see above. For the other sense, I definitely understand some of them. Others I'm not sure.

I'm on Lemmy so no. /s

I don't get it.
- Lonely internet nerds.

Do you know what love is? A chemical. Electrons in your brain sending signals. Are you familiar with Ophiocordyceps unilateralis? It's a fungus that infects ants. It's amazing, really. The spores take over their central nervous systems and force them to climb to a high point, and then the fungus begins to grow up, bursting from the tops of their heads like a branch. And it kills them, of course. All so it can spray new spores over the jungle, infecting more ants. When people say love, that's what I think of.

Love is a parasite. I knew it!
So, manipulative, infectious, subjugative, and fatal?
Good thing cordyceps can't survive in humans due to our higher body temperature.
- Yet.

Personally, I think Heinlein said it best: "Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own."

Love is also a choice that you need to make every day.

Next week my wife and I will be celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary. I love her more now than I did back then.

No.

I understand it in theroy.

But:

Ah the infinite loop.
Some lyrics should help.
Should I try to hide
The way I feel inside
My heart, for you?
Would you say that you
Would try to love me too?
In your mind
Could you ever be
Really close to me?
I can tell the way you smile
If I feel that I
Could be certain, then
I would say the things
I want to say tonight
But 'til I can see
That you'd really care for me
I will dream
That someday you'll be
Really close to me
I can tell the way you smile
If I feel that I
Could be certain, then
I would say the things
I want to say tonight
But 'til I can see
That you'd really care for me
I'll keep trying to hide
The way I feel inside
Just recognize it and break the cycle.
- I think you misread the meme. So I'll point you in the direction; the shirts are pride flags.

Only the parts Haddaway taught me

Love is not just one thing on its own.

Tru

Do I?

Nope. Tho that might be years of others conditioning me to believe I was unlovable, then social doings became harder cause I was done with school

Found one.
There are plenty of people who felt the same way you do but it doesnt have to be a macro thing. Am I lovable? What a crazy thing to say. Have I been loved? I love you. I dont love anything specific about you, obviously, but when I look out into the world I want you to be safe, and cared for, and healthy. Thats love.
Thats macro. Micro comes from within. Its wired into your body, generally speaking.

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

-- ee cummings

Philosophical answer: That shit is crazy, but we need it. We'll never understand it.

Science answer: Evolution and brain chemicals.

Enough to get by, but not completely. Like most things.