I'm not sure if I've ever felt romantic love. Placing a lot of your emotions on something external and caring a lot about what it is and how it's perceived is as far as I've gone. Love historically meant to me something that I could pour my passion into, but it's become a more calculative assessment of moral values and possibilities now. At worst it's letting yourself be carried away by feelings of amusement, self-absorption which I wouldn't label as love, at best it's feelings of gratitude for the existence of something or someone else.
If I can't trust something then there's no possible relationship I could have with it other than that of mistrust and testing.

When it comes to "traditional" love I've had are crushes back when I was a kid and teenager. The purest and warmest feelings were in that awkward time between being a little kid and entering puberty, that weird 'feeling' of attraction towards a girl that made no sense since, well, it was before puberty so I had no "reason" to be attracted to a girl. I wanted to get her attention and stuff, but I didn't know why. Very weird stuff, but nice.
I'm much too detached and cynical these days to entertain the thought of indulging in such heartfelt vagaries, but I do still deeply enjoy romance in VNs. It doesn't really work for me in other forms of media.
As for other types of love, like platonic love, yeah, that's nice. Trust is a wonderful thing.

I don't know I just feel glad when I see my wife. It's like moe moe kyun~ but more intense.

>>158678
I don't think I've ever experienced romantic love. I do remember maybe feeling something like a "crush" for two classmates I had, but these feeling towards them always felt weird, for some reason, I always preferred to feel this "crush" and keep it deep inside my head, always feeling but never really acting on it to make something of it.
I do remember hating the awkwardness that came with it and the potential to ruin a good friendship just because something inside me thought it would be a good idea to have a "crush"

>it feels like dying
That is a very interesting view. I'm not sure if I share it, but I think to be able to see what you mean.

To me, love just feels like a very intense affection for someone, similar to or maybe the same as you feel for a parent / sibling / first most comforting person of your life. Feels like a guardian!
I'm not sure if I know what romantic love is, affection and sexuality to me have always been completely separate things and while I can of course see both applying to the same person, that wouldn't result in a unique feeling for me. I also have always been confused by the widespread use of descriptions like "cute" for something obviously lewd / sexual, which I'd instead just describe as "sexy", because "cute" to me are things like animals or vulnerable people.

>>158678
Love is such when it's both a suggestion and your own sovereign choice you commit to. It feels accordingly.

I have never ever

Love is a prison. Love collapses the infinite potentiality of self into a small specific set of predictable states and actions.
It serves to perpetuate overarching systems which is why it's pushed so heavily everywhere. If the meat factories stopped running consciousness and energy would no longer be captured.
Children understand this naturally which is why they mock love so much because to them it's funny, at least until adulthood sets in then. Unless it doesn't, and then you're in a world of hell.
But it's hell either way because love is really lack too. Love does not make give you anything it only takes away. It makes you believe an illusion that you're empty, that you're missing something. It takes away your peace and happiness, and gives you an illusive mirage of peace and happiness to chase ad infinitum.

If we were truly free, and with clear and solid awareness and mind, maybe it would be worth it in itself. Like willingly jumping off a cliff in a video game. But you could say that for anything, under our current circumstances of ignorance and illusion it only serves to keeps us ever further from truly understanding where, what, or why we are.

>>158719
Love is self-destructive but that's what gives the profound sense that there exists a world outside yourself. A leap of faith where the only winning move is to completely abandon your expectations of what's to come and live solely within what is happening now.

Like all feelings it's very hard to put into words and it means many different things to different people. To me it matches both a prison and freedom. Love is trusting someone entirely with the whole of your being, giving you freedom from relying on others, or of having to appeal to others in general, for you have who you want. Prison, of the fact that once you share in this trust with someone you generally cannot have this level of closeness with another. The box is now closed, you've chosen someone and they have chosen you, this being romantic love of course.

Platonic love is different. You can love many things, and they can love you back but it is always more fragile than the commitment and trust of the above, there can be an undercurrent of anxiety. Platonically, you are both friends and love each other from convenience or of a confluence of hobbies and conversation but there is also the understanding that it is not a strict bind. A social contract of meeting in the moment, and parting the next, of hopefully meeting again rather than it being unconditional.

I used to think love requires sacrifice. Ideally, you sacrifice a day of w*rk so the first thing you see at home is your happy and obedient wife and family, and you give up opportunities like traveling, hobbies and moving elsewhere because you're at a pleasant plateau. Being a neurotic control freak, it would be horrifying to be in panic mode every time the person you love is outside your reach for five minutes, which leaves you to imagine a worst-case scenario.
Nowadays, I'm glad there are characters that make me feel hope and warmth, just by thinking about them. Unlike me, they will not age and it is my obligation to stay somewhat healthy and optimistic(as far as it goes) so their radiance will not wither in vain.

I know other people experience love but I don't know if I have.

You guys are entirely insane

>>158734
Who said you could speak?

>>158734
Au contraire, I'm: way too sane; not insane enough.

>>158678
the reason why it's popular in fiction so much is because it doesn't exist irl. just as magic, dragons and isekai. It's a fantasy, delusion, a state of mind where you see another person as they are not.

man, you guys are depressing, it's nothing like that
is it sour grapes? or did you all love the wrong person?

>>158936
im da jokah baby

Hopefully this is a little more positive: Years ago, I read two quotes, one from Victor Hugo, and the other from Dostoevsky. "To love someone is to see the face of God," and, "To love someone is to see them as they were meant to be," respectively. What really struck me about that was that I had been thinking about the same concept for a while and had put it into similar words about a week before finding those quotes. That's one of the things I've felt about love: the simple desire to make my beloved happy. To make Heaven real just for her. I've been accused of being "knightly" when it comes to love, not in the white knighting sense that I think women can do no wrong (far from it), but that I want to overprotect my love, from any worldly harm or corruption. The harsh lesson I've learned is that you can't protect someone from their own self and so between that and the total lack of good people around here, I've given up on 3d romance as a whole. But it did feel very nice at the time.

>>158951
That sounds very sweet to me. I also completely understand your reasoning for throwing in the towel, but I hope you will keep yourself open for romance if you encounter a worthwhile situation by chance.

>>158952
Don't worry, I haven't given up completely. Someday I really want the ideal scenario like >>158731 describes, but I'm not holding my breath about it is all. It's a lot easier if you can not worry about it and just wait, especially if you stay busy with things like work and study and learn to fill in the occasional lonely night with anime.
If you haven't already, I hope you find something fulfilling and lasting. So too for us all.

>>158956
Thank you very much for the sweet words, right back at you! I have not, which I mention in solidarity because I'm fine with that.

My opinion on love is the only correct one! But nobody wants correct, huh. Typical... Loven't, aren't we?

>>158975
I also want to be correct. What's your opinion?

>>159033
¥ it's so empowering when you're being seen as not who you are!
People complaining about the "love" they think they're not getting — in a nutshell.

This picture is sponsored by the fitting coincidence of Saya no Uta banner playing as I write this.

>>159033
>>159039
Joseph Conrad had something about this in Lord Jim
>“I love her dearly. More than I can tell. Of course one cannot tell. You take a different view of your actions when you come to understand, when you are made to understand every day that your existence is necessary—you see, absolutely necessary—to another person. I am made to feel that. Wonderful!”
Great book all around by the way

I'll have all of you read
¥ The Eden project: In Search of the Magical Other
so you'll actually understand what love is and what love isn't.

I CAN increase Kissu's Love Fluency Quotient, so I SHALL do so.
This post CURSES you. The CURSE lifts once you'll actually try to read the book.

>>159047
aaaaaaaa why did it have to be jung i hate alternate modes of knowing

>>159047
I would say that a good portion of kissu already have a good understanding of love.
>>>/poll/7344

>>159047
It's through this post that I learned libgen is no longer a thing. Can you only love others by inflicting harm upon them? I like my interpretation of true love as trust, gratitude, and compassion, thank you.

>>159048
It really didn't have to be his framework at all, but nobody else bothered to get to the point as quickly.

>>159052
>libgen is no longer a thing
Is it really? .is had been giving me issues for a while but now .li isn't loading either... I hope it comes back

>>159052
>>159078
There's always the Anna's Archive.

>>158734
I don't have to listen to you.
>>158936
The original poster asked us for our free opinion, if we were only supposed to give positive responses he should have explicitly told us in the first place. I think love gets enough praise anyways judging from how more than half the songs I hear any and everywhere are about le love barring pure instrumentals, so boohoo if the relative few of us don't see it the same way.
>>158720
Love isn't necessary for that. I can look at an animal with its banality and realize that there exists others in the same profound way, and if I really wanted to live in the present then I would stay a child because that's what childhood is: pure presentness. A child isn't thinking about the future or the past beyond simple memories or dreams, their center of being is entirely here and now, and childhood is totally devoid of romantic love. Love demarcates the beginning of adulthood and entrance into measured society, which is why in all those Disney movies part of the maturation is the child hero falling in love with the heroine. Don't you remember the baby carriage song joke or the cooties game? Only a kid would come up these jokes. Coincidentally childhood is the happiest time of our lives, hmmmm?

But see, that's just my opinion, nerds. I'm well aware that a lot of people think love is the Good™ or the highest worldly pleasure or whatever. I can't change anyone else's opinion and more importantly, I don't want to.
Let's put it this way since >>159033 made me think, I would rather be an Angel than dissolve away into the LCL ocean.
Personally I think friendship is much more deserving of praise.

>>158678
My measuring stick is whether I can say I love you to a person
If you love your mother, you should be able to say you love her, if you love your partner/friend/pet etc you should be able to say the same
You might say this is a narrow world view but for me, personally, this is what separates love from other things
If you say you love your homie but can never say I love you to them, do you really love your homie?

>>159092
I can't say "I love you" at all.
I've never been able to and I have no memory of ever doing it.
Your measuring stick only works for NORPs.

>>159095
But can you really say it's still love when it doesn't allow you to overcome that?
When it bubbles up such strong emotions that you blurt it out thoughtlessly, knowing full well how awkward it is but needing to make sure the other person understands you?
Not saying you need to go around saying it constantly, but if you can't see yourself saying it to someone, do you truly love them? or is it something else?

>>159092
What about when there are gradations of how much you're to express love?
¥ I may or may not love you.
¥ I love you, probably
¥ I love you, I guess
¥ I love you a bit
¥ I love you!
¥ I love you so much.
¥ L-Love... *hugs and cuddles*

>>159100
Well can you see yourself saying I love you in its purest form? if not then either it's not love or you're too verbose (simply unlovable...)

>>159090
I don't view love as inherently sexual, romantic, or erotic. I think children stop loving the world so they lose most interest in it, it bores them.

>>159102
>simply unlovable...
Shut the FUCK up

>>159152
>Shut the FUCK up
Simple, to the point. Statements like this people LOVE.

>>159162
Those things are only meaningful if they have enough build up to have an impact. Simple statements aren't actually exciting by themselves.

>>159170
That's true.