Love [Continued & Revisited]
Love
Circa 22:34 03 Mag 2024
Is there ever a reason not to tell someone you love them?
This is not rhetorical. I really do wonder.
I suppose I wonder everytime I stop myself from telling someone I love them. That would suggest I've found a reason on several occasions, so I have my answer.
Is it good enough, is what I mean to ask, I guess.
I question my own judgement here.
Is there ever a reason good enough?
Good enough for who?
Love was revisited the night of the 10th into the 11th. The following was derived.
Love [To be Revisited]
11 Mag 2024 01:08:20
I don't want anything from you— not even your love.
Love is an offer; not a demand, not a request.
Many thoughts and comments preceded this derivation. In conversation.
11:51 10 Mag 2024
I’m trying to get clear again on when I tell someone I love them and why.
11:52
I’m currently in a place of If I tell someone I love them, what are their expectations for that word?
Which doesn’t quite make sense we all have slightly different understandings of love they’re hardly ever precise matches so I can’t move my own understanding to match someone else’s.
But I think I then hold myself to some standard or promise that doesn’t exist.
11:55
I realise as I type though I’m not responsible for making sure my definitions and understandings are precisely congruent with someone else’s and their meanings are no more valid.
And love isn’t bound to time or necessarily unconditional.
11 Mag 2024 12:29
Knowing how deep and ardent those feelings were in the past and how genuinely beautiful the relationships were when I was really in them or present in those feelings I feel a strangeness about the possibility of not having those feelings anymore
Especially if I haven’t spoken to that person in a while.
12:31
And then I think if ever they became aware my feelings have changed would they think it would’ve been better to not have been told I loved them at all even when I did?
12:32
I suppose I’m getting at the kind of question, do people only want to be told they are loved if they believe it’ll last forever?
And do they only want to be told they are loved if they’ll be loved in a precise kind of way?
12:35
The more I say the more I realise I’m trying to work out for people their propensity to receive love and what kind of love they’re willing to receive and that really has nothing to do with me.
12:36
I may be circling around to the fact that if telling someone I love them brings forth an incompatibility then it is what it is and that was going to come forward anyhow.
12:48
I guess the issue is I’m talking about love just as love.
It exists entirely outside of any distinct cultural or social constructs.
Humans would experience emotions and attachments to each other even if modern society did not exist and there was no such thing as marriage, monogamous relationships, dating, etc.
It’s just the nature of living beings.
So I’m talking about love entirely beyond that but I suppose a lot of people are usually discussing it through specific lenses.
Like the lens of a monogamous romantic relationship.
Then it does suggest a particular significance and set of expectations.
But I don’t know I disagree even then.
If I were in a monogamous romantic relationship and I told someone I loved them, that’s still me just having a real conversation with you just as one being to another.
I’m not intending to zoom into a specific context and now set that on some kind of timeline.
Because loving you does not suggest I am confident I would like you as a monogamous partner for marriage or anything else it’s usually associated with.
Love in itself is just love.
And then you can choose to pair it with other things and other promises.
If it makes sense to do so.
12:55
But I think for other people they intrinsically link love to these very specific grounded on Earth structures or practices and rituals specific to their familiar cultures and societies.
12:58
I’ve had pushback from people who would maybe fall into this category [this category being people who would describe our relationship as platonic].
But, I don't know, I think some of them thought I see them as distinctly romantic simply because of the way I talk or express myself.
Like I think people often make a thing of when I tell them I love them and it’s regularly assumed I’m talking about a distinctly romantic crush or wanting to “date” them or something else I’m not really sure.
It throws me off every time I don’t really understand it.
But I’ve also then just accepted that as an incompatibility.
Just in ways of going about life and understanding life and connection and being.
01:03
I feel like something’s clicking.
01:05
Maybe the issue is people think love has to be reciprocated.
01:06
Or every time it’s expressed they think it’s because the other person wants something from them or is expecting them to reciprocate.
So receiving love almost feels like a demand to offer love.
01:08:20
I don't want anything from you— not even your love.
Love is an offer; not a demand, not a request.
I love you. I. I am the subject. I love you. You are the recipient. That is all.
I love you. I have love for you. I am in a state of love consequent of you. That is all. I simply offer you the truth.
That said, it is true I do not want anything from you solely because of love. This includes not requiring you to bear unease or bear witness to my love simply because it exists. The only issue now is I usually won't know of your discomfort with love until after it has been expressed. But very well. I can refrain and mind expressions from then on.
My original question perhaps should have been what is the reason to tell someone you love them, if simply loving them is not enough.
Enough for who?
23:11:11 8 Ago 2024