Fading Love

Fading love grows vicious tentacles That grab and suction onto Rigid conditions from a sea of rich choices To glut its voracious appetite for overbearance. The beast, camouflaged in its natural domain, Silently stretches its long, meddlesome arms Into the tightest crevices of trust and confidentiality To uncover new requisites of personal admiration. When threatened, love immediately jets aback Retreating rapidly to safety Amid a cloud of inky deceit Safe to ponder new strategies for its risky carelessness. With no skeletal frame to contain its form, Fading love hides from time to time In slits inaccessible to those with backbone Who dare to release its captured demands of prey. Highly intelligent, the creature learns To play against those who do not conform With the changes resulting from rules Formulated in its independent behavior. Crushed in the beak of faded love While being held in the poisonous embrace of its eight arms, A struggling, once-held attribute becomes a meal That fails to escape to freedom.

What Is the Definition of Love?

Sonnet XLIII, from the Portuguese. Elizabeth Barrett Browning - 1806-1861 How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. I love thee to the level of everyday's Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints, -I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life! - and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death. This poem is one of the most quoted popular writings on the theme of love. "Counting the ways" of love can be very difficult since the subject covers a vast ground of related emotion. In a similar fashion, philosopher Richard Garlikov would ask lovers if they can distinguish differences between love and other feelings that may be confused with it. Garlikov wonders, "If you are looking for love, would you recognize it if you found it?" Here are some questions to consider:

Can you tell the difference between love and infatuation? Between love and attraction? Between love and sexual desire? Between love and friendship? Between sex and intimacy? Between a good relationship and one that is only pleasurable?

Infatuation may be defined as "the state of being completely carried away by unreasoned passion or love; addictive love." Infatuation is usually intense but short-lived passion or admiration for someone. In fact, infatuation is not usually mutual. When infatuated, people are thrilled, but not happy, wanting to trust, yet suspicious. Most infatuation relationships have a high degree of sexual charge around them. In the human body dopamine, norepinephrine, phenylethalimine, and oxytocin together sometimes override the brain activity that governs logic. When the chemical flood dries up, the relationship either moves into a loving romantic one or there is disillusionment, and the relationship ends.

Attraction is "a force acting between two people that tends to draw them together and resist their separation." The attraction may lead to friendships and romantic relationships. To determine attraction, people must take personality and situation into account. Active assortment refers to direct effects on choosing someone similar as one's self in mating preferences. The data shows that there is a greater effect on political and religious attitudes than on personality traits.

Sexual desire refers to "libido as the free creative—or psychic—energy an individual has to put toward personal development or individuation." Natalie Angier describes sexual desire in this manner. " It is a near-universal experience, the invisible clause on one’s birth certificate stipulating that one will, upon reaching maturity, feel the urge to engage in activities often associated with the issuance of more birth certificates." With recent studies reporting that approximately 36% of women have low libidos, some researcher believe that low sexual desire is hard-wired into women through evolution.

Friendship connotes a relationship which involves mutual knowledge, esteem, and affection and respect along with a degree of rendering service to friends in times of need or crisis. It is a cooperative or supportive behavior. In a comparison of personal relationships, friendship, often involving trust that someone will not harm a friend, is considered to be closer than mere association. The Christian Gospels state that Jesus Christ declared, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." (John 15:13). According to a 2006 study documented in the journal the American Sociological Review, Americans are thought to be suffering a loss in the quality and quantity of close friendships since at least 1985. 25% of Americans have no close confidants, and the average total number of confidants per citizen has dropped from four to two.

Intimacy refers to the feeling of being in a closely personal association and belonging together. Genuine intimacy in human relationships requires dialogue, transparency, vulnerability, and reciprocity. In anthropological research, intimacy is considered the product of a successful seduction, a process of rapport building that enables parties to confidently disclose previously hidden thoughts and feelings. Intimate conversations become the basis for 'confidences' (secret knowledge) that bind people together. ( Moore, M., 1985, "Nonverbal Courtship Patterns in Women: Contact and Consequences") There are two distinguished forms of intimacy: emotional and physical.

Pleasure is difficult to define because the experience differs from individual to individual. It is "a commonly conceptualized as a positive experience, happiness, entertainment, enjoyment, ecstasy, and euphoria." Whether derived from eating, exercise, service, music, recognition, or any other stimulus, it is often seen as a sensation that creates the illusion of sexual experience. Epicurus and his followers defined the highest pleasure as the absence of suffering, and pleasure itself as "freedom from pain in the body and freedom from turmoil in the soul." Utilitarianism and Hedonism are philosophies that attempt to increase to the maximum the amount of pleasure and minimize the amount of suffering. The actual pleasure center of the brain is the set of brain structures theorized to produce great pleasure when stimulated electrically.

Sorting out real love from all of these similar states and feelings is not an easy task. And, certainly, real love involves some combination of the concepts defined above. Yet, many people seek and find one of these traits and believe they possess all they need to survive through the trials of a loving relationship. The ability to identify infatuation, friendship, and so forth may better define the state of existence of which they have become a part. Perhaps these paragraphs will uncover some gems in the intriguing territory of love.

“Love is not about finding the right person, but creating a right relationship. It's not about how much love you have in the beginning but how much love you build till the end.” -- Unknown

Your Image of Me

Your Image of Me

I know your image of me is what you hoped I’d be.

I never meant to hurt a heart that put such hope in me.

I confess the wrong of living days you are not in mind,

And admit such times will come when I am still unkind.

My worst faults are deep, cold veins of the blackest coal.

To extract them now would carve open wounds into my soul.

So I walk my walk with haunting ghosts of old memories.

I conjure them to understand the pieces of what used to be.

There is a saint to grant all grace you most dearly deserve,

A perfect soul to seek and praise all things he does observe.

With angelic arms he wraps you in a dream caress

As you lay your head upon his sinless pious chest.

His words are balms that soothe and heal life’s deepest scars.

His hands frame your moon-lit face shining among the stars.

But heavenly powers are means of love I cannot possess.

So, defective as I am in form, I must confess.

I may never reach the marks that you have planned for me.

My imperfect love shows stains for all the world to see.

Alone in a Crowd

I'm alone in the midst of a crowd Waiting for you to deliver me From the heart of the swarming mass To set sail in your calm blue sea. I feel the gentle swell of warm new waves That form from your sweet caress And smell the sunshine within your hair That falls lightly upon my chest. Feel moist sweat roll in tiny beads As fiery blood heats our hearts to flame We swim in the tides of our love Until you longingly call my name. But my mind then returns from the dream And my eyes once more scan the large throng. I search for the smooth lovely face I just kissed in my dreams for so long. I'm so alone in the midst of a crowd. With no hope you'll deliver me. All the while I had hoped for a love I was trapped in my cold reality.