"Married people constantly have to find ways of expressing their love for each other, because unexpressed love is of less use than a dead fox. The idea of love as created in our brain can give some pleasure to us individually, but to no one else. It rather harms our beloved. Who enjoys being shown the blueprit of a house without any means of building it?"

"Love that can't be expressed isn't love. It should be called by another name. It can probably be called selfish love, which people should clearly distinguish from love for another person. These two loves often can't be separated, like the color of ocean and sky at the horizon; but although it is so at the horizon, it shouldn't be so at the shoals nearest the shore."

- Seikan Hasegawa (1945- ), Essays on Marriage, p.70

I just found this thread, will read through the rest momentarily, but wanted to mention how this quote struck me. I think it's based on outward observation of the dynamic expectations within just about any close relationship between two people, particularly romantic couples and parents/children. Partly I think it come from watching owners and their pets. We give treats to our pets for good behavior, and (when we are emotionally healthy individuals) we give unabusive negative reinforcement to them when they display a behavior that we find irritating or hurtful. Yet often times, in our human relationships, we are too afraid of each other to express how we feel toward each other, and even more often, we don't have the knowledge of how to do that without overly or underly valuing each other.

I agree that people should express love in loving relationships! But I don't believe they have to at all times or else all the sudden they won't be lovable or loved anymore by those who love them (internally or externally). To me, that's not love, either internal or external, to have that expectation forced onto one or both people in a close relationship. At best, it has to be chosen by the lover to express the love. And that's if they were raised in or otherwise exposed to an affection-showing environment in the first place. Some just weren't. Their love is internal because they've never been shown how to express themselves emotionally/outwardly/verbally.

Yet even in that, it's tricky business. Because some do seriously abuse this principle. In some cases, they can't admit that they really don't love someone. In other cases, they know they don't love someone, but they are further abusive of the word love, because they'll say they love that person yet never bother to act like it, and basically string that person along for ages on end... Both of which I find perverted and sick. Yet even these have to be forgivable. I do believe that most of the time, it's the first reason for this: they just don't know how. Somehow, the Golden Rule hasn't clicked in their brains - or else they just don't mind not having affection thrown at them left and right, and so they assume that others shouldn't want it either.

Lately, I've been dealing with the question, "Should people have to ask for affectionate actions that show the love of others to them? Or should they not have to worry about that in the first place, because loving people will love them soooo much that of course, they'll do these great things to show their love?"

To be honest, I'm just coming to a place where I'm realizing that some people just have to be asked for loving actions to come out of them, because otherwise, they have no idea what you want from them in the first place. Getting mad at them just because they didn't give you what you wanted (or said no when you asked) has never helped anyone, it only puts others on the spot, and it hurts you. Asking them for those loving actions to be done, in some cases, is the only way those people will ever learn how to be eternally affectionate.

Hmm... To summarize: "Let others act like jerks, you can choose to act like Love, like God, because you are His Children." I like that

This is a marvelous book I just found yesterday and started reading smack-dab in the center of it.

Loving is a skill at which over the years we become more adept.



My first thought about this is why not ask? But probably not 'in general' like saying "why can't you be more loving?" Maybe more specificly like, "please give me a hug, I really need a hug."

The author of these essays says a partner should train to recognize expressions of love even in forms that are humble and poor.

"Unexpressed love is not love, and blindness to love even when it is imperfectly expressed is also not love. To increase our married love we should try to express our love as concretely as we can, and at once we should try to see our love as spiritually as we can in the forms [material forms]." - ibid, p. 73

Generally, I don't tend to ask people for things they aren't already giving me because my assumption is that if they really, really wanted to and had the time, they'd already be doing those things. For instance, when I've had a crush on a guy/man (for more than a few months and I'm sure I'm serious about my feelings of love for him) in the past, it's like I've had to STOP MYSELF left and right just to keep from smothering the poor thing! I found myself thinking about him continually, or just about that anyway. Which always felt a little odd, and was definitely inconvenient, as it made it hard to focus on other important things (not other people though), but I've been told that I'm just very sensitive to people, etc., so I figure that's why. Yet isn't it still true that even people who just don't happen to get bit that hard by the "love bug" still, well, do get "bit" by it somewhat? Meaning that, if someone really, seriously loves someone, won't they just want already to do at least the most common things that people do (as well as come up with a few creative, unique ways too) to show their love for that person?



Well, I agree with that somewhat, but it's hard to see love when it's not being shown concretely, in ways that can be easily recognized as someone at least making the commonly agreed upon effort (for instance, a child bringing Valentine cards to school - it's commonly agreed in the community that this shows love).

When it's not being shown at least in those ways, much less in other creative and concrete ways, all I can say is how it comes across to me: the person doesn't really, really love or want me - especially when they turn around and do all those things for others who they also say they love (or who they even say they love less than me). I find myself thinking, "Erm, ooookkkk... If you say so..." and I find myself having to choose to believe that they love me, particularly if they aren't vested in me in some other way (hoping to gain some "reward," such as marriage, or even just housework done, or whatever), and they're just honestly hanging around me when they do -- because they want to.

I realize that expressing what I want is an important part of all close relationships. But I'm just asking, "Isn't there a point in time when a person just shouldn't have to ask for certain things? Where it's just commonly understood that those are ways to show affection? Also, if there's a question of whether or not those things would be well received, then shouldn't the one who wants to express their love simply be the ones to ask for the related desires of the person who is the object of their affection?

I guess what I'm saying is that all I know is this: when I'm hog wild "in affection for" someone else, I want to show it concretely, and I don't have to be asked by them to show it to them. To me, that's what being a lover is. It's more than being a loving person, as well. It's letting that person be the object of my love, and finding appropriate ways to show it. To me, that's being honest and authentic, with my own heart and with them. I do agree that love that goes unexpressed is selfish at best. Because there are selfish reasons for not expressing it. But I think it's important that if people love each other, they ask each other what ways the other person wants to be shown love.

I don't think people should always have to ask "Will you do this and thus for me that shows me love?" Sometimes, yes. Such as prayer requests. And with hugs, that's a personal space issue, so of course you have to ask first, especially when it's a first-hug (or a first kiss, though really, that shouldn't be a last minute discussion). I think that sometimes, it's just obvious what can be done, and really, when you're genuinely fascinated by someone, you don't have to go looking for ways - they just present themselves to you and, when you know it's alright with them, you go for it. Because love in your heart just kind of makes you do that. It's all about having a healthy connection from your heart, through your brain, to your hands and feet.

I know that not all forms of showing love can be "guessed." I know that, especially in romantic situations, men tend to worry about "how do I do this right?" All I can say to that is that the best way to find out is to just decide what you want to do (aside from what a woman might want you to do) and then ask that woman you love, first of all, if it's alright if you do that thing that you want to do, and then ask her if there's anything else she'd like you to do that she'll take as "I Love you."

Also, I personally find it tacky if a man acts like he's thinking, "Well, I did such and such for my ex, and that seemed to work for her" and then expects the I, the next woman who came into his life is supposed to like the same things! Obvious might be obvious, but some things are less than obvious. For instance, a Valentine card is one thing, but chocolates and flowers are something else. Cards don't make a woman fat, and they don't die. I personally care about this, yet some women don't. You see what I mean?

So, it's best to know what kind of lover you are to begin with, but it's also best to ask a woman whether that's ok with her, and also ask her how she wants to be shown love, instead of making her always be the one to come to you and ask you for everything. To me that feels like a woman is being asked to be way too controlling in the relationship, always nagging for what she wants with "requests," while a man is taking on no responsibility for his end of it at all. I just think it should be both her asking him for things sometimes, but also a lot of times his asking her for what she wants as well. At least that's how I look at it. Perhaps my thinking is messed up here, I have no idea. I'm still single! Heh!

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and , if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it...."

- Henry David Thoreau, Walden

" Men are born soft and supple
dead, they are stiff and hard.
Plants are born tender and pliant,
dead, they are brittle and dry.

Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible
is a disciple of death.
Whoever is soft and yielding
is a disciple of life.

The hard and stiff will be broken.
The soft and supple will prevail."

- Lao-tzu, translation by Stephen Mitchell

"By meditating n our partner's death, we probably regret most not giving enough effort to making our partner happy and to causing less suffering. Think about our partner's reasonable wish, hope, and dream that couldn't be attained. Think about our partner's reasonable pain, agony, and gloom caused directly or indirectly by living married life. How much did we satisfy our partner and how much make our partner unnecessarily cry? A large part of married love arises when we recognize how incapable we are of making our partner happy, especially how in capable we are of controlling our ego, for most of the misery we cause our partner could be avoided by controlling our ego."

- Seikan Hasegawa, Essays on Marriage, p.75-76

"Love all God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprendhend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love."

- FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY (1821-1881), Russian novelist, from The Brothers Karamazov