<p>ok so you're thinking 'what a stupid question'</p>
<p>but
isn't love just basically selfish in the first place. say you love a girl. and you feel like you'd do anything for her. but is it truly love? you only love her because she makes you happy. if she stopped doing this, then the 'love' would fade away. actually you are just using her to meet your own needs. </p>
<p>say you take her to dinner because you know she'd like it. but isn't the reason you're taking her to dinner actually so that she will be happy and consequently be nicer/more pleasant to you? so even though you think you're being kind and generous, in the end, everything you do for her ultimately benefits you. </p>
<p>if you bought her a diamond necklace, but you could never see her reaction, never hear her words of thanks or signs of appreciation, would you still do it? i doubt it. because you don't get anything out of it yourself.</p>
<p>if all of a sudden she cheated on you 50 times and set your house on fire and tried to kill you, would you still love her? no, you wouldn't, and you'd say that it was because 'she's not the woman i fell in love with. she's a stranger to me'. but she is the same woman. she's just not so nice to you anymore. whatever happened to loving unconditionally? but, she's not benefitting you anymore so you drop her.</p>
<p>maybe this is why i find the idea of a loving god so hard to understand. i mean who can give and give and not expect anything back? everything we do, we do it for ourselves no matter how much we try to deny it. this world is just basically people using eachother, and the people who are especially good at it we call winners. </p>
<p>True love is the opposite of selfish. Consider the Greek word agape, which means unconditional, self-sacrificing, thoughtful love. You love to make the other person happy, despite how you feel. Selfish love isn't the kind that lasts.</p>
<p>If it's real love, then yes, even if she did something awful to hurt you, on some level, you would still love her (although you may want to kill her or at least never see her again). You'd still love the person she used to be, before you went psycho on you.</p>
<p>I feel a little sorry for you. Have you never experienced love? How do you feel about your parents? How do you think your parents feel about you? I hope you experience real love someday.</p>
<p>Edited to add: God is beyond human understanding.</p>
<p>but isn't self sacrifice totally against who we are? because everyone admits that people are basically selfish, right? </p>
<p>there are the few instances when people actually sacrifice their own lives for others. like for example, a mom pushes her kid out of the way of speeding car and dies in the kids place. but doesn't she do it so that she won't have to live with guilt? or becuase she's so attached to the kid that she can't imagine her life without the kid anyway? or because its evolution and she's just trying to ensure the survival of her genes?
and isn't the act of creating a kid in the first place selfish? because she's bringing a kid into the world to make her happy, not for the kid. if she was thinkng about the kid she wouldn't have let herself bring another person into a world of suffering. </p>
<p>i read a book on it before. basically the whole idea was that the reason why this world isn't pure hell is because of guilt, not love. guilt is what motivates people.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>so do you think love really exists or not?</p>
</blockquote>
<br>
<p>No. People seek out human relationships for what they get out of them (emotional support, intelligent conversation, a target of pity or moral goodwill...), not for the benefit of the other person. It's like that line from The Stranger where the guy's like "the old ladies were so absorbed in their thoughts they'd completely forgotten about the dead woman in front of them." You are not a person so much as a set of interactions. You don't matter to people; you only matter to them as you relate to them.</p>
<p>The only thing humans have that somewhat resembles caring is empathy. Which basically means they hear you talking about your situation and then they remember a time when they were in a similar situation, and then they feel your pain. But that means they've substituted themselves for you; it's their head glued to your body. So they still don't care about you, just their second incarnation.</p>
<p>...So basically, exactly what you said. Except stated in more complicated terms.</p>
<p>I disagree with your whole worldview. That's a really sad way to look at life. I try not to act selfishly, but to love every day. And I almost never feel guilty, except when I fail at the ideals I set for myself.</p>
<p>Au contraire, love is a pure emotion of selflessness. It is the giving of oneself to another, both the status of being in love and the act of making love. You are happy because she is happy. She is happy because you are happy. It is a mutual feeling.</p>
<p>Love can't blossom without happiness to sew the seeds. It's not something that just happens. You can't just love a human being unconditionally. It's very different from the love one has for God.</p>
<p>yeah, but the reason you want her to be happy is because it makes you happy.</p>
<p>if her being happy made you feel like you were being run over by a truck i doubt you would want her to keep being happy. no, you want her to be happy because you benefit from it. if you had no benefit from it, you probably couldn't care less.</p>
<p>everyone should be a hedonist. because thats kind of like the most you can get out of life. i think the problem is that people repress themselves too much, you know? so that's why they start wars and stuff. like if people got laid more often then they wouldn't even be thinking about these things (sorry to be so crude)</p>
<p>ok truthfully though i still am kind of an optimist. so i'm only being 1/2 serious...</p>
<p>I used to not believe in the saying "if you really love someone but he doesn't love you back, you'll let him go [or let him let you go] if you truly loved him." Years after the break up, I do. I'm surprised I still have feelings for him, but I'd be perfectly fine even if he were with someone else.</p>