“Grief is the price we pay for love.” Queen Elizabeth
I came across this quote recently and I thought it had teeth.
Traditionally, when we think of love it’s hearts and valentine’s, sunset walks on the beach, intertwined arms sipping beverages, weddings and tears of joy.
When you think about love, what’s your first thought? Are you a OMG I’m in love sort of person? Or are you pragmatic? Perhaps pessimistic?
In reality, love is a multi faceted little emotion.
Imagine that when you’re in love, you get to roll a die every day:
One pip=euphoria
Two pips=anxiety
three pips=contentment
four pips=anger
five pips=selflessness
six pips=grief
Hasn’t the average person who admits to having loved feel all these emotions? Isn’t love a combination of good and bad?
Doesn’t loving someone bring on the whole spectrum of reactions?
If you truly love someone, doesn’t it mean that at some point you will grieve?
Is love a happily ever after fairy tale, or is it impossible for love to end happily?
As it’s write my blog Thursday, I ask you for your opinion:
Is it possible to love without grief?
If we had two dice, what would be six more love feelings that we could list?
Discuss…
Waking up on the Wrong Side of 50 
Interesting Post 🌸
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Thanks, I think…😉
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Yes
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💗
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At some point all love connections will end in some way. One person will leave either on their own, because of outside reasons or because of death. Therefore I believe all love has some sort of grieving involved assuming since you love them you will grieve when they are no longer with you.
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Exactly
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I can think of a few more: curiosity, disappointment, resignation. No matter the labels as individuals I think we grieve for more than just the obvious reason of an ending such as divorce or death. Didn’t someone say “love is complicated” in a movie or something? It sure is and perhaps cannot be defined so easily…
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Ooh..I knew if I lifted up to people smarter than me I’d get sides of the other die! Excellent emotions
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Well let’s not say smarter, perhaps just different perspectives 😉
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🤔
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Grief is part of life just as love is part of life. If you are lucky enough to love and be loved then yes at one point in time you will experience grief. Remember that famous line from “love Story” that said love meant never having to say you’re sorry? I hated that line because I thought that if you were in love it meant that at times you had to put others before you and say you were sorry. You might be disappointed or angry but you love the person so you suck it up and move on.
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Ryan O’Neil did deliver that line though. I vacillate as to how I feel about that line. I interpret it differently at different stages of my life
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When someone I love tells me that they are sorry they are recognizing that I have been hurt in some way and they are putting me before them.
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I get that. But sometimes I just think that being hurt is a part of love. I don’t have one clear thought on that quote. But it would make a great blog….
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That it would.
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This is such a timely post for me, currently my primary relationship is in shambles, but after 37 years of marriage I know there will be a new season, it will return, scared, and marked, maybe flowing in a new direction. This is how relationships go, how they change us, helping us to know ourselves in a way that is not possible alone. C
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Thinking of you. It’s never easy.💗💗
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Deb said resignation. Yes, that is something that pops up in my head too.
But there are many layers of love…
Like how you love your wayward teenager is different from how you love a friend, a spouse, a romantic interest…
Infatuation is sometimes (mis) interpreted as love.
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Infatuation and lust are totally taken as love. When they erode there’s nothing left
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Hey that’s really well said.
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One out of one hundred comments to be the a decent one…
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So much this! I think it is because of much of the negative stuff that goes along with love that I tend to be so wary of relationships (other than my kids and hubby). Too many of them have ended in pain and left so little good when they were gone that I struggle to risk it anymore. I do have some amazing relationships, but the negatives have marked me enough that I can’t see JUST the positives anymore. All of it is so intrinsically tied together in my head.
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I totally understand that, which is why I thought this quote was sort of brilliant. We forget that there are two sides to everything
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Light and shade. You can’t have one without the other. I quite enjoyed the lust, but then we had kids and got old and replaced it with watching TV.
I think the spots on the die would change over the years, but I’d still suggest double six – homicide. After thirty years you need to believe there’s a way out…
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😆I read something today about the prevalence of escape fantasies
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I presume that as Julia turns to look at me as I scratch inappropriately and shout at politicians on TV, that she is also thinking of murder. It’s less traumatic than divorce and the financial settlement is simpler.
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And the opportunity for a podcast or true crime book…
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You lost me at podcast but I caught up by True Crime. Yes, you need to capitalise on all these life experiences.
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Before someone else does
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Love is war and peace, entwined. It’s lust and romance, ridiculous and sublime, spontaneous and timeless. And it’s why we can’t stay away from the stuff.
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True story
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Yeah I think it is. I loved my Dad, because he was my dad but I didn’t like him, so my grieving process when he died…The grief itself wasn’t there.
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I understand that
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Is it possible to love without grief?
No I don’t think so, when you love you give a part of yourself to that person/animal, (yes I am including animals, I loved my pets more than my parents when they were alive, is that bad?) . So when you lose the object of your love for whatever reason it tears that part of you away. What we must understand and accept is that is you are going to give your heart you will at some point have it broken. That said that the fear of a broken heat should not stop us from loving, there is no greater gift than to love and be loved.
Well that’s what I think. 🙂
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I think you have very solid points
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Love without grief? My experience is “no.” If you choose to love, you can expect grief and pain at some place in your journey.
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Agreed
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Hope Fear Joy Optimism Commitment Comfort
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I don’t know about anyone else, but sometimes my relationship goes through all six casts of the die in a day. If there were two…security, disappointments, jealousy, troubled, infatuated, resigned
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I think you are correct…every relationship has varied emotions toed to it
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Always grief…if not now, then later.
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True
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I saw that quote in a book last night and I was like, where did I just see that?? It was here, lol. The book did not give the author of the quote. Lately my experience of love has been way too much grief and tiny bits of good stuff.
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Unfortunately life sucks sometimes
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I think love always leads to grief in one way or another. Not just the intense grief of divorce or death, but even the “lesser” feelings of grief experienced by disappointment or disillusionment.
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Agreed
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Impossible to love without loss or sadness, for they are on the same spectrum of human clinging… and the human condition is essentially ‘suffering’ (paraphrasing Buddha)
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Excellent point!
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Love is all things at once.
Therefore love is absolutely grief.
But grief is healthy and normal and without love there would be no grief.
I may be going in circles here…
Great post, girl! ❤
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💗💗💗😗
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