I really can’t get past writing about love…
Never fall in love with something that won’t love you back.
Mary Kay Andrews The Homewreckers
Last week, and at least one other week, we talked about how the word LOVE has become overused. We sort of fixated on whether we should be able to love important people in our lives, and love baked goods. all with the same intensity.
So without getting into the whole “in love” vs “loving” debate, should we love something that won’t love you back?
Ever been in love with someone from afar; an unrequited situation? Does being in love with someone who doesn’t love you back, or doesn’t know you exist, help you out in the long run? Does it make you feel better? Does it get you to a better place? Even think about crushes: did my love of David Cassidy when I was in third grade make it harder to appreciate real people in front of me?
I know. Some of you are going to say that you can’t help who you love. But is that true? Or in that case, can you love someone who doesn’t really know you exist? One of my wise friends says that love is reciprocal: love only exists if the two things are in love with one another. In the context of the above quote, this statement seems pretty accurate…
Which leads us to:
Inanimate objects.
In the case of the book, the quote refers to a house that a contractor “loves”. Her astute former father in law reasons that loving this house, this inanimate object will end up torturing her. She’ll pour too much money into it, she’ll spend too much time with it, she will fixate on the details, and in the end, it really won’t give her anything back. It will empty her with no ability to replenish.
Does loving something that doesn’t love you back leave you empty?
Do shoes or a movie or a chair really deserve your love, as it can’t reciprocate?
Discuss:
Waking up on the Wrong Side of 50 
I totally relate to being in love with David Cassidy. When I was in college, I was in love with someone who liked me. It put me in a less confident, helpless feeling position. I think we use the word love too often especially for inanimate objects.
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Exactly. I’ve never had an unrequited love thing that worked for me
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If it’s with a person, it’s humiliating. If it’s with an object it’s unsatisfying.
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Exactly. But this quote summed it up so well
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But if it’s a love from afar —especially if they don’t know you exist — is it truly love? I’d call it infatuation. And yes, I’ve been in that position before, and no, it didn’t help in the least. When I finally made contact with her for the first time since elementary school and talked about how much I’d liked her back then, she didn’t even remember me. That did the opposite of help!
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Exactly! While maybe we can’t help those feelings, we have to be aware of their power..like fixation or obsession
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Yes, we accept whatever we call the warm fuzzy feelings, but there are deeper and more severe factors in play when you get into obsessive behavior. Someone who is obsessively fixated on a person will likely be very unaware that theirs is not normal behavior
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👍👍
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Love can fill you, love can empty you. It’s an eternal reaction like closing your eyes when something is flying towards your face. Every up and down makes your heart stronger. Love is a word that comes too easily to many. I see nothing wrong with that.
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As long as its actually love, with meaning behind it I’m ok with it
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Pets deserve all the love that they return to you.
You never forget your first love.
Teen love goes on forever, long after the person is forgotten.
Songs, poems, movies about love are normally the most popular.
We do have this obsession with love. But no emotion, no feeling is spoken about with such reverence, while overusing the word at the same time.
I love my wife, but I will always have a special place in my heart for Olivia DeHaviland and one girl who I will never understand why I never called.
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We all have that one person…
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Whether it’s a person or inanimate object it seems rather fruitless to love anything that doesn’t have the interest or capacity to acknowledge your existence. Yet we do it with people- mine was Davy Jones of the Monkees, and you know I overuse the word love all the time in general. Do we really love those people we can’t have- probably love is not accurate there either. Maybe admire or seek out what we perceive as an ideal, even though it’s never going to happen. I just Googled love and by the definitions I found it seems that *love* is being recognized to be both “deep affection”, but also “interest and pleasure in something” with the operative part being *thing* not one. If our major lexicon has now embraced using love in multiple ways perhaps there is no longer a debate about what we can, or cannot love?
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Oooh…throwing a question at me…I would counter with, just because everyone does it should it be a rule…like adding irregardless to the dictionary. I’m going to overthink this a bit…
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No, please do not even think about irregardless as part of any normal conversation or dictionary addition. I feel deep loathing when I hear that word, but by all means, overthink to your hearts content on everything else 😉
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😂
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When you experience unrequited love, is it love? Love should be mutual, in my view. It should make both parties feel the joy of love, not leave one feeling frantically wondering whether the love will come.
Simultaneously, one should never be made to feel bad to have expressed love. Even if the love is unrequited, it’s still a gift.
My two cents.
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I agree that someone shouldn’t be made to feel bad, however…I once had a guy who didn’t quite get that I wasn’t into him…and it’s really hard to say to someone that you appreciate how they feel but it’s not the same. He thought he could make me love him, and I had to be tough about it
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I overuse the word. All the time. And then some. But I once had a teacher shame me for saying I loved a book, while describing it to a fellow student. Teacher said, “we can love people or pets, but not books or places or other non-living things.” Or something to that effect. And because I was a somewhat difficult child, at least in her class, I began loving EVERYTHING. It’s a hard habit to break.
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I think we all do it to a certain extent
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I was in love with someone for years who I’m pretty sure didn’t love me back in that way. We were very close friends and I chose not to say anything because I didn’t want to ruin the friendship. I don’t think the love was diminished because it was one way.
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That sounds reasonable
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I don’t think we can really love people we don’t even know. I agree that celebrity worship is infatuation. But if you know someone well, love them, and they don’t love you back, it doesn’t negate your feeling. It causes a lot of pain, though, so we wind up shutting it off for our sanity. There are certainly limitations to our vocabulary in English. Maybe other languages have different words for our intense feelings towards inanimate things like houses and foods and sunsets.
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I read a book recently,about another country which I now don’t remember, but the gist was how they didn’t understand Americans loving so many things…
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Loving something or someone is not the same as being in love, of course. Two different processes. You can love someone or something without reciprocation being necessary. Being in love works rather differently…
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Yeah…it’s a tricky distinction
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I do think we use the word “love” too much, but I suppose it has many meanings. Personally, the work that bothers me the most when used improperly is “obsessed.” Now everyone is “obsessed” with whatever they happen to enjoy, like, say…cheesecake. That’s not what obsessed means, unless you eat cheesecake for every meal and spend your every waking hour researching it’s origins, hunting down new recipes, etc.
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Excellent point.
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It was Shaun Cassidy for me. 🙂 Thinking about loving something or someone who doesn’t love you back, I believe you can feel strongly about “things” that can’t give you anything in return. Is it love? Unlikely. But with people, I do believe you can love without being loved back. The best example I can think of is a child who loves their absentee parent. A parent who truly doesn’t show love, and possibly doesn’t give two craps about their child…but that child feels love for him/her regardless. These posts definitely have me thinking a lot more about the use of love and the meaning behind it.
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The absentee parent thing is something I hadn’t considered….hmmm
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