Do you believe love exists or is it just mental hallucination?

[iwanttodie019]

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[AngelTear]

"Love" exists emotionally as in affection, compassion, etc
The feeling is there for most of us I think

However, personally, I do not think anyone is truly capable of unconditional love
There will forever be conditions you must adhere to if someone "loves" you no matter how secure it seems
And if you can no longer meet those conditions they don't love you anymore but this isn't always the case
People can just stop loving you/falling out of love with you

It happened to me with my parents, they just stopped caring as much the older I got
I also cannot feel or perceive affection from other people no matter what they do to make me feel loved
But tbh no one really tries to make me feel loved
So take what I say with a grain of salt

 

[Forever Sleep]

I think love exists in the mind- preferably multiple people's minds- reciprocated between them. I don't see how it exists outside of a living being though. Not as a separate entity. I guess love is a little like gravity except, more discrimatory. It needs sentient beings to be created but, it doesn't necessarily materialise when sentient beings are near one another.

I suppose what's weirder are the various forms of love. I think you can love friends and family members or pets in a different way to a romantic partner. I feel sure I went through limerent crushes- which shared commonalities with love but were more crazy and, not entirely based on real life! We'll even say we 'love' objects or activities that we feel a deep connection to. But- it's a feeling. Feelings feel real- even if we can't necessarily see them.

What's maybe more troubling is the levels of love we are capable or, incapable of. I'm not sure everyone loves in the same way or, to the same extent. For all sorts of reasons. Some people just seem colder. Some have been hurt so, seemingly become more closed off- to protect themselves.

Plus, I think there is selfish love and, selfless love. When we want to love, how much of it is about us wanting to love that other being versus how much we want them to love us? I think that gets reflected in the way we treat one another too.

 

[Macedonian1987]

Love exists... but not in this world. That's what I think.

 

[threeeyedfawn]

Love is a chemical but can also be a choice

 

[daleke]

love is a mental hallucination in the same sense that an image is just bundles of meat in a liquid suspension firing little pieces of electricity when light hits a funny flesh string. these things are real to us, even if by some other frame of reference they aren't. i feel like over-intellectualizing experiences like love, joy, etc. detract from the actual experience. even if love doesn't seem real to me, as an outside observer, i can respect that illusions (from my point of view) are real and meaningful to the person experiencing them, especially if they're shared.

i think this is an interesting question, kind of akin to mary's room? but you could also ask whether people who think they are experiencing love are necessarily experiencing it.

 

[L1feless]

i don't think something like "love" exists, it's all made up. at least i've never felt it.

 

[Liebestod]

It is nothing but a chemical reaction created by our brains like any other emotion. It is cruel.

 

[Chiyumine]

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If love existed, we wouldn't be here, let alone I.

 

[WhatCouldHaveBeen32]

I think it does but for me, what I feel when I do feel love, it is more of looking up to people, or being happy that they got a choice that I could never have, that they fought against something that I failed to fight or was too scared at the time.

I appreciate them and for that moment I do feel like I love, not because of how they look or how they talk but because of what they say. I always said that words don't matter where they are from as long as their intention is right and I still believe that.

But I don't show this to anyone, I feel it and put it away. I can't let life dictate my choices more than it already has because thinking about it, it's probably a chemical reaction of some kind, something that is outside of my control.

I know that and I wish that I didn't because I find myself stopping from doing anything that brings joy because I hate lies and my brain lying to me with chemicals is the biggest lie of all.

 

[Quantum_Marten0302]

It is nothing but a chemical reaction created by our brains like any other emotion. It is cruel.

what is cruel about it?

 

[FadingSnowFake]

It exists, and it hurts.

 

[Shiitake]

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Everything is "mental hallucinations"
its a naive way to view it, mental hallucinations dictate our life,
love is real, and mental hallucinations are real.
I've come to learn, love serves a purpose, the only 2 times i have loved someone, i was used as a mental crutch to make them happy again, then they left (understandable and im not complaining) ive done the same to others.

 

[fallingbehind]

You can have love for friends, if you have them. I think familial "love" is inherently forced and I think "romantic" love is a psyop.

 

[copioushopelessness]

What I thought was love for years was just a delusion and trauma bond. Being abused then love bombed into submission. I realized I loved the person before them.. or at least cared much more. By then my life had been ruined and the last person gave up on me. I think love is only real when it's reciprocated in a healthy realistic way. It's a choice. I think a lot of people idealize love without building the connection it takes to make it work. Don't be like me, don't ruin your life over a delusion. See things for what they really are.
The person who claimed to love me is why I'm mentally and physically declining. I ended up with literal brain damage.
What I wanted to be love turned out to be a hate stronger than I ever thought possible.
A feeling isn't enough as bad as that sounds. It also needs to support you. I chased a feeling when I should've stuck with who took care of me. Routine and comfort is so much more important than passion. People hurt eachother over passion.

 

[Hime]

There's a lot of ways to define love, but most of the time... Yes, it is very real and it does exist. I think that's why it hurts so much, why it causes pain to so many. If we all had that love and affection, it would make waking up every morning just a little bit easier. Our biology just can't handle loneliness or isolation, we need companionship in some way.

 

[woofwag]

Everything is a mental hallucination, everything is just atoms and particles falling in love with one another to make chemical reactions and systems of functioning. I think it's a bit naive to deny the existence of love, as the definition of what it is is so broad. Even if you personally don't feel love for anything or feel like anything loves you, how can you deny the validity of someone else experiencing that? I love someone so much that we fused. We both formed multiple replicas of each other in our brains. What a magic thing to have these two fucked up clusters of pain and sorrow and confusion come together to find comfort in the other. And not just to find comfort, but to multiply ourselves. We hurt each other so much, and it still couldn't destroy our love. Like a moth to a light. And who's to say moths don't fall in love with lights anyway? Humans are such stupid creatures. We know so little of the world and yet pretend to have it all figured out, when really, we're just trying to feel in control. So yeah, love is real. Don't let your apathy for the world deny you the experience of feeling it. Even if it hurts.