There are many similarities that I have found between this week’s
readings and last week’s readings. In the
video for Love- you’re doing it wrong, the speaker says that “Love is the
desire to be desired.” In last week’s
reading of the Grant Study, George Vaillant claims that “reaction formation
allows us to care for someone else when we wish to be cared for ourselves.” These two quotes speak very loud and clearly
to I think all humans. These quotes are
expressing our immense desire as individuals to be wanted, as much as we want
other people. Whether or not this is
truly what love should be defined as, I do believe it is something that makes
every single one of us happy. If we did
not crave desire why would we dress nice and (in a girl’s case) fix our hair
and makeup, just to run to the local grocery store? I do not think necessarily that love is
simply “our desire to be desired,” but I do believe that it plays a large part
in our relationships. In this week’s
reading Love Hurts (Other People), it speaks about jealousy and how we tend to
put others down who could be a threat to our love life, “the surge of romantic
love leads them to derogate these people.”
I think this links back to
wanting to be desired because no one wants to see their significant other desire
other people, so some people’s reaction is to make them look less desirable so
that our desirability shines brighter than theirs. It also links back to the grant study and how
“it is very hard for most of us to tolerate being loved,” because when we are
loved and are in love, it means that we have opened up our hearts and are at
high risk of being hurt. Whereas if we
did not allow love to come into our lives, we would not have these risks. Even though this is not how I think life
should be looked at, I find it to be true, but for us to find ultimate happiness
I think that we must also find some kind of love in our lives as well.
I think you did a good job connecting all the readings. I too believe that there is a small part in all of us that wants to be desired by others. Some my crave the attention more than others, but we all want to be wanted. In the video and the grant study, they both seem to think love is about our desire to be desired. I think with love,you must first love yourself. In the reading by Dove, she says, "I no longer felt the need to focus in on an object in order to allow my thoughts free reign, unsupervised- a window had opened in me." Now she's talking about posters hanging on a wall and how they don't matter as much as they did. I think you can use the attention of others in place of the posters she's talking about. If we don't love ourself, or have confidence in our relationships, then we will always be paranoid of our significant other desiring someone else. If we're not confident in our spouse/significant other, then we will think we have to make others look less approachable so we are still desired ,like the study showed in Love Hurts (Other People). Vaillant says, " it is very hard for most of us to tolerate being loved." I think one may not tolerate the affection, because like you said Ferrell, we may be too scared to be vulnerable because of the chance our partner loses their love for us. Or one could not tolerate love because they don't love themselves so how could someone else love them? We must love ourselves so in turn we will have confidence in our relationships and we will be able to accept the love of others more easily.
ReplyDeleteWhen ‘Love Hurts’ states, "the surge of romantic love leads them to derogate these people,” I feel it was kind of justifying jealously as an act of love. I don’t believe that these two concepts should not be lumped together so carelessly. This jealousy is caused by insecurities in the relationship. Now, what I think would be interesting would be if they used the same kind of experiments on much older, married couples. I doubt that there would be nearly as much “derogating” in the more mature relationships.
ReplyDeleteI understand where Yan Dall'Agilo coming from when he says that "Love is the desire to be desired", yes, I think we all want to be desired and yes, I think when we are desired it makes us love that person even more, but I do know that you can still love someone deeply even though they may not love you in return. Real love is not always requited. It can be and when it is then its wonderful and beautiful, but some of the greatest examples of love, is loving someone to the extent that you would do absolutely anything for them knowing they wouldn't do the same for you. True love is sacrifice. Let's go back to where it all began. The definition of love is Jesus Christ. God is love. No matter what you choose to believe; whether He was a real man or not, maybe just a story, His actions are what true love is. His story deserves to be remembered. He suffered unimaginable pain, he died on the cross for your sins, my sins, he died for all those people who cursed his name as he stumbled by bearing the weight of the cross. He loved us so much that even though we hated him he still sacrificed himself.
I also somewhat disagree with your outlook on the Grant Study man who said, "It is very hard for most of us to tolerate being loved." When he said this I think he meant something more along the lines of "We only accept the love we deserve." We must love ourselves first in order to truly be loved in return. However, yes, I do agree that when you love someone you are vulnerable, at risk for heartbreak. It’s like letting someone hold your heart in their hands, knowing at any moment they could crush it or drop it letting it crumble to pieces as it hits the floor, but that is the chance we take.
Based on today's readings, I also agree that deep down all humans want to be desired by others. In our previous class reading on the Grant Study, Vaillant mentions that "Reaction formation allows us to care for someone else when we wish to be cared for ourselves." I believe this connects to the article Love Hurts (Other People) by bringing jealousy into the picture. If we have that person we claim to love, we would want to make them look less desirable. If that's the case, I would have to disagree on that part. Jealousy will only cause problems (such as trust issues) on the whole relationship. Love is a major risk in life, which brings us to Mr. Dall'Aglio's video. He mentions that we are all useless until we find that certain someone that will truly care for us. At the end of his video, he states "...because in order to be valued, I need another to desire me." We all want to be desired but in order to feel that self-love, we must be desired by others or else we won't see it ourselves.
ReplyDeleteI strongly agree with your connections on this weeks and last weeks readings. Love is an extremely important part of living our life to the fullest. It is something about love that makes us feel special and important to others. There is many different types of love though, however for the most part they are have the same definition. There is no better way to put it than the way Yann Dall'Aglio said it in his TED Talk titled "Love-- You're Doing it Wrong", he defines love as "the desire to be desired." As humans, we go to great lengths to get noticed by people and be desired, we take time getting ready in the morning to look good, and I know I tend to want the best of the best and become very materialistic. There is also a deep kind of love that one might find in their religion. Dove says, "To be saved, to establish a mystical and ongoing spiritual strength, one does not try to become Christ or identify with Christ; instead, one develops a relationship to him." This also goes along with Yann Dall'Aglio's definition of love. The desire to be loved by Christ is the desire to be wanted by him. I personally feel it is important to have this relationship with Christ in my own life, but it goes a long with the definition. It is my ability to spend time in my bible and at church with Jesus, making me work on my relationship with him, to fulfill that desire of wanting to feel loved.
ReplyDeleteIn correspondance to that, love makes us do some crazy things. In this weeks reading of "Love Hurts (Other People)," it talks about jealousy. Love is full of jealousy, the dark side of relationships. The article goes into explain how in order to not make your partner mad, you well degrade other individuals. Sadly, I find this very true in my own life. I find when I am in a relationship I am very picky about who other girls and will be quick to call them out on there flaws in front of the guy I like or am dating.
Love is all around us. It can be used for good or bad. Love for the good is finding love in religion and can sometimes be finding love in another person. Love, however, can be bad when we are willing to let our jealousy and insecurities get the best of us. All together though, love can be defined as the desire to be desires.
This quote from "Love Hurts(Other People)","Love, arguably the most positive of all human emotions, also comes with a dark side", I feel ties in with the quote "Love is the desire to be desired" "Love- You're Doing It Wrong" in that if someone truly wants to be desired, they might go through lavish measures just to get the attention of the one they want. The dark side in this being that if someone is willing to do anything to get this one person, are they truly acting on the basis of love, or do they just want the attention of all? I agree with your statement saying that love is an extremely important part in living life to the fullest, but what if the love on seeks isn't pure? What if that love is derived from an evil that wants nothing to do with actually being loved? In the Epistle to the Ephesians, Paul says "As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace." The lord wants us all to love one another as we love ourselves, and by relaying this through Paul he is showing us that he loves and trusts Paul. He is trying to set an example of how we are to live our lives. And in the event we do live our lives the way God intended, we will have lived our lives to the fullest. If we are to truly love another person, we have to set aside all differences and just embrace the beauty of all that surrounds us.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, but with “Love- you’re doing it wrong” by Yann Dall’Aglio he states that “Love is the desire to be desire” of course we all want to be desire by someone else. Although that is what we would all like, that isn’t love. We like the attention of someone else and like to be reminded about being wanted. He also says that we focus too much of attention to impress others. In my opinion I don’t think you need someone to remind you that you are valuable or important, yes its nice having someone there but its up to you how you carry yourself. If I keep a good mentality and stay positive then I wont have to relay on other to feel good about myself. And I know he states that “we must all understand that were all worthless” because if we stick by this mentality when we are together we will try to find the good within each other. In Love Hurts (other people) they talk about jealously and how when you’re jealous you’ll start to talk bad about your partner so others wont find them as attractive. Everyone is jealous because if you are in a relationship and you see someone else trying to take your spot you’ll get upset. “..the jealous sorts suddenly become very negative about other attractive people, rating them much less appealing.” It is very true because I have done this myself, I was in a relationship and I would tell my friends that my boyfriend wasn’t so good looking so they wouldn’t check him out, but it could be vice versa. We don’t want them to see that others find them attractive as well and we want them just to ourselves.
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