LOVE STORIES


THERE ARE MANY KIND OF LOVE STORIES. THERE'S THE ONE I'M CELEBRATING WITH 45 YEARS OF MARRIAGE THIS WEEKEND. THERE'S OTHERS THAT CELEBRATE FALLING IN LOVE WITH YOUR PET, YOUR CHILDREN OR GRANDCHILDREN, OR A BEST FRIEND.
LOVE COMES IN MANY FORMS AND THIS WEEKEND WE CELEBRATE THEM ALL!

SHARE YOUR LOVE STORIES!
HOW DID YOU MEET, WHERE DID YOU MEET?

SAY IT WITH LOVE THIS WEEKEND.
Major congratulations to the Owl Couple.
 
Another type of love story....how I learned to love my mom. You've all heard the stories by now about her. She was an unusual woman, and many times we just wanted to proverbially strangle her...lol When I truly learned to love my mom was the last two months of her life. When we learned she was terminal, I moved in with her to take care of her. And that's when I learned so very much. I asked a lot of questions about her life and suddenly the 4 closets of clothes made sense, the need for control became clear, and I "saw" my mom as not my mom but a fellow human being and soul. She just happened to be my mother. In those last two months I learned a new level of love.
How truly wonderful for you both Debi.
 
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I had a similar thing happen with my mom too, Debi. We were both stubborn Capricorns, so we were always locking horns. At one point I quit communicating with her, feeling that my wounds were too great for reconciliation. But when she became terminal with cancer, I was able to read her one of my stories, and to take turn sitting with her ( nearly all 8 of my siblings were there too.) I was also able to forgive her for so much, simply having become a mother myself, to a problem child. And I realized how short life can be, and how I regretted not spending more time forgiving than holding grudges. I had a very healing dream after her passing, that tied up lose ends and let me know how truly she had loved her children.
I need tissues now. Darn, I just popped by for a spook or two. Now I’m all warm inside and wet outside.
 
I often wonder what true love is, your first love may be just lust when you are young. The love for your kids may be a selfish feeling so your genes carry on. Your love for your mum or parent may be a survival technique, same reason for your love of a long term partner. There seems to be a selfish reason behind all these relationships we label "love". Or am I just being paranoid?
 
Here's a story I'm going to relay about my parents love story since I don't have one of my own. They were introduced to one another through a late mutual friend in late '76 early '77 and I believe it was a blind date. When he first showed up at the floral shop my mom worked at the time, he had long hair, a thick mustache and was athletic. First impressions weren't very lasting ones but she thought there wasn't any way in hell she'd ever go out with him but they did anyway. And just like something you would read out of a romance novel or see in film, this blind date turned into a strong relationship and later marriage for the ages.

They dated for a year and married on February 19, 1978 if memory serves. She had a five year old daughter from her previous marriage that he adopted and I came along a little over three years later.

They had their fair share of ups and downs as all couples have, but these two were literally inseparable and stuck with one another through thick and thin, no matter how dire the situation may have been at the time. They were married for nearly 40 years until she contracted a rare form of cancer and, even then, he never left her side. We weren't there when she did but she had a friend that held her hand at the hospice when she just slipped away. And I'm not trying to thread jack and make it about anything else, but, she wanted to be buried next to her parents but he buried her at another cemetery about three miles up the road and about a mile and a half from where I'm living now.

She told my dad that when we were going to have her services, a train would come and she'd be on it. Sure enough, during her services, a freight train made an appearance - just as it had during her parent's funerals on both occasions a quarter of a century apart. She always saw it as a message from her parents telling her that everything would be alright as we did. The kicker? Her dad used to be a brake switchmen for Illinois Central when she was very young and still, ever so often when we'll go to visit their graves, a train will still make an appearance from time to time. That being said, I don't think that true love, in any form, ever really dies. I'll stop now because I'm feeling teary eyed.
 
I often wonder what true love is, your first love may be just lust when you are young. The love for your kids may be a selfish feeling so your genes carry on. Your love for your mum or parent may be a survival technique, same reason for your love of a long term partner. There seems to be a selfish reason behind all these relationships we label "love". Or am I just being paranoid?
I do not believe you are Oz. In fact, I think your implication is well supported by the familiar supposition that you have to love yourself in order to love another. I believe that is why persons with several different forms of mental illness or social dysmorphia are unable to show even empathy to/for another person.

So, because knowing love for another is empathetic to loving oneself, all love is - in some small form - related to self.

I’ll allow Professor Paintman to take the discussion from here.
 
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I often wonder what true love is, your first love may be just lust when you are young. The love for your kids may be a selfish feeling so your genes carry on. Your love for your mum or parent may be a survival technique, same reason for your love of a long term partner. There seems to be a selfish reason behind all these relationships we label "love". Or am I just being paranoid?
I just think your labeling the feeling wrong. I think selfish has a bad connotation to it. I don’t think it’s wrong to want love to last in whatever form. We don’t want to be parted from those we love no matter the situation. That is just the nature of real love. I think it is why we are here, to learn to love in many ways. It may be the part of us that lives forever.