The struggle to love

Anyone ever find it hard to love, whether it be yourself or others? Sometimes it seems just out of reach and us hoping that one day it will be in our reach. It is easy to talk about love and its mechanics but it is difficult to apply it in life. Maybe its because some of us don't have a good enough reason to love instead of fear so we will always choose fear in certain situations.

Anyone else find themselves struggling to love at times?

reply to post by Ralphy


Certainly I find myself struggling to love. Not family but in romantic relationships and my fellow man/woman. Could you maybe be a tad more specific? I think it's an interesting post but love is a very broad term.

I guess I'm talking in term of forgiveness. If someone cuts me off I struggle to calm myself down which I do but I wish I never got worked up in the first place. Or if I do something stupid, it takes me awhile to let it go instead of instantly not evening worrying about it. I never seem to have a good reason to let things go I guess.

Originally posted by Ralphy
Anyone ever find it hard to love, whether it be yourself or others? Sometimes it seems just out of reach and us hoping that one day it will be in our reach. It is easy to talk about love and its mechanics but it is difficult to apply it in life. Maybe its because some of us don't have a good enough reason to love instead of fear so we will always choose fear in certain situations.

Anyone else find themselves struggling to love at times?

I hate everyone. Sometimes it seems that way. People are stupid mean and rude.
But sometimes I find when I speak one on one with even the stupidest and the most rude we have some area of common humanity and I cannot help but love them and feel pity for them in their struggle just like me.

I find it not hard to love, but too find someone who loves me.
I have had extreme feelings for many of my friends, but all of them are straight and do not want that kind of relationship with me. I wish I could say that I have learned to move on when I realize I dont have a chance, but that would be a lie.

I had bad experiences with relationships and the opposite sex in general during and shortly after highschool.
After some depression, I figured I should just come to terms with "reality" and accept that I would not have a successful relationship in my life.
After a few years, and lots of thinking, I have decided that I will keep the option open, and was just being young and dumb, or something like that. The women of my past were definitely not the right ones, no matter how much I may have thought so then. There may not be a "right one", or, even any one, but, it is obviously a possibility.
I am not going to live my life for love, trying to find it, waiting for it. If it happens, cool, but, it isnt necessary to my happiness in life, and thinking this has made me much more happy.

About letting go; I have made many stupid decisions, some of which, cost me a price I can never possibly know.
But, I can learn from them. I can make a choice to acknowledge my idiocy, mistakes and bad decisions, and either better myself, in body and mind, or wallow in the waste I have created. I dont like sitting in my own filth, so I learned to get over my past, and think about my actions as much as possible before actually making them actions out of thoughts.
Believe in yourself, you are a human being, and we can do amazing things if we try. You dont need the help of any god, but, there are always fellow humans, and there is nothing wrong with sharing the burden sometimes.

spw184, I had a similar problem, maybe you can find something for yourself in my post. I want to say, just read what I said and do that, but, everyone is their own person, but maybe it can help you find more peace in life. That is one of the reasons we share our thoughts right?

Most difficult person for me to love is myself, then everyone else.

I can't love myself becaue I feel like I am constantly attempting to meet some invisible standard set my everyone else. This whole push and pull by our culture tends to stretch me too far so I just remove myself from the social scene unless I am feeling especially good about the situation, which is rare. Dress like this, talk like this, etc. The funniest thing (which isnt funny at all) is that EVERYONE will agree with what I have to say about culture norms and how they force people to act a certain way, but NO ONE actually attempts to be different. They ridicule differences.

And like another poster has said, when people are one on one sometimes they will let their shields down and be real for 5 minutes. But, it never last long as soon as their brah comes around I already know I'll be odd man out. But, I am also in a crappy enviroment besides it being the eastcoast middleclass america. I go to a university where I tend to be the oldest person there unless it is one of those alduts coming back to get a degree. But, even then those alduts try to fit in with the young crowd and will act ignorant (and I mean that in its true form). I have a nutrition professor who dresses like a whore and talks like an uneducated valley girl. Which the devil in me doesnt mind at all. Unfortunately I woke up to reality a long time ago and can't stand when people demoralize themselves to fit in with the crowd.

My quest for love ended after a series of bad relationships. I tend to get in relationships that are umm lets say more mechanic. I have 1 maybe 2 real friends and a family in which I walk on egg shells around because I talk to freely.

Not to mention other than my family, most people move in and out of my life like a dream. To put so much energy as love takes will only sap me in the long run. I will work on loving myself thru and thru before I attempt loving someone else. That way I know I am not being a fake.

Omg, this thread makes me sad.

LETS LISTEN TO SOME INSPIRING MUSIC

The point of that last post was, as you can see by the theme of those songs, you need not care what other people think of you, as long as you love yourself, thats all that matters.

I must admit I struggle to love stupidity and con artists.

Everything else is a walk in the park.

Ribbit

Originally posted by ButtUglyToad
I must admit I struggle to love stupidity and con artists.

Everything else is a walk in the park.

Ribbit

Do you struggle to love enviromentalists and religous fanatics? because I do...

Originally posted by Ralphy
Anyone else find themselves struggling to love at times?

I can sure relate to this.

I get so embarrassingly irritated with people, and it's almost as if I can't find one bit of connection with any of them most of the time. Like they work hard to prove to me that somehow I was shortchanged when they were handing out whatever it is that allows people to feel a visceral alignment with others. And it's gotten worse since I've gotten older. Day after day, I discover new ways to realize that I have nothing in common with the herd that either stampedes past me from one idiotic center to the next, or scatters around like cows in a field that stretches seemingly forever in every direction.

But then invariably I'll find myself face to face with one of these, and I'll see that there's a spark of some kind in the eyes reaching back to mine. And I'll recognize something real and incredibly important in that spark. Something that feels necessary and almost urgent in its immediacy, as it captures my complete attention and requires me to drop my self-inflicted autonomy, allowing me to open wide and inhale just enough of this one to establish a concerned connection. Just this one for now, but still, at least one. Even if only for how.

And as I look to the rest of the herd, from the two of us, this time, I'll see small twinkles here and there. Eyes glittering, as they graze and stampede about. It's not association, but it's not isolation either. It's something bridging the two, and for me, it's like walking into my mom's kitchen again after an afternoon of hiding in my room from the world and hating the fact, that as a pimple-faced teenage loser, I've been forced to exist. It's like being grateful that something still exists that feels like home.

My life has been a quest for love. I've loved myself for some time now, and I've always been willing to give my love. I find it hard to keep it up if the person changes away from you. I can understand how it's harder at times than other times. But, it's important. Love is life changing.

Note to everyone: Stop being so depressing!!!

Don't worry about loving anyone. Just love The One.
The only one you will ever experience is yourself.

youtu.be...

reply to post by spw184


Are we not all already hard-wired to love ourselves? All we really want is to be loved. You know, when people say "they hate themselves", they seldom really mean it. If they really do and they go to lengths to prove it, they likely have deep mental problems.

As long as you love yourself.. that's all that matters. Yeah, comforting, but also cliche and rhetorical to me. There is a whole lot more that matters (though, I'm still trying to figure out what..) and I'm an expert at loving myself.

reply to post by Ralphy


Well just let me say your not alone in not being able to love. my problem is i cant identify with anyone, it seems to me that everyone is hiding something and you can never truely know someone. how can you give such strong feelings to someone who you do not fully know? everyone has secrets that they keep and everyone knows how easy it is to lie and put up a front. why set yourself up for failure? when you know that giving your feelings to someone will only end in you getting hurt and lied to.

reply to post by Ralphy


Not really I find it easy.