What’s the difference between simply being infatuated with someone and loving them? — Benj96

The degree of goodwill for the other person. An infatuated person has little or no goodwill for the person they are infatuated with (down to lacking the most basic empathy for them). Whereas loving someone also includes having goodwill for them, wishing them well.

If you subscribe to the idea of love please explain why on earth we would need it. We are animals with a high rate of infidelity I would struggle to believe we are indeed as monogamous as culture and romcoms would dictate

The high rate of infidelity is possibly due to the high rate of infatuation, and with it, the low rate of goodwill.

There are social projects that can successfully be engaged in only when there is enough mutual goodwill. These projects can be anything from raising children to growing crops. People benefit from such projects, so we can say that they are evolutionarily advantageous.

To be honest I usually think that we tend to confuse the concept of love with respect. The admiration I have on my parents is not about love but respect. Plato warned back in the day that "love is a serious mental disease" I do not know how right he can be at all but it is true that the concept of love is not well understood at all.
Sometimes love itself can be dangerous and toxic. People can get mad over others because they "love" them.
Aspects and customs as "Valentines day" are just related to consuming. Companies need love to see products. As they need Christmas to do the same.

What’s the difference between simply being infatuated with someone and loving them? — Benj96

Love cares for the being of another even it involves being separated from them. If you are connected, then it means learning what they need with or without you. The lessons will not all be pleasant. Love is suffering without punishing somebody or something for the experience. More easily said than done.

I row the boat alongside you, pulling the oars. Welcome aboard.

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Evolution has no need for love. Well no need for love between partners at least, maybe maternal and paternal love towards offspring yes, but as for partners all that is called for is sexual attraction/ lust. The convention of marriage is very much a legal and political thing regarding possession and responsibility towards children. — Benj96

Are you sure evolution has no need for love? How did you determine that it doesnt, given that we have evolved with love as part of our emotional range? Hasn’t love helped us survive as a species?

What’s the difference between simply being infatuated with someone and loving them? If you subscribe to the idea of love please explain why on earth we would need it. We are animals with a high rate of infidelity I would struggle to believe we are indeed as monogamous as culture and romcoms would dictate — Benj96

Well its hard to say exactly but the difference between infatuation and love seems a matter of degree, no?
Monogamy and love are not the same thing, nor does one require the other. People can and do en masse, love more than one person. Monogamy is a social control, a social contract of sorts.

We are animals with a high rate of infidelity I would struggle to believe we are indeed as monogamous as culture and romcoms would dictate — Benj96

You could be right that we are less monogamous than we are told we are or than we would like to be. But I think life and nature itself imposes some restrictions on the number of partners we have, apart from culture.

And love is not necessarily incompatible with having more than one partner. I don't see why it should be impossible to love one partner at a time or multiple partners at the same time. Also, we may love them in different ways and to different degrees, etc.

For me love has its root in Ego.The way that it is socially described as a pure "altruistic" emotion, is nothing more than another human myth.

We are animals with a high rate of infidelity I would struggle to believe we are indeed as monogamous — Benj96

As you said we are animals. What kind of animal is monogamous?? We aren't monogamous at all. Nature haven't programmed us that way. Monogamy is just a social compromise we make as to feed our Ego and to feel that we "own" the other person.And not anyone else is allowed to fuck it! Of course love exists but has nothing to do with monogamy.

The convention of marriage is very much a legal and political thing regarding possession and responsibility towards children. — Benj96

I would add the "possession" of our partner too. Not just kids.
You ask at the end ".. the desire to settle down?". For me seems more like the "desire to kill our fear of being alone".

What’s the difference between simply being infatuated with someone and loving them? — Benj96

Commitment.

The OP is extraordinarily numb; anyone who seeks an evolutionary account of love is not in love.

The degree of goodwill for the other person. An infatuated person has little or no goodwill for the person they are infatuated with (down to lacking the most basic empathy for them). Whereas loving someone also includes having goodwill for them, wishing them well. — baker

Commitment. — Banno

Thank you both. It's what I'm going through. This is what I truly believe in. I cried about the reality of it all. Then I cried some more.

:ok:

Take care...

If you subscribe to the idea of love... — Benj96

People don't love others because they subscribe to the idea of it, they love because it's something they feel. You make it sound like an abstraction one either believes or doesn't.

Do you subscribe to the idea of pain? There are times when you have no choice but to feel it, same with love.

My recollection is that it was Spinoza, but I may be wrong, who said that a necessary condition of being in love with someone is that your happiness is dependent on their happiness.

If anyone can verify the source, I'd be grateful.

It was either Spinoza or Robert A. Heinlein.

That makes sense. bet it's from Time enough for love.

edit... ah, Stranger in a strange land.

“Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”

Thanks, Tom.

To me love is a metaphysical condition and as such real. The world is always an object of care for us. what I mean is that we are never unaffected by the world around us, but very intimately related to it, From the thoughts I am typing down, to the slightly sticky chair I am typing on to the feeling of the keys of my board giving way and the letters appearing. That is I think the condition of love, the feeling of experience of the world and care for that experience. It is a precondition of all our other experience and therefore my designation as 'metaphyscal'.

Love of a person means that the world has condensed into that one single point, which starts to dominate other concerns. It is the bundling of care for the world towards that other person in which we recognise our own position in the world. Love is like a mirror, it is as it were the world smiling back.

Evolution has no need for love. — Benj96

This doesn't add up. Every single trait that exists in the present was/had to be good for survival and if love is part of human relationships, it must aid in living or some aspect of procreation must depend on it. Where? how? is a mystery to me. I suggest we approach the matter from the viewpoint of someone about to be hoodwinked; after all, flowers don't actually intend to give bees a drink of nectar, it's bait to make the bees unwittingly cross-pollinate. You're a bee that has finally come to the realization that it's just a sex toy. Nothing wrong with that though, right?

I remember how to write your nickname -- Tobi. Correct?

Yes, Caldwell, correct. It is Tobi :)

Posted twice...

What’s the difference between simply being infatuated with someone and loving them? — Benj96

If you ignore what I said in my previous post, the difference between infatuation and love is the same as the difference between thinking only about proximate gratification and taking utmost care to give remote consequences their due.

The infatuated person: I need fae.
The person in love: Does fae need me?

Intriguingly, the infatuated person believes (I need fae) but the person who's in love doubts (does fae need me?)

Posted twice... — Tobias

Mea culpa!

As you said we are animals. What kind of animal is monogamous? — dimosthenis9

A big majority of bird species live monogamously. It's also displayed in monkeys and apes. Gibbons are a notable example. Many canines have a tendency towards monogamy. Beavers are another prime showcase for sticking with a partner for life.

If you subscribe to the idea of love please explain why on earth we would need it. — Benj96

Evolutionary, it makes a lot of sense to band together with a mating partner and bust out one baby after another. So does settling down and raising the children together. I can at the very least imagine how and why this was genetically adopted as "love".

The idea of love that is promoted through culture is a bit of a different story though. There are some notions being "taught" about love that are pretty harmful and self-destructive for the individual. It's a small line between "real love" and the toxic infatuation with another.

A big majority of bird species live monogamously. It's also displayed in monkeys and apes. Gibbons are a notable example. Many canines have a tendency towards monogamy. Beavers are another prime showcase for sticking with a partner for life. — Hermeticus

Even if they are, humans aren't. These are exceptions. Humans put mental effort as to be monogamous. It doesn't come natural to them. If a married man see a naked woman he will have an erection. He will have to try to think and put hard effort as to convince himself not to fuck her. It won't come natural to him.

Even if they are, humans aren't. These are exceptions. Humans put mental effort as to be monogamous. It doesn't come natural to them. If a married man see a naked woman he will have an erection. He will have to try to think and put hard effort as to convince himself not to fuck her. It won't come natural to him — dimosthenis9

True that! Do you see love transcending pleasures of the flesh? Or, is it just as I think it is, two sides of the same coin?

I think also that, more or less, is two sides of the same coin. When we speak about partner's love of course.

I think also that, more or less, is two sides of the same coin. When we speak about partner's love of course. — dimosthenis9

I'm asking you whether love is a sham, a scam, a con, just an empty emotion which is meant only to sugar-coat the actual, the real, goings-on, the two-backed-beast?

Well no I believe that love is a true emotion. But we humans have made many myths and fairy tales about what is "meant to be" and its origin.
In partnership we have combined it with monogamy. Which is wrong for me. These are two different things. Can't I love someone but at the same time want to have sex with others too? I don't see any contradiction to that.

In some cases, as you mention, it is also used to sugar-coat the two-baked-beast. But it's not always the case.
Saying that more or less is two sides of the same coin meant that, if we plant a seed into a couple. That seed would also need plenty of "sex water" also as to grow up and turn into love. There are exceptions of course but in most cases it does need sex.

The person in love: Does fae need me?

... the person who's in love doubts (does fae need me?) — TheMadFool

I think this way.

Take care... — Banno

Soothing words.

If a married man see a naked woman he will have an erection. He will have to try to think and put hard effort as to convince himself not to fuck her. It won't come natural to him. — dimosthenis9

That's a very crude analysis. Not all naked women are fuck-worthy; and no all naked women want to get fucked by you. You talk as if she had no say in it, and as if there were no other qualifications.

But that's part and parcel of this intellectually and emotionally numb thread.

That's a very crude analysis. Not all naked women are fuck-worthy; and no all naked women want to get fucked by you. You talk as if she had no say in it, and as if there were no other qualifications. — Banno

Not crude at all. You turn the point into a matter that doesn't exist, cause you just find "fuck" word too shocking for you obviously. Who said that she would have no say? Obviously I mean that as to get naked in front of you she would want it also. And obviously you would find her attractive as to have erection. Didn't expect that I would have to clarify such a simple thing.

It could also be the same with a woman to whom Brad Pitt would be naked in front of her. Don't turn it into a race matter cause has nothing to do with that. I talk about monogamy in both sexes. Not as a privilege of men.

But that's part and parcel of this intellectually and emotionally numb thread — Banno

I care to make my point clear. Not scared at all to use "low quality" or "bad" words for that. There are no bad words at all for me, only bad meanings.