I Don't Believe In Love

Queensryche. I used to really dig their stuff. I still do I just don't put them on the music engine as much as I used to. Here's the vid. Here are the lyrics. It's part of a concept album which tells a very tragic story. Without giving it all away a junkie becomes involved in a political revolutionary/terrorist type movement & is ordered to kill the woman he loves. He refuses to do so & tries to find her but when he does he discovers she's already been killed. The song is his expression of denial in the face of this tragedy. His world is darkened to an almost unbearable extent so he denies that love existed at all as he cannot deny that fact that his lover is dead.

I admit that at times it'd have been easier on me if love didn't exist at all, but I also think that my world would be considerably darker if that were the case. Before I delve into whether or not it's always a good or cool thing to have around I'm going to try to define it. I'm going to be working with a very simple definition of love. I make no pretenses on being 100% right or of this being an inclusive definition. I try to keep it simple so I can understand it (I am a guy after all).

Love in the romantic sense (as opposed to the platonic sense) is a mix of several things. It's a combination of primarily caring & attraction mixed in with some amount of respect &/or admiration. The combination of each element will vary to some degree though I have no idea how far & under which circumstances.

This is important; this is not to be confused with what most folks refer to as "being in love". That is a separate (although usually connected) experience. It is very possible to love someone but not be in love with them, or to fall in & out of love with them, yet still love them. In my experience loving someone is like an entrée whereas being in love with someone is like a dessert. It's very nice when both are present but if I had to choose I'd say a more solid & healthier relationship would only require 2 people loving each other.

To complicate things a bit more I don't believe that love is fleeting. Being in love can come & go but once you feel love for someone it's permanent. Circumstances have an effect & sometimes it can seem as if a person does not feel the love they once did for another person. It's still there but dormant to the point that pragmatically it does not seem to exist. Yet the right circumstances can allow it to come to the surface again.

Acceptance or acknowledgement or some faith that love will be received positively is essential in letting the emotion develop fully. If acceptance (for lack of a better word) does not seem likely the conscious or subconscious mind will put a halt to the further development of any feelings of love. Pragmatically it never develops or seems to grow but as I said before under the right circumstances it can surface again & even develop more than it did before. Love simply exists. It does not disappear once felt.

Have you ever ran into a former lover that you thought you didn't care for yet felt very strong emotions towards him or her? That would seem to confirm this part of the theory. Its happened to me & likely it's happened to you. The thing is the love was always there it just took certain circumstances to feel or acknowledge it again.

Speaking from personal experience I still love every woman I've ever loved. AS, JL, GAvO, JD, VA, KS, KZ, JA & JAG. I still have love for every one of them. However a few of them I don't consider to be decent people (namely AS & JL) & most of the rest of them I don't see any chance of a future with. Therefore while I can still feel love for each of them if I dwell on it I do not feel compelled to act or express that love. Under the right circumstances I would feel it just as strongly as I did when I was involved (or trying to be involved) with them, but those circumstances would have to create a situation that I believed would work.

I'd need some chance of acceptance in a manner that I would need. I’d need to have faith that it was not futile to put out emotionally (so to speak) in order for those feelings to rise to the surface.

The kicker is that even if I did feel love for any one of them full force I would be just as capable of not acting on it as I would be of acting on it. I would also be capable of suppressing whatever I felt to control the desire to act.

Love is not uncontrollable. You can feed it or starve it to some degree & sometimes without even trying. But love is not totally at your command either.

There may be more parts to the equation than the 4 I mentioned (caring, attraction, respect/admiration & acceptance) but I have no idea what they are or if they'd be specific to an individual as opposed to universal. It's also entirely possible that those 4 things are just what I need to feel love for someone, but in my experiences with women (including my discussions of the matter both direct & indirect) my definition seems to be universal. Individuals vary a bit & different proportions seem to be necessary for different people & circumstances but if we limit the topic to generalities I think I'm mostly correct.

Love is controllable to some extent but denying it is always uncool in the long run even when you don’t wish to act upon it. One of the biggest wrongs I've done to myself & another was committed while I controlled my feelings of love for someone. It was not as simple a situation as I thought at the time & I thought everything moving towards a desirable end. But I suppressed my feelings because of the circumstances when I should have been more open with myself & the young lady involved. It's not that the situation would have necessarily turned out differently had I expressed my love for her, but it would have brought about a more natural chain of events than what transpired (though the outcome may have been the same).

4 things; caring, attraction, respect/admiration & acceptance. If you feel those 4 things for a person then in my estimate that's the base form of love; the beginning of love if you will. It can certainly grow from those things & become much more than the sum of its parts but I think that's where it all starts. It can be suppressed & stagnate & seem to disappear through circumstance or your own will, but it's always there; waiting for the right circumstances to surface again.

The idea that love is so enduring may seem naive or idealistic but in my experience it's held up well as a theory. Of course I'm a bit of an idealist & a romantic so I could be biased.

As much as I like Queensryche I disagree with the song's premise (even though I understand it). I believe love exists & even though it's sometime difficult to deal with (not to mention painful as hell) it's worth it, especially when the person you love is worth it (whether or not it works out as you desired).