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Do men or women feel know use give understand love more or less or differently than the other?
And if so does this then mean there is more than one kind of love?
And if this is so does this mean love is something specific and not the over ruling 'Love' we all come to short-hand so as to encapsulate?

Do women have a higher capacity need for love than men?
Do women 'do' love better than men?

Is love for from a man different than love for from a woman?
Do we have expectations of love when it comes to gender?
Does love have gender rolls?

This is not a question of sex but of gender, but are the two ever inseperable?
That being said;
If I am straight is my love for a woman or man different than if i were gay for a man or woman? (excluding sexual where ever possible when this overall Love is concerned.)

@sometime sun,

is there really a differentiation between men and women and the concepts they supposedly embody (since gender is where you would like to keep the conversation on)? Yes in the normative sense (not my own mind you) that male is masculine and female is feminine. The masculine concept has been wrongly attached to the male sex and the feminine to the female sex. And that may be where you see part of the reaction by feminism where reaction to a male normative framework seeks equalization (in both sex and gender rights) and remedy in what at least they consider to be oppression (which it honestly is within their philosophy). Negative attributes attach to these preconceived notions, such as rationality (or lack of) among other things which third wave feminists like Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan confront.

That being said, the ideal should be that no, there should not be any sort of differentiation. The concepts of masculine and feminine should be universal. So in response to your final question, the love that you produce should not be any different if you were gay or straight. But normative genderization does not really permit that though, does it? If love is essentially a bond of friendship, genderization (as a social construct) should not hamper anyone for pursuing the same universal right.

@VideCorSpoon,

If Hesse's Narcissus and Goldmund were about two women's lives, how would it have played out?

What if Ivan and Alyosha were two women?

But I'm being silly. There's something untrustworthy about literature's portrayal. The authors always wanted to develop the character and attach 'hero' to the male characters. The hero in women has been left unexplored, and is probably fundamentally different. Unless of couse I haven't been reading the right books.

It's interesting. When I was reading some of my peer's poetry I've noticed that the two main themes encompassing most of girl's poetry are love and death. For guys it's love and angst. Guys don't talk about death. Women don't talk about angst. Exceptions include Hamlet and Atwood, lol. But when it comes to love, both are very much interested in the same thing. And one cannot make a direct or definite correlation between capacity for love and one's gender.
When it comes to love also, the people who can love profoundly tend to be indifferent to what masculinity and feminity mean. One can either create a few profound relationships with people that others cannot understand or cope with, or, one can have friends with many people and use the term friend loosely.

I think when one realizes the full potential of their self and self efficacies, they have need of being an individual, and at the same time a need for a higher kind of love, because the world is seen differently. I don't want to say more profoundly, but there is a greater depth is there not? Please critisize me on this.

In western society, when the world is seen so blandly and 'efficiently', we are structured not to need to depend on each other too much. Our work and jobs do not require friendship, and the need for trust. We'll inevitably emerge 'friendships' to satisfy one's lonliness and constant boredom, because the world seems banal.

There is a desire for 'stuff', and a lack of a desire to gain experience. In developing nations, things are different. Friendship means more, and it can acheive more.

When that person says, "I just love my new phone", we understand they mean love in a different way. But really, how different is it?

@Holiday20310401,

Holiday20310401;103588 wrote:

If Hesse's Narcissus and Goldmund were about two women's lives, how would it have played out?

What if Ivan and Alyosha were two women?

But I'm being silly. There's something untrustworthy about literature's portrayal. The authors always wanted to develop the character and attach 'hero' to the male characters. The hero in women has been left unexplored, and is probably fundamentally different. Unless of couse I haven't been reading the right books.

It's interesting. When I was reading some of my peer's poetry I've noticed that the two main themes encompassing most of girl's poetry are love and death. For guys it's love and angst. Guys don't talk about death. Women don't talk about angst. Exceptions include Hamlet and Atwood, lol. But when it comes to love, both are very much interested in the same thing. And one cannot make a direct or definite correlation between capacity for love and one's gender.
When it comes to love also, the people who can love profoundly tend to be indifferent to what masculinity and feminity mean. One can either create a few profound relationships with people that others cannot understand or cope with, or, one can have friends with many people and use the term friend loosely.

I think when one realizes the full potential of their self and self efficacies, they have need of being an individual, and at the same time a need for a higher kind of love, because the world is seen differently. I don't want to say more profoundly, but there is a greater depth is there not? Please critisize me on this.

In western society, when the world is seen so blandly and 'efficiently', we are structured not to need to depend on each other too much. Our work and jobs do not require friendship, and the need for trust. We'll inevitably emerge 'friendships' to satisfy one's lonliness and constant boredom, because the world seems banal.

There is a desire for 'stuff', and a lack of a desire to gain experience. In developing nations, things are different. Friendship means more, and it can acheive more.

When that person says, "I just love my new phone", we understand they mean love in a different way. But really, how different is it?

wow-what a comment. i was wondering where you had been, and here i forgot you were a moderator too! oh well, i have been busy...

i always thought my poetry was full of angst...i may be wrong. the hero capacity in women isnt unexplored, though it is underportrayed i suppose. there is a hindi film called 'mother india' which is really great. the other thing is that angst in a man is a more powerful expression than from a woman who would be perceived as being weaker and more susceptible to the kind of suffering we can call angst. to see a male actually experiencing this is much more devastating. have you ever heard a man scream?

capacity for love and quality of love are two different things of course-in the world there are some people who have a great capacity for love, but some kinds of love can also kill. i definitely agree that the people who can love profoundly do not see masculine or feminine other than as attributes of the self of all of humanity. the reason for that being that at the level of spirit, which is the highest form of love-gender no longer exists. yes, that is the greatest depth of love.

friendship is a sort of love, but my experience and pondering is more along the lines of life partner type love and hero worship, which can be quite profound also-in other words the love of a student for a teacher or patient for doctor or chela for guru.

i love my phone is just a silly colloquiality...

---------- Post added 11-15-2009 at 01:56 PM ----------

sometime sun;103571 wrote:

Do men or women feel know use give understand love more or less or differently than the other?
And if so does this then mean there is more than one kind of love?
And if this is so does this mean love is something specific and not the over ruling 'Love' we all come to short-hand so as to encapsulate?

Do women have a higher capacity need for love than men?
Do women 'do' love better than men?

Is love for from a man different than love for from a woman?
Do we have expectations of love when it comes to gender?
Does love have gender rolls?

This is not a question of sex but of gender, but are the two ever inseperable?
That being said;
If I am straight is my love for a woman or man different than if i were gay for a man or woman? (excluding sexual where ever possible when this overall Love is concerned.)

not only is there a lot on this plate, you have introduced the two major issues that cause people to be unable to maintain their decorum while discussing-women (or the male/female comparison) and homosexuality.
let me try not to enrage anyone...

there are many different ways to use the word love, of course-you can find definitions. everyone must have different meanings behind their love for a child, a parent, a pet, a movie,etc. and there are levels of human love, one for another, from the physical/material to the archetypal to the spiritual.

i believe everyone has a need for love, that goes for both sexes, and the greater or lesser the need cant be confined to either gender. it is more a question of the balanced nature of the person. the more balanced a person is, his need will be legitimate. the need for love is natural, i believe. but the more unbalanced a person is, his/her need will be desperate and impossible to fulfill.

people have expectations but that is unfortunate. love for or from a man or a woman is not of a specific kind or level, as far as i have seen. any such opinions are misguided, though they exist. as to who 'does' it better, that would be the most self-actualized and well balanced person, regardless of gender-one who has fewer ego issues and a good sense of when to draw limits or build boundaries and when to crash the gates and break down the walls. but i would say that love is 'done' better between two people who are complementarily matched to each other, again irregardless of gender.

along these lines, there are roles, but they should be flexible and attuned to the two people involved and the situation at hand. one will always assume the dominant role most of the time, and again gender doesnt matter. it varies even today in different cultures, as to whether the male or female will generally take the dominant role in which area of life and family. but it should be suited to the individuals.

so from these beliefs, i base my opinion that the only difference between the love of a heterosexual couple and a same sex couple is that they will both have to deal with pressures of society and family, adding another element in the relationship that will have to be addressed.

@sometime sun,

What would happen if we normally thought of "love" as a certain kind of relationship between two people (omitting entirely any reference to male or female, or maleness or femaleness)?

@sometime sun,

As the great philosopher Uncle Fester said: She's a girl, and I'm a boy... We got nothing in common...

The common quality of all love is caring... You know a relationship is done when people no longer care, and just get on with their lives... As we can see, some times people say they love money, and even if they care for the money the money cannot care for them...So what is it??? Is money a sign of self love, a way of caring for ones self??? All I know is, it is not a relationship, as the love of people is, a form of relationship... We cannot really love that which does not love us back, and this is true of our relationships with people...If we love our country, but our country does not love us, then the love must die, or the relationship...

@sometime sun,

I remember asking myself once if I had to choose between love and money what would I choose. I chose love of course but I'm begining to regret that decision, lol.

@Caroline,

Caroline;103620 wrote:

I remember asking myself once if I had to choose between love and money what would I choose. I chose love of course but I'm begining to regret that decision, lol.

Maybe sometimes,,,we just fall in love,,,with love.

@sometime sun,

sometime sun;103571 wrote:

Do men or women feel know use give understand love more or less or differently than the other?

Oh, please cover my heart and soul--my very being. . . for but for the loss of words, how can I answer without much ado about the lack of love for the basic grammatical rules of our beloved English language . . . for starters, at least?

sometime sun;103571 wrote:

This is not a question of sex but of gender, but are the two ever inseperable?

While some expressions have been put forward on this idea, I treat it as a singularity--chronologically. Thus, in this way of looking at it, physical sexual state, is equal to gender. The two are especially separated by brain state/build.

And, in hopes of better definition, could you please more carefully explain your idea of 'love,'here? Agape, philias, eros, (or another two or so), or a combination, of some sorts, of all but eros)?

Fido;103618 wrote:

As the great philosopher Uncle Fester said: She's a girl, and I'm a boy... We got nothing in common...

With due respect, I very much question this statement. The reason for doing so is that the female and the male do have something in common--and that is the need for propagation of the species, and the difference in sexual operation physically. This difference (eros being the subject here) is the attraction, and the fact of having the attraction is equal.

@sometime sun,

VideCorSpoon;
But is not friendship a type or form of love, meaning there are others to yet be included? I would say friendship although love in its own right is the precursor to most other types of human love.

Exoticist being part of what we imagine predict love to be?

Womens higher capacity could be down to the general idea of nuture, their bodies are built to be charitable.

'Occupation'; i like that.

Gender as social construct means different rolls for each player to enact.

Let the coversation decide, and i wont have to.

Idealy there should not be differentiation, but there is?

Is the normative necessary?

Holiday20310401;
The feminine hero would be heroine one e away from heroin.
A drug that is highly adictive and destructive or is that the woman? Very Happy

Talk about language perogative, and is most language created by men?:whistling:

The death part of the male is to do with losing the hard-on, a fond feminist would eject. And the angst for the woman is mans death realsied, a non feminist would bear.

We expect more of love as an individual, this means as a society we may have to settle for less, or settle for more like all others, which is where valentine romance comes from, it is curbing your desire for love, as love is highly flamable.
'Why dont you buy me flowers anymore?' 'Because it wasn't me who bought them in the first place'

It is different to say things than to mean them.

Salima;
Since when are the sexes ever decorous, btu where love is afixed? Very Happy

Everyone has a need for love.
Love has a need for everyone.

So you agree love has scale?

jgweed;
What if instead of thought of "love", felt it, endured it, eated it? regardless of male or female would sexuality disapear?
Is it only sexuality that lend to gender where it comes to love?

Fido;
So you agree love is different by gender?

You cannot love property.
If you are in a relationship with 'it', it is not love.

We can love what does not love us back. It is Devine Love and Charity.

Caroline;
There is no choice, if there were love would not exist.

Elmud;
Maybe love fall sin love with us?

I hope you are not talking about romance.

@sometime sun,

KaseiJin;
Do men or women (male or female) purport, purpose, proof, purify, present love more or less than the either niether, neither nor? how would you answer for middles, at least? Very Happy

First we quickly think of love for God.
'God is love' says St John.
'Faith, hope, love, the greatest of which is love.'
But aside form love in the gendered human state takes a little faith and hope to be experienced.
The muslims have 5 kinds of love,
4 deal with God, 1; love for Allaah 2; love of that which Allaah loves 3; for the sake of Allaah 4; love for something along side Allaah.
These 4 deal with what is termed by me Divine love, and sure some deal with human affairs but they are love initialised by God-love Divine, Gift.
There is a fifth which here we are dealing with.

5; hidden, natural love which is a persons inclinations towards that which suits his nature. Human.
We are dealing in human love, gender love, love between the sexes be them same or different. Not love of materials, but of race, of human, type species specific.

We move onto your Agape (love, 'I love you'), Philias (friendship), Eros (Passion) and Storge (affectgion). yes more of these forms of love.

In 'The Four Loves' C. S. Lewis (affection, friendship, eros, charity ('I Love you' you dont need to love be back))
'And what, on the other hand, can be less like anything we believe of God's life than Need-love? He lacks nothing but our Need-love, as Plato saw, is "the son of Poverty". It is the accurate reflection in consciousness of our actual nature. We are born helpless. As soon as we ar efully conscious we discover lonliness. We need others physically, emotionally, intellectually; we need them if we are to know anything, even ourselves.'

'I cannot now deny the name love to Need-love. Every time i have tried to think the thing out along those lines I have ended in puzzles and contradictions. The reality is more complicated that I supposed.'

'Crying out for Him who can untie things that are now knotted together and tie up things that are still dangling loose.'
'I do not say that man can never bring to God anything at all but sheer Need-love. Exalted souls may tell us of a reach beyond that. But they would also, I think, be the first to tell us that those heights would cease to be true Graces, would become Neo-Platonic or finally dialbolical illusion, the moment a man dared to think that he could love on them and henceforth drop out the element of need.'

Human love.
So i suppose i am asking as much for the types and forms of love as well as if the overall capture of love is different types for different genders or unification of all types for all genders. One love. Need-love?
Does the needs of a man for love differ from that of a womans needs love fulfilled?

I suppose a question would be if you were to choose the sex of your friend, your only friend in all the world, would you prefer a guy or a gal?

@Fido,

Fido;103618 wrote:

As the great philosopher Uncle Fester said: She's a girl, and I'm a boy... We got nothing in common...

The common quality of all love is caring... You know a relationship is done when people no longer care, and just get on with their lives... As we can see, some times people say they love money, and even if they care for the money the money cannot care for them...So what is it??? Is money a sign of self love, a way of caring for ones self??? All I know is, it is not a relationship, as the love of people is, a form of relationship... We cannot really love that which does not love us back, and this is true of our relationships with people...If we love our country, but our country does not love us, then the love must die, or the relationship...

i have to disagree. i have always loved people who didnt love me, starting with my parents. sometimes it is good and sometimes bad, and sometimes i think it is a symptom of a basic wish for punishment by someone who feels they are worthless. at this point, it is a habit i cant break. or can it be true that no one can love me? or can it be true that those who do are so cruel one wouldnt know the difference between their love and their hate? do i actually attract people like this or unconsciously eseek them out?

but with a background like that, i probably dont know what i am talking about. nevertheless, i have to say that at last i have reached the point where i can consciously decide to love someone-and consciously decide to stop loving them if it becomes harmful to me. as far as the part of the need of being loved in return, i think i have successfully overcome that. companionship would be just as important maybe even more so if it was with someone who was completely compatible. and it is possible to find a person of opposite sex with whom we can have something in common-even everything. i know because i have found more than one.

---------- Post added 11-16-2009 at 06:20 AM ----------

sometimes sun-
i dont want to get into the definitions because they are only different ways of describing what you think love is.

by grades, did you mean to ask if i think there are levels of love?

i believe different people are all capable of a different extent of love and different ways of expressing and experiencing love.

as to your question, my personal choice for an only friend would be a man because i have known only one woman in my life who had the qualities that i desire in a friend. in fact, i would say she was my only friend in all my life, my forever friend. but she died.

@salima,

I appreciate your efforts, there, sometime sun. It is a bit difficult to follow your thoughts (as there is some disconnect in the language), so perhaps we should simply go with one matter at a time.

Your most recent post dealt a lot with religious belief-system themes; and the emotional expression of admiration and zeal for such, is usually expressed in the realm of that which is covered by agape (the devotional attachment to ideas and principles here).

We can be sure that the innate ability to 'feel,' and following, to express agape, will be different in degree from person to person. We can be sure that the state of having both a physical sex, and a brain sex, will prove to be immaterial. We can also be sure that agape is much more so a H. sapiens matter.

Therefore, when looking at agape, which in English would be rendered by the word 'love,' among a number of other place holders, we can most safely conclude that both sexual state and sexual orientation, have no bearing on it; being human does make a very big difference. Also, we can fairly conclude that in that agape is an emotional content/expression matter, there will be differences in the degree of that content and possible expression, from person to person; a fully diagnosed psychopath will have very little degree of agape.

Next, then, we should look at philias (phileo, philios, philos) matter. But that in another post.

@KaseiJin,

Salima;
yes yes, scale measurement definition of love, is it thick is it thin and by weight does it make it less or more. Something different by degrees rather than form or type.
The overall love which i have chosen to illustrate as Need-love in a broad sense, is it a stream that can turn into a river or is it the water by which all things on that river journey?

Sorry for your loss glad for your gain.

---------- Post added 11-17-2009 at 12:05 AM ----------

KaseiJin;
I dont have to much time to spend here tonight so will leave off with a couple of quotes on friendship (philias) from the same book 'The Four Loves' C. S Lewis, just to start with for tonight.
'To the Ancients, Frienship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all the loves; the crown of life and the school of virtue. The modern world in comparison, ignores it.'
Begs the opinion that the good old days are no more.
I agree with this but only through the medium of litterature, i can imagine that there is far more time for friendship today rather than yesterdays survival even if we choose to ignore this timing issue.

'We admit of course that besides a wife and family a man needs a few "friends". But the very tome of the admission, and the sort of acquaintanceships which those who make it would describe as "friendships", show clearly that what they are talking about has very little to do with that Philia which Aristotle classified among the virtues or that Amicitia on which Cicero wrote a book. It is something quite marginal; not a main course in life's banquet; a diversion; something that fills up the chinks on one's time. How has this come about?'
History and present anymore?

'Friendship is - in a sense not at all derogatory to it- the least natural of the loves; the least instinctive, organic, biological, gregarious and necessary. It has least commerce with our nerves; there is nothing throaty about it; nothing that quickens the pulse or turns you red and pale.'
Has our current commerce with people and new found time in our space put more importance upon what that frienship that was by these degrees lost? Dose more time mean better friends.
I agree with this, but will still say that love is still a need even if just the less necessary frienship that we have either come to settle with or revive.

@KaseiJin,

KaseiJin;103709 wrote:

I appreciate your efforts, there, sometime sun. It is a bit difficult to follow your thoughts (as there is some disconnect in the language), so perhaps we should simply go with one matter at a time.

Your most recent post dealt a lot with religious belief-system themes; and the emotional expression of admiration and zeal for such, is usually expressed in the realm of that which is covered by agape (the devotional attachment to ideas and principles here).

We can be sure that the innate ability to 'feel,' and following, to express agape, will be different in degree from person to person. We can be sure that the state of having both a physical sex, and a brain sex, will prove to be immaterial. We can also be sure that agape is much more so a H. sapiens matter.

Therefore, when looking at agape, which in English would be rendered by the word 'love,' among a number of other place holders, we can most safely conclude that both sexual state and sexual orientation, have no bearing on it; being human does make a very big difference. Also, we can fairly conclude that in that agape is an emotional content/expression matter, there will be differences in the degree of that content and possible expression, from person to person; a fully diagnosed psychopath will have very little degree of agape.

Next, then, we should look at philias (phileo, philios, philos) matter. But that in another post.

In my opinion the Greeks do not have a single thing excepting confusion to add to the subject... They did not know how to love... At some point in their history they romoved women from a point of near equality with men, and reduced them to little more than slaves...Girl babies were exposed; left in jars to be retrieved, or to die; and eventually women found they were more valueable and desirable as consorts than as wives, and the houses of the Greeks fell empty... Who can they blame??? They did it to themselves because they were able... So what did they do??? They defined love by its object...We think of the love of dogs as different from the love of people, or the love of money, or the love of knowledge... The fact is that love is a form, and a form of relationship... We can have a relationship with a dog, but no relationship with knowledge... The relationship in philosophy is through knowledge with those who value knowledge...The desire to quantify, to define love with a fine edge demonstrates a thourough misunderstanding of what it is...You can measure sugar by the grain, but love is not sugar...It is not a physical reality, but a moral reality, and a moral form...It is not an object, and it is not finite... We have it as a moral form because we cannot live without it, and the recognition of that fact, that the something we call love is essential to our lives makes us search for a hard definition... We all have to settle for what we get, and what we can observe... It is subjective, and because it is essential to life it is our object...

@Fido,

Fido;103978 wrote:

In my opinion the Greeks do not have a single thing excepting confusion to add to the subject... They did not know how to love...

Removing historical concerns from the developed and applicable linguistically locked in notions, we will find that it is irrelevant whatever happened to Greek culture, at large. The lingusitical terms hold. Also, to assert that the Greeks, en masse, did not know how to love, is not only quite unprovable a claim, but firstly requires a working definition of love. If we were to hold philias as that, then there would be no problem.

If one looks over a number Greek Lexicons, one will find at least (depending on print size and layout) some three to four pages of 'phili-' based words . . . why, think about philosophy, Philianthopi, philidelphia (the city name here) . . .

The emotion of 'phili/o' can be best described as that which is family/friend attachment and bonding love. It is that affection, admiration (to a lesser degree than, but not totally removed from, that of agape), and skinship--physcial contact and pleasant warmth. It is the space within which, with that source of the arousal of such emotion, one feels relaxed and ready to be in. It is that which one can feel as though being in the presence of a mirror (of sorts) with oneself.

Here again, just as with agape, philias does not demand any attention to physcial sex, nor mental sex (sexual orientation mentally) although there will be a degree of natural bias in its building/developing towards another. I have more female friends than I do male friends. . . and the time we spend together, the conversation we have, and the skinship we share, is quite equal to that of what I experience with my male friends, my sons, my sisters, my mother, and other relatives. The degree of philias which naturally builds towards acquaintances, of course, will vary with familiarity.

Speaking again of the above paragraph's natural bias, it will only be the case that from time to time, for reasons which somehow just can't be pinned down, just can't be put to words, we will seemingly have some aversion towards a particular person, almost from the get go. This is a natural bias, instilled through nurture much, much more than through nature, which is hard to overcome. However, this is simply expressed as a lack of the development philo (philias) towards that person. Again, sex may be a factor here, but only for the reason that the bias is a sex-linked bias--there are 'natural born ' (this is only a linguistic style, and in no way demonstrates what is known about the development of such...see above paragraph, in detail) women haters and men haters out there, you see.

It may well prove that the total of evidence we do have on hand in sexology, will fairly demonstrate that 'women-hating' will have a higher occurrence in more strongly structured patriarchal societies. If we were to actually find an Amazoness society . . .let me in !! . . .NO, I meant to say, we'd probably find a higher occurrence of 'men-hating.'

In summary, therefore, we do not find an inherent requirement for ones physical nor mental sex state, in the love which is philias.

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