Fascinating thread and many interesting perspectives.
My take is that "love" moves through several iterations as we age. The burning passion of youth is simple; it's driven by powerful hormones and the biological imperative to perpetuate our genes. Men will mate with almost any woman that has the requisite equipment, within very broad boundaries for appearance and behaviour: Mrs. Right Now. Women will succumb to the charms of a bodice-ripping, "Harlequin" hero. Love is lust.
Throughout our younger lives we are conditioned through our experiences, values and beliefs to think the way we have been taught to and to behave in acceptable ways. This results in a unique and personal model of the world, developed through a multitude of social, cultural and familial influences. This model is conditioned through a limited lense - our experiences, so our perceptive reality is created from limited input. We refine our models. A self-fulfilling prophecy develops where our beliefs produce millions of thoughts and behaviours that support our belief system. This in turn creates many more circumstances reinforcing our model and ever more thoughts and behaviours aligned with our conditioned method of thinking and behaving. This very complex cycle is difficult to break because all situations, conditions and people not congruent with our personal reality, are filtered out by our programmed brain.
This is the "love" where we may just "click" with another or we have "great chemistry" with someone aligned with our model. But the model is so complex that universal alignment is impossible. This is the stage where women may find a man who conforms to their "romantic" model in raw form. However, conciously or sub-conciously, she feels that she can condition this man into full conformance. She will than have created her personal "Mr. Right". Meanwhile, the man is thinking: why are you trying to change me. The "love" dissolves as the futility of this is finally recognized.
Later in life, we may begin to understand that our intricate lives are simply the creations of our own thoughts, behaviours and beliefs. Personality is the complex, fractal patterns that support our unique version of reality. We are likely to perpetuate our lives, however positive or negative that may be. Hopefully though, as the hormones wane, the ego is subdued and our model becomes plastic, we realize that someone who even approximates our model is a treasure, with commonalities to be savoured but also with differences to be celebrated. We hopefully become more tolerant, less judgemental, more open to possibilities and more willing to accept that the world is alive with many parallel realities. We create the option to change life-long conditioning, aspiring now to model the best of humanity; bliss, wisdom, serenity, kindness, charity - a model that I'm convinced is the "true love" that both men and women will agree on and share.
R.R.
