What is love? There's a difference between love, and in love. I love my family. I love my cat. I love my friends. That doesn't mean I'm in love with them. So, to be in love... how do you define it? We know what love is- the border between love and in love is fairly clear. To love is to care for deeply, to be in love is... well, how do we define this? To be infatuated with someone? -No. Perhaps to risk your life for them. -No, because there are people who I just love that I'd do that for. How about.... to care more about someone than you care about yourself, or anything else. (?) Not just physically, but emotionally and mentally. You'd let them go if you had to, if it was what they needed to be happy. (*sigh*)

Now, another thought- where do you draw the line between being infatuated and being in love? Infatuation can feel like love, but it's far from it. But on the flip side of that, love is often accompanied by infatuation. (It's not always a bad thing-- so long as you're not blind to what's important.) Is infatuation a bad thing? It can be, quite often. It's good in that it gives you that feeling of being in love. Whether they admit it or not, everyone likes that feeling. What people dislike (or are afraid of) about love is the idea that the feeling will go away, or be taken away- that it will end. (If you've ever been totally and completely in love with someone, then you probably know what it's like to harbor the thought of it someday being taken away. It's almost like you're afraid to be happy and stay in love, because you feel that you should prepare yourself for the day it will all be gone. And then... when that happens (often of a result of the afore stated doubt), it hurts more than you can ever imagine.)

So, it's normal to press yourself away from love. Isn't it? It's normal to want to seclude yourself, and avoid ever being placed in such a situation a second (or third) time. With each strike, it becomes harder and harder to recover. OR, if you condition yourself each time, to be less and less involved/absorbed in each relationship, it may become easier with every turn. The only catch with that is that- you're not in love. What good is a relationship if it's meaningless? If it only exists as a therapy to your past failures? -So you can say that you're with someone, a nice someone who you care about, and with whom you have a relationship that works. That's not to say that you don't love the person, or that it's completely meaningless (contrary to the statement three lines earlier). This just means that the relationship isn't all it could be (if it's indeed capable of being more- which isn't always the case)-- and a relationship like that may very well be pointless.

So, a thought to tack onto this- what if you pursue something real (whether it be in that pointless relationship or with someone else)-- what if you pursue this deep, caring, infatuation of a relationship, the kind that makes you infinitely happy and terribly fearful... and then, you end up losing it, being hurt? What a terrible mistake you've made! Or is it? Is it truly better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? What if you've already gone through that path once? Should you go through it all over again? Are you setting yourself up for heartache? Or... does your heart ache the entire time that you're resisting it?

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