Hit by love

HarryHoskins · Feb 8, 2012

Hi Ya'll!

There is always the possibility that this may be a cupid question but I believe in balance so I have to post it to even things out.

It [the question] is: What do a human body and mind do when it is hit by one or more instances of love? Movies show us bells, whistles, fireworks and sometimes even people being knocked off their feet. I am thinking of Dirty Dancing when a man loves his lady so much that he does the special move in the lake and properly sweeps her off her feet (with her help). I think in the real this is impossible!

What do you think about this doubt?

amrose · Feb 8, 2012

I don't think I understand the question. Are you asking what physical/chemical/biological reactions people have when in love? What doubt?

job · Feb 8, 2012

I'm with amrose . . . not sure what you're asking about.

HarryHoskins · Feb 9, 2012

amrose said:
I don't think I understand the question. Are you asking what physical/chemical/biological reactions people have when in love? What doubt?

job said:
I'm with amrose . . . not sure what you're asking about.

I'm with Amrose & Job -- whilst this thread had plenty of ideas behind it, it was mis-judged and poorly executed. My apologies. Still, if you'll forgive my false start, I'll give it another go.

I'm interested in people sharing how romantic love has affected them physiologically, psychologically, emotionally and intellectually. I am also interested in people comparing and contrasting how love in the 'real' world and love in the world of fiction differ or are the same.

Hope that makes more sense.

Stacia Kane · Feb 10, 2012

HarryHoskins said:
I'm interested in people sharing how romantic love has affected them physiologically, psychologically, emotionally and intellectually. I am also interested in people comparing and contrasting how love in the 'real' world and love in the world of fiction differ or are the same.

Hope that makes more sense.

Love in the real world and love in fiction should be the same as far as how they make you feel/what they reveal to you about yourself/etc. Fiction is about telling the truth.

job · Feb 10, 2012

Well ... genre Romance tends to be 'courtship stories'. One can write this as the 'butterflies in your stomach' moment, famous from all those post cards with big-eyed kittens. One can write it as 'I want to jump his bones' and go on to fluid dynamics and hydraulic systems.

Best way to see how people describe either of these is to grab up some recent genre Romance and see how the author treats this.

Love is buying a rose for your girlfriend. Or love is holding her hair back while she vomits in the toilet at week 14 of the pregnancy. It's admiring his strong many chest as he lifts you into his arms for a first passionate kiss. It's also admiring his stringy, scrawny chest as he lifts his grandchild into the pool to teach her how to swim. You can see how these have quite different physiological and intellectual sequelae.

When you talk about love, it encompasses the vast panoply of all human emotion and thought. A whole book isn't enough to examine even one love story.

Lil · Feb 10, 2012

job said:
Well ... genre Romance tends to be 'courtship stories'. One can write this as the 'butterflies in your stomach' moment, famous from all those post cards with big-eyed kittens. One can write it as 'I want to jump his bones' and go on to fluid dynamics and hydraulic systems.

Best way to see how people describe either of these is to grab up some recent genre Romance and see how the author treats this.

Love is buying a rose for your girlfriend. Or love is holding her hair back while she vomits in the toilet at week 14 of the pregnancy. It's admiring his strong many chest as he lifts you into his arms for a first passionate kiss. It's also admiring his stringy, scrawny chest as he lifts his grandchild into the pool to teach her how to swim. You can see how these have quite different physiological and intellectual sequelae.

When you talk about love, it encompasses the vast panoply of all human emotion and thought. A whole book isn't enough to examine even one love story.

Ah,job, I do enjoy your posts.

JustJas · Feb 11, 2012

job said:
Well ... genre Romance tends to be 'courtship stories'. One can write this as the 'butterflies in your stomach' moment, famous from all those post cards with big-eyed kittens. One can write it as 'I want to jump his bones' and go on to fluid dynamics and hydraulic systems.

Best way to see how people describe either of these is to grab up some recent genre Romance and see how the author treats this.

Love is buying a rose for your girlfriend. Or love is holding her hair back while she vomits in the toilet at week 14 of the pregnancy. It's admiring his strong many chest as he lifts you into his arms for a first passionate kiss. It's also admiring his stringy, scrawny chest as he lifts his grandchild into the pool to teach her how to swim. You can see how these have quite different physiological and intellectual sequelae.

When you talk about love, it encompasses the vast panoply of all human emotion and thought. A whole book isn't enough to examine even one love story.

I agree with job that "a whole book isn't enough to examine even one love story."

Romance novels and films focus on the first phase of love when hormones and temperatures are running high. Do these moments of passion and fireworks exist in the real world? Absolutely. A new romance really does create a feeling of being 'high' (at least in my experience). The whole world looks different, you walk down the street with a spring in your step and the birds in the trees seem to be singing just for you. You think constantly about your love and count down the seconds until you'll be together for your next 'fix.'

But let's be honest and admit that these moments are based mostly on lust, not love. Love takes time to grow and is not dramatic and exciting in the same way that lust is. If the romance is more than physical it is what is left when the drama and excitement of lust have faded away (as they inevitably do). It provides a foundation to build a life together, and if the foundation is strong it will survive all the disappointments and hurdles that life throws in your way.

How does it feel you ask? The best way I can think to describe it is that it feels like "home." When you are in the arms of someone you love it's like you are in the most secure, warm, happy place you can be and you know this is where you belong. You can let down the facade you put on for the rest of the world because at home you are loved and cherished just the way you are.

Hope this helps answer your question!

HarryHoskins · Feb 12, 2012

Thank you all for your answers on writing and on a more personal level.

After reading the replies so far and hearing about the distinction between lust/infatuation and a more developed or mature love I'd like to add an extra question.

Is love simply need?

I'd also like to engage with the below response further.

Stacia Kane said:
Love in the real world and love in fiction should be the same as far as how they make you feel/what they reveal to you about yourself/etc. Fiction is about telling the truth.

I think you are right, SK -- but this raises all sorts of philosophical and genericific questions for me.

If 'Fiction is about telling the truth' does this mean fiction which doesn't seek to tell the truth isn't actually fiction? And -- if it isn't fiction, (by the reversal of your maxim) then is it truth? And -- if it is truth, does it mean that truth is about telling lies?

Is the reversal of the 'Fiction being about truth' maxim more about exposing the avoidance of truth both in everyday 'real' life and in fiction that doesn't represent truth in some way? Is the maxim, rather than being a helpful writing edict, telling us that we can't accept truth in any other format than a fictional lie and that our everyday communications are, in fact, all dishonest?

If this is the case, how can I even trust what I am writing? How does one get to the truth of emotion when it would seem the natural human condition is to lie to everyone including oneself?

On the plus side, this creation of opposites, this world of reversals and landscape of reflections would indicate to me that when [name redacted] told me she hated me outside the [name redacted] on a cold December night in 1998, she was, in fact, telling me she loved me.

These thoughts lead me to an ask another question.

If one is hit by love, does one start to wear body armour after the first instance? And does this body armour do something to reverse the perception of love? Does it become something wounding rather than something healing?

Cathy C · Feb 13, 2012

I will presume you meant this as a serious philosophical question and will treat it as such.

I think you're confusing the concept of 'truth' as the opposite of 'lie', with 'truth' as a reflection of reality. What Stacia meant was that fiction was meant to be believed as an alterate reality. Otherwise, there would be no categories other than memoirs or non-fiction.

So,

Love in the real world and love in fiction should be the same as far as how they make you feel/what they reveal to you about yourself/etc. Fiction is about telling the truth.

means that love in fiction should be every bit as believable as what happens in real life. Or the reader WON'T believe it. It must be true to the emotions humans have in order to make the reader feel the emotions while reading. Romance fiction isn't just a matter of telling the reader the people are falling in love. It's a matter of making the reader fall in love too.

As for this question:

On the plus side, this creation of opposites, this world of reversals and landscape of reflections would indicate to me that when [name redacted] told me she hated me outside the [name redacted] on a cold December night in 1998, she was, in fact, telling me she loved me.

If that person had once loved you, then in a way--yes. If she had previously told you she loved you and abruptly hated you, then that reversal was likely because of a betrayal of trust. She loved you enough to hate you. Love and hate are very close. What was once love can be made hate through anger or hurt. Sometimes it can be healed (which is frequently a conflict in romance fiction, BTW) and the reader wants it to be healed because such a healing can also happen in real life.

Does that make sense.

RichardGarfinkle · Feb 13, 2012

HarryHoskins said:
Thank you all for your answers on writing and on a more personal level.

After reading the replies so far and hearing about the distinction between lust/infatuation and a more developed or mature love I'd like to add an extra question.

Is love simply need?

I'd also like to engage with the below response further.

I think you are right, SK -- but this raises all sorts of philosophical and genericific questions for me.

If 'Fiction is about telling the truth' does this mean fiction which doesn't seek to tell the truth isn't actually fiction? And -- if it isn't fiction, (by the reversal of your maxim) then is it truth? And -- if it is truth, does it mean that truth is about telling lies?

Is the reversal of the 'Fiction being about truth' maxim more about exposing the avoidance of truth both in everyday 'real' life and in fiction that doesn't represent truth in some way? Is the maxim, rather than being a helpful writing edict, telling us that we can't accept truth in any other format than a fictional lie and that our everyday communications are, in fact, all dishonest?

If this is the case, how can I even trust what I am writing? How does one get to the truth of emotion when it would seem the natural human condition is to lie to everyone including oneself?

On the plus side, this creation of opposites, this world of reversals and landscape of reflections would indicate to me that when [name redacted] told me she hated me outside the [name redacted] on a cold December night in 1998, she was, in fact, telling me she loved me.

These thoughts lead me to an ask another question.

If one is hit by love, does one start to wear body armour after the first instance? And does this body armour do something to reverse the perception of love? Does it become something wounding rather than something healing?

I apologize for the dogmatic tone of the following pronouncements.

Love isn't need. Love is sharing life with someone.

Fiction should be a guide to reality, but not necessarily a depiction of it. Sometimes the best way to get a sense of something is to get a new or a distant perspective. Fiction can make it easier to take a step back from the immersion in life we all experience and get a new view of it. In this way, the strangest of fiction can often provide a deep insight into the most basic of reality.

amrose · Feb 13, 2012

RichardGarfinkle said:
Fiction should be a guide to reality, but not necessarily a depiction of it. Sometimes the best way to get a sense of something is to get a new or a distant perspective. Fiction can make it easier to take a step back from the immersion in life we all experience and get a new view of it. In this way, the strangest of fiction can often provide a deep insight into the most basic of reality.

This post is also endorsed by amrose.

As to trusting the honesty of your writing when it is a human tendancy to lie to oneself as brough up by the OP...

I don't think it's possible to write well (I'm not talking about the technical aspects of craft) if you are not in touch with who you are. It's not the words you're writing that are true or false, but the feeling behind them.

Before I ever completed anything longer than a short story, I used to attempt novels and there would come a point during the first draft where I would just get angry. My character would go on a tirade and I would stop. Usually I wouldn't go back to draft. I didn't understand why that happened. I knew I had strong feelings and I knew the reasons behind them, but I was keeping everything at an intellectual distance.

That comes across in the writing. And when I stopped "lying" and the emotions came through, that was scary.

I think it's pretty impossible not to learn a general "something" about an author when you read their work. Maybe nothing specific, but an impression, anyway.

RichardGarfinkle · Feb 13, 2012

amrose said:
This post is also endorsed by amrose.

As to trusting the honesty of your writing when it is a human tendancy to lie to oneself as brough up by the OP...

I don't think it's possible to write well (I'm not talking about the technical aspects of craft) if you are not in touch with who you are. It's not the words you're writing that are true or false, but the feeling behind them.

Before I ever completed anything longer than a short story, I used to attempt novels and there would come a point during the first draft where I would just get angry. My character would go on a tirade and I would stop. Usually I wouldn't go back to draft. I didn't understand why that happened. I knew I had strong feelings and I knew the reasons behind them, but I was keeping everything at an intellectual distance.

That comes across in the writing. And when I stopped "lying" and the emotions came through, that was scary.

I think it's pretty impossible not to learn a general "something" about an author when you read their work. Maybe nothing specific, but an impression, anyway.

I mostly agree, although one of the things that one can discover particularly reading fiction from the past few centuries is the blind spots people have.

Reading very good writers from the past reveals massive blind spots, particularly in cultural prejudices (sexism, racism, and classism being rampant).

I often wonder what blind spots I'm carrying around that (if my writing survives) someone will see a long time from now. It's a useful caution particularly if I'm feeling overly self-aware.

HarryHoskins · Feb 14, 2012

Cathy C said:
I think you're confusing the concept of 'truth' as the opposite of 'lie', with 'truth' as a reflection of reality. What Stacia meant was that fiction was meant to be believed as an alterate reality. Otherwise, there would be no categories other than memoirs or non-fiction.

You're right, I confused the saying 'Artists use lies to tell the truth' with SK's 'Fiction is about telling the truth.' Still, I must say there was, for me, some interesting ground to be covered in the mistake.

Confusion aside, the below makes a lot more sense to me now.

Cathy C said:
... love in fiction should be every bit as believable as what happens in real life. Or the reader WON'T believe it. It must be true to the emotions humans have in order to make the reader feel the emotions while reading. Romance fiction isn't just a matter of telling the reader the people are falling in love. It's a matter of making the reader fall in love too.

The last sentence in the above is particularly interesting to me. In a romance, who is the reader meant to fall in love with? the protagonist, the couple/triple/quadruple, the book, the story Or are they meant to experience the sensations of falling in love vicariously? Is there a particular book that is reknowned for showing this, or is it a more personal thing between individual reader and individual book?

Cathy C said:
If that person had once loved you, then in a way--yes. If she had previously told you she loved you and abruptly hated you, then that reversal was likely because of a betrayal of trust. She loved you enough to hate you. Love and hate are very close. What was once love can be made hate through anger or hurt. Sometimes it can be healed (which is frequently a conflict in romance fiction, BTW) and the reader wants it to be healed because such a healing can also happen in real life.

Does that make sense.

I think a lot of things (though not all) that are binary are bent round into a ring rather than lying on a flat graph. So love being close to hate, just as super-coolness is close to super-geekness, makes sense to me.

With regard to this binary ring, could one write a romance in which dysfunctional love -- lets term it sick love -- was the central theme. Would it still be a romance? Or would it move into drama?

RichardGarfinkle said:
Love isn't need. Love is sharing life with someone.

Interesting point, RG. If love is about sharing, then love is about the 'we' and not the 'I'. Therefore, could one say those who believe that love is need are selfish and those who believe love is about sharing are more selfless. Also, I once read -- though I forget where -- that love and sex were the suspension of disgust. Does anyone agree with this statement and, could it -- alongside TG's earlier ideas -- also explain the quick switch from love to hate in so many relationships?

RichardGarfinkle said:
Fiction should be a guide to reality, but not necessarily a depiction of it. Sometimes the best way to get a sense of something is to get a new or a distant perspective. Fiction can make it easier to take a step back from the immersion in life we all experience and get a new view of it. In this way, the strangest of fiction can often provide a deep insight into the most basic of reality.

I'd say that's a pretty good description of one of the defining characteristics of art.

amrose said:
As to trusting the honesty of your writing when it is a human tendancy to lie to oneself as brough up by the OP...

I don't think it's possible to write well (I'm not talking about the technical aspects of craft) if you are not in touch with who you are. It's not the words you're writing that are true or false, but the feeling behind them.

Before I ever completed anything longer than a short story, I used to attempt novels and there would come a point during the first draft where I would just get angry. My character would go on a tirade and I would stop. Usually I wouldn't go back to draft. I didn't understand why that happened. I knew I had strong feelings and I knew the reasons behind them, but I was keeping everything at an intellectual distance.

That comes across in the writing. And when I stopped "lying" and the emotions came through, that was scary.

Now this is just straight-up fascinating. I think what you are saying here is that the core truth of a person is their emotional intelligence rather than their logical intelligence.

Perhaps I'm confusing what you are saying, but if not I can see some truth in this. That is to say, I imagine emotion and feeling came before thought and language (anyone know if this is the case?). However, at the same time, one could say that emotions -- especially something as powerful as love, are a kind of madness that blinds intellectual logic. So are we left with, at our core, a kind of mad truth that is based on chemical reactions and visual cues to another person. Is this is so, does it explain why so many relationships are dysfunctional at a logical level and have I just answered my own question about whether a 'sick love' story is actually a romance?

amrose said:
I think it's pretty impossible not to learn a general "something" about an author when you read their work. Maybe nothing specific, but an impression, anyway.

So, if you're writing with emotional honesty, I can definitely see this as true as to get that honesty one needs to draw on ones own experience. I think this, to a certain extent, is also true about even the most self-aware and logical author as they will at some stage be riding their subconscious.

I wonder if this extends to a persons normal and non-fiction writing too? For example, I am getting the impression from peoples writing in this thread that they all, apart from me, think me rather lovely and marvelous.

JustJas · Feb 14, 2012

This thread raises some interesting points, most of which are way over my head so I'm just going to back up a few steps and hope the OP doesn't mind.

I notice that everyone seems to agree that fiction is about telling the truth...Not the actual truth, but the emotional truth. I agree with this. The best fiction does provide insight into emotional reality. There is nothing that makes me close a book faster than a story that doesn't "ring true" for me.

Saying that though, I have to point out that romantic fiction is also about lying. The whole HEA is a lie. There's no such thing in the real world. Real life doesn't follow a formula where couples meet, feel an attraction / fall in love and then some obstacle/s keep them apart until they are finally reunited.

I know it's insulting people's intelligence to claim readers can't tell the difference between fiction and reality, but do romances gives women false expectations about finding love?

There's this great old book called The Female Quioxte about a young woman in the 18th century who spends her life reading romance novels and then misinterprets every encounter she has with a male because of her warped view. I've often wished that someone would write a modern day version where a woman raised on romcoms must face up to the fact that the hero is a complete loser and there is no HEA. That would be much closer to the 'truth' in my jaded opinion.

Ralyks · Mar 16, 2012

JustJas said:
There's no such thing in the real world. Real life doesn't follow a formula where couples meet, feel an attraction / fall in love and then some obstacle/s keep them apart until they are finally reunited.

Sure it does. It's just that the obstacles are mundane and typically keep them apart for an hour or maybe a day. Then repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat...for twenty years.

The thing about romantic fiction is that it almost always ends with the beginning. It does not tell the whole story. It is not a story about what love is like. It is a story about what falling in love is like, and, in real life, the amount of time we spend falling in love, in comparison to the amount of time we spend loving, is typically miniscule. So it tells a truth, but it tells a truth about the splash and not the ocean. And maybe it does inspire women to keep seeking splash after splash so that they never see the ocean, but I think, in a greater number of cases, it just keep them entertained and afloat while they're already in the ocean.

Nightmelody · Mar 16, 2012

Here are some statistics that might be of interest--romance readership demographics.

http://www.rwa.org/cs/readership_stats

Slightly more than half are married or with a significant other. Mean age is well into the forties. So I would imagine few of these women, who probably are married, or have been married, or have had other serious love relationships by their forties--I doubt they are overlooking ordinary men in favor of Fabio-esque billionaires. That is a common view of romance readers, though.

I think they are looking for a few hours of indulging in an engaging, intriguing story. Like in other genres of fiction, romance readers are easily able to tell real life from fantasy.

Back to the OP and True Love/ Love at First Sight stuff. When I was young(college aged) I was always 'falling in love'.

When I was a college freshman I had a new boy friend I was pretty crazy about--he was very romance cover handsome. I can remember walking into the college library, he was at the card file, he looked up, saw me, smiled, and the sunlight hit his beautiful green eyes and they seemed to twinkle. My heart skipped a beat, not kidding!

I didn't marry him, we broke up, I tore up my diary and got drunk, all very college girl stuff. While he was very attracive, as time went by we liked completely different activities. He was going to be a lawyer. I was a drama major.

At my 21st B-day party, still in college, a guy I knew as a friend--I thought he was funny-- gave me a big old b-day kiss. A toe tingler. Skipped beats. Funny, he was really cute, I'd just never noticed. Insta love, we dated for a year then broke up. He was going to be a lawyer.

About ten years later I was at a wedding reception at a mountain lodge, and saw a guy friend I knew well in college across this big room(he is really tall.) He was laughing with a mutual friend and I knew--That's the man I'm going to marry! My heart again skipped a beat. True story. But before we got married I had to get out of a relationship with a spoiled trust fund baby, not so romantic--trust fund baby never once made my heart skip a beat in fours years. I should have known. As soon as I was free, we dated a couple times, got engaged and married 6 months later.

The first time my father saw my mother, dressed in a yellow suit with gloves(it was the forties)--someday I'll blog their first meet, cute story-- he told his dad, "That's the girl I'm going to marry." Married 52 years.

My sister met her husband at age 15 and never looked at another guy. He was cruising Main street in a cool car, plus looked like Bon Jovi back in the day with the blond fluffy layers. They married at age 18. Sadly, he died a couple years ago, very suddenly. They had 32 years and were happy, full of plans.

I know all those were examples of attraction, but so many couples start there before sifting through the pros and cons as they get to know each other better. In romance novels the cons are more interesting than real life cons--like the green eyed boyfriend who turned out to be so dull, or my trust fund baby who needed a! lot! of attention and spent most of the winter on the ski slope(I don't like skiing.) Romance novel cons are the obstacles that get solved on the way to HEA.

elindsen · Mar 18, 2012

JustJas said:
Saying that though, I have to point out that romantic fiction is also about lying. The whole HEA is a lie. There's no such thing in the real world. Real life doesn't follow a formula where couples meet, feel an attraction / fall in love and then some obstacle/s keep them apart until they are finally reunited.

I would strongly have to disagree with this. My husband and I met, felt instant attraction and fell in love all within six weeks. We met online so he had to fly back 2,500 miles (obstacle that kept us apart) and then after six months we were finally reunited.

Not saying I have this fairytale wedding, although I feel I do, just saying it does happen in life. Fiction is not totally a lie. It, romance included, is based on real life.

randi.lee · Mar 18, 2012

RichardGarfinkle said:
Fiction should be a guide to reality, but not necessarily a depiction of it. Sometimes the best way to get a sense of something is to get a new or a distant perspective. Fiction can make it easier to take a step back from the immersion in life we all experience and get a new view of it. In this way, the strangest of fiction can often provide a deep insight into the most basic of reality.

I back this as well. Also, some people read fiction because they want to be transferred to a world bigger, greater and more satisfying than their own. This includes the exaggeration of different elements of real life, such as the sweep-her-off-her-feet perfect love-love romances. They certainly aren't for me, but I'm just one voice.

Hit by love

HarryHoskins

Straw-fed

amrose

is Envy Augustine

job

In the end, it's just you and the manuscript

HarryHoskins

Straw-fed

Stacia Kane

Girl Detective

job

In the end, it's just you and the manuscript

Lil

JustJas

HarryHoskins

Straw-fed

Cathy C

Ooo! Shiny new cover!

RichardGarfinkle

Second Edition and Second Laughter

amrose

is Envy Augustine

RichardGarfinkle

Second Edition and Second Laughter

HarryHoskins

Straw-fed

JustJas

Ralyks

Untold stories inside

Nightmelody

elindsen

Zombie lovin'

randi.lee

Certified Non-Genius