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I actually think my ideas about love were
more cynical when I was a kid.
Not so much the shades of grey, but... All the petty jealousy, backstabbing, strife, pain, and drama that can be caused by love were pretty readily evident. My own parents were quite happily married, thankfully, so this was just from observations of Other People.
But even back then, I
think I could have articulated that love is only a force for good to the extent that it encourages us to look out for other people (empathy would seem to do this better than love alone, though the two are often hand-in-hand to some degree, albeit not always.)
But what I might have failed to grasp back then is that, for good or ill, we
need love (well, most humans do—to different extents for each person on a sliding scale). It is a thing, like sunlight, that we have great difficulty living without. Not having it ultimately affects us physiologically, because we are evolved social creatures (whose psychology and physiology are inextricably linked).
As a result I'm much more sympathetic now to people who get entangled in toxic relationships or seek out love in places that seem inadvisable (whereas kid me would be quick to point out that such people are idiots). You need love from
somewhere. And so, the question becomes
how to have healthy relationships (be it romantic or platonic, I should say—I don't think humans need
romance, just love, but it seems it may sometimes be difficult to get enough love in our hands-off culture, outside of a romantic relationship)—we do need them, so the question is how to go about them. And of course a bunch of people aren't very good at it, this relationship thing, most are just normal. All the more reason I may get upset when culture encourages us to think of these relationships in ways that I think are harmful.
...Which isn't to say I'm going to stop reading trashy romance stories, but I
will gripe about them afterwards. And there are certain things that will turn me away entirely, and treating women like thier first purpose is to be objects of sexual fantasy is near the top of that list, partially because of how insidious and harmful that worldview actually is, and how pervasive it is—on bad days it feels like it's a strict majority opinion (at the very least amongst men), and that enrages me.
Edited by pokari, 08 December 2019 - 09:38 PM.