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From: tjc@hrcca.UUCP (Tom Chapin)
Newsgroups: soc.singles
Subject: Re: Re: Love before or after attraction?
Message-ID: <217@hrcca.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 13-Oct-86 00:43:52 EDT
Article-I.D.: hrcca.217
Posted: Mon Oct 13 00:43:52 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 13-Oct-86 19:14:10 EDT
References: <363@oracle.fluke.UUCP> <207@hrcca.UUCP> <256@bgsuvax.UUCP>
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> Tom Chapin writes
> > My experience has been that friendship and sexuality are not very
> > closely connected, in fact the opposite.  If a friendship is going to
> > move to love, the sexuality and the rest were there from the beginning,
> > but put aside for whatever reasons.

And Kathi Gagan replies
> I used to think that this was  the case.  However, I have come to feel that, t
> at least for me, it is not alway so.  

Oh, ok, so I didn't say things very well.  The long term relationships I
have been in have certainly combined them, along with a number of other
things.

What I was attempting, and not too well, to say was that, for me, love
is a total relationship, while friendship is partial.  Love contains
everything that friendship does, but friendship does not contain
everything that love does.  

And so, for me, however important and valuable friendship is, it remains
a stopgap while waiting for the real thing which will combine it with
everything else.
 
 
> A real friend is the most valuable thing in the world.  Lovers can drift into
> and out of one's life.  

I don't see it this way.  For me it is friends who drift in and out.  As
for lovers--not sexual liaisons, but lovers--I have had two, one was for
five years, one for ten.  They are eternally a part of me, and even if I
am not with them they are and will always be friends.  If it is love, it
may change, but it doesn't drift.
 
> > 		I love as one ought to love - desperately
> > 						- Mlle de Lespinasse
> > 
>  What kind of love is this?  Is not part of the problem the English language?
>  When we speak of love do we mean :
>         
>         friendship?
>         infatuation?
>         lust?
> 
> Or do we mean that gentle caring in which there is no difference between
> the beloved and the self.  This indeed is rare.  
> 
> Kathi Gagen

I can't speak very well for others, but for me it means all the above,
and the last most of all.  

-- 
~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~
Tom Chapin  					{ihnp4,allegra}!hrcca!tjc

	I detest the tranquility in which I lived before I knew you.
						- Mariana Alcoforado

	Amor meus, pondus meum: illo feror, quocumque feror.
						- Augustine