Do you honestly believe love is enough?

No. Then its just called insanity. People say it but only the insane believe it.

Yes. All the other things you listed have to do with the ego getting in the way.

No, I know for sure it’s not. There has to be at the very minimum an agreement of what the relationship is and for both people to not only want that thing but be able to live it. All else is pretty much life gravy.

Love, communication, and compromise. The rest can be dealt with.

Love don’t pay the rent. :-D

Is love enough for what? You Maslow has a theory that there are a hierarchy of needs. You have to fulfill certain needs first before you can get to others. Having shelter and food is perhaps the most basic. Then comes sex. After that love and self-actualization.

The idea is that if you don’t have money, as in your example, then you can’t have love. It doesn’t go the other way around. Love can not be sustained if you do not have the things that come before it.

However, I think it is important to point out that the need for money is somewhat arbitrary. It is based on expectations. It is based on the status that one wishes to achieve in society. So if I were rewriting Maslow’s hierarchy, I would put status in there somewhere—perhaps at all levels.

One can be happy with all different amounts of material possessions. It is possible to be happy with a thatched hut and what little grain you can grow and perhaps a chicken every once in a while. It is also possible to have a large mansion and five cars and feel like that just isn’t enough.

It all depends on your reference frame, and I would argue that the relevant reference frame has to do with what you consider to be your peer group. If you are within your peer group, then you have achieved your needs for shelter and food. Then you have sufficient preconditions for love. If you fall from your current material status, then you no longer have the preconditions necessary for love, even if plenty of people are happy enough at this status level to have love.

You have two choices. You can either let yourself be happy with your current material conditions, or you can move back up to where you were. Either will allow you to have love. It also works moving up. Moving up to a new level of material good can leave you unsatisfied, simply because you do not know how to relate to people here. If you can not be happy, you can lose your love here, as well.

Love can survive the transition between different levels of material goods as long as the people can allow it to make up for any change. I.e., if the relationship is strong enough, the couple can be happy no matter how poor they are. Then they won’t beat up on each other, and the relationship can stay strong.

So I would say that love can be enough, but it isn’t always (or even often) enough. It all depends on the quality of the love. Love must be of the strongest variety in order to be enough to transition between different levels of material goods or status. If a relationship has started to come apart due to how people respond to changes in material status, then the actual transition will kill it.

On the other end of things is the question of whether love is a stepping stone to self-actualization or if it is self-actualization all on its own. In my experience, love is self-actualization. It makes me feel that all is right in my world; that I am a perfect being all by myself no matter how else I am. This is because she accepts me as such no matter what I do.

That doesn’t mean she would accept me no matter what I could do, just that she accepts me at the range of behavior I current exhibit. So as long as I am being pretty much me, and she accepts this me, I feel perfect and I feel love and I am actualized. Nothing can hurt me.

Although I have to say that social-status still plays a role. Probably as one of the preconditions at the level of material security. Social (status) security is as important, I think, as material security. Then sex, then love, then actualization.

Yes and here is proof, if the love is strong enough….....

I was a rookie cop making very little money. I was also in the National Guard, which gave us food to eat in our early years of marriage. My wife became pregnant right after our marriage.

We barely had enough money to buy baby essentials and baby food. Our baby came first. After paying the insurance, electricy and water bills, we barely had enough money for a can of VegAll each night. There was no money to wash and dry my guard uniforms, so we both cleaned them by hand, in the bathtub. To this day, I hate VegAll. I will not eat it….period.

We were thankful to have what we had. Our money may have been very low, but our love kept us afloat and carrying on for the better times. We now look back at those hardship times and it makes us appreciate the now good times.

Our baby and our love for each other, kept us going.

Oh, and did I mention the day old bread I would buy every two weeks?

Yes, but not for everyone. It’s a matter of what means most to the individuals involved.

I think the idea is if you have love, you should be able to draw from it enough strength/patience/resolve to get through life’s hurdles.

Can I flag Wundayatta’s post for being too long? :P

No, you also have to have mutual understanding, a certain degree of compatibility, and compassion (for your spouse and other people).

I believe it. But then I’ve been poor all my life, and so has my entire family, so I can live like that. Makes it easy if that’s all you know.

@FutureMemory I don’t write my posts for fans of “short attention span theater.” :P

P.S. I also think that if you love someone then you already show them all of those other things that everyone is listing. How can you say you love them if you don’t show it?

Of course not. Adults shouldn’t believe in fairy tales.

@Scarikah Unfortunately (as the high divorce rate shows) people can feel love for their spouses, but sometimes that love can be very selfish, or some of us have had the misfortune to fall in love with people with whom we have little in common. Also, love can be felt in the fiery flames of passion but still have an absence of compassion (conscious, polite, active caring for others).

One of the worst things in the world is to fall in love with someone and then find out that that person thinks that your ideas of right and wrong are all a bunch of hooey, or that they have certain habits and desires that end up making your life almost unbearable.

Lighter examples of this would be when a neatnik falls in love with a slob, or when a non-stop talker falls in love with a person who needs lots of quiet alone time, or when a hunter falls in love with a vegetarian, or when a man who doesn’t want children falls in love with a woman who’s biological clock suddenly starts ticking at full tilt when she hits 35. People fall in love with people who are not compatible with them all the time, and in those cases, love is not enough to sustain a good relationship.

Also, people can fall in love with people who they don’t really like or respect. Because it’s hard to regulate who you fall in love with.

The people that look good on paper (for each one of us that might be something different) are not necessarily the ones we fall in love with.

It depends on the people involved and I agree, a lot of it is ego.

In the early years of my marriage when times were tight my ex was a complete angry baby about circumstances. He was a passive aggressive pouter and extremely stubborn in refusing to look for and implement any creativity to the situation.

I, on the other hand, am very creative and take pleasure in many simple things.

If we couldn’t go out for a $50 dinner he refused to enjoy a picnic on the living room floor.

I could figure out how to make a great little meal out of some interesting ingredients, whip up a cake from scratch, and, with a SMILE on my face too! lol

I was able to find happiness in a package of flower seeds or re-arranging the furniture or making a pot of soup. He, on the other hand, could only feel happy when he had the means to indulge in the big ticket items likes cars, boats and pricey electronics and tools.

He was highly resentful of my simple ability to find happiness from a place of creative resourcefulness, and his killjoy attitude was certainly one component of our ultimate divorce.

Love can be enough, but it has to be healthy, authentic and mutual.

Personally I think it’s a bit of a foolish notion to believe that love is enough to make a relationship last. Love is definitely a large part of any intimate relationship but to have it grow and last it takes love, responsibility to each other, respect for one another and to some degree sex (at least in my case).

Yes all you need is love provided you already have shelter, food, clothing and health.

Love can pay the bills… if you love what you do for money

Sometimes it can be enough and your question reminds me of this very moving poem from Tang Dynasty China.

An Elegy
Yuan Zhen (779 – 831)

We joked, long ago, about one of us dying,
But suddenly, before my eyes, you are gone.
Almost all your clothes have been given away;
Your needlework is sealed, I dare not look at it….
I continue your bounty to our men and our maids—
Sometimes, in a dream, I bring you gifts.
...This is a sorrow that all mankind must know—
But not as those know it who have been poor together.

@Coloma and your answer is the reason that you would make the perfect husband for ME. Too bad we aren’t lesbians : (

No. I think mental compatibility is equally important. That’s what helps you get through the rough spots. (I mistyped combatability before I corrected it.. Good old Freud.)

Love comes in many forms.

Is romantic love enough? No, I definitely don’t think so, not for me. Is love in general, in all its various forms, from self-acceptance to family to friendship to romance enough? More than enough.

No. You also have to have whips and chains and some skill in leathercraft :-p

@ANef_is_Enuf Love, communication, and compromise. The rest can be dealt with. If you have so little to compromise with, something as little as stopping by for pints with the fellas or getting a handbag because it was 65% off and you might never get a deal that good on a bag that well for a long time, will be the match to the powder.

@wundayatta The idea is that if you don’t have money, as in your example, then you can’t have love. It doesn’t go the other way around. Love can not be sustained if you do not have the things that come before it. The idea I was alluding to more, was people seem to believe that if you didn’t have the basics, or the minimum trappings of living, that if your love was strong enough, it could mitigate those shortcomings. People always bring up how this homeless couple or that found each other or manage to stay together, etc. To say they have nothing much but they have their love to sustain them.

@john65pennington We barely had enough money to buy baby essentials and baby food. Our baby came first. After paying the insurance, electricy[sic] and water bills, we barely had enough money for a can of VegAll each night. There was no money to wash and dry my guard uniforms, so we both cleaned them by hand, in the bathtub. To this day, I hate VegAll. I will not eat it….period. Rarely, have I seen in most couples, (especially younger ones) that level of commitment. As I say, unless two people are in lockstep as you and your wife was, in like-mind on all major issues, love will not work alone. You can love someone but not be together on issues, duties, or how to spend the money. If you were not together on how putting the baby 1st and some of the money for diapers was spent on other things that might not have been that important. Then quarrels would be happening with either of you not really understanding what the flap was all about with the other.

@Coloma I was able to find happiness in a package of flower seeds or re-arranging the furniture or making a pot of soup. He, on the other hand, could only feel happy when he had the means to indulge in the big ticket big-ticket items likes cars, boats and pricey electronics and tools. Classic example. What if he thought, that you guys could not be riding around in a beater car because you would look poor, so he goes out and buys a nicer, newer car with vacation money figuring it was a good deal. If the vacation was important, because of the timing or the trouble to get the time, spending the money would jeopardize the timeframe, there could be a big fight brewing. Love might not be able to overcome the fundamental differences on how to handle money or spend it. If you both were insanely rich, he would be happy, even if you found no need to spend all you could have spent.

Hypocrisy, believe it or not, the arguements never happened. Sure, we were hungry. Sure, she and I both wanted to go out and eat just one time, but held our restraints and just tightened our belts a little tighter. Day old bread is not too bad, if you spray it with water. It brings back some of its original softness. We survived because we thought as one and made decisions for a just cause.

I denno. I doubt it. Sometimes I even wonder if love is real as we generally define it, and if it is, if it’s something beyond a byproduct of something humans do and use to chug along, rather than to set into and find peace in.

Maybe though. I loved my dad, he loved me. I didn’t seem to need to find a reason for it.

I went out with a guy that, if I didn’t love, it was close enough to love. sure felt out of this world, anyway.

I like to think love is very real and that it’s all we would need (plus a holiday) but the cynic in me keeps smacking me upside the head if I say stuff like that.

Darwin can suck it.

A money pit destroyed my relationship… An evil demon possessed house that drove me insane.

*No, not really… But the house was BAAAAD and that is the reason it actually was as bad as it was.

Yes, I suppose. I fell in love with a girl once. She didn’t love me back, that was our problem. She said she did, but she always wanted me to want to do the things that she wanted to do. So we never did the things that I wanted to do, because that would make her look like less of a cowboy, and she just wanted to fit in with the boys. And we moved to Wyoming together. Where she wanted me to look and act like everyone else there. I couldn’t do it and it just made it harder. So I left. She did admit later though that she had lost interest in me. She used those words exactly too. “That’s okay, I lost interest in you anyway.” Well, whatever, I say to that. Gah! It’s making me angry just thinking about it..