Thread: Money and Love one or the other... And thoughts about Love

It seems to me that one often has to make the choice between money and love. And that to have both is often out of the question.

Personally, I never really thought that I had made this choice before, until I remembered two relationships that ended largely due to my major in mechanical engineering, which happens to represent the money side of things more than love, when you compare it to a relationship. I was too busy to really spend enough time with the other person, and further more, didn't know how to manage my time properly, which could've allowed for both to coexist.

The difficult part of the choice is our world is becoming so dependent on money, that it's one of the major goals for people now. Without money, a lot of things become much more difficult to do.

Love is always available. You can be too sick to move, dumb as a brick, and flat broke, but still in love. Money doesn't buy love, in fact, it can ward against it. How many billionaires and millionaires are actually in a loving relationship with someone who isn't in it for the money, who actually loves the billionaire or millionaire for who they are? In some cases, it's probably greed and lust holding the relationship together, not genuine love. Beauty happens to attract lust, as it is something that can be appreciated without knowing it, but to really love someone, you have to know about them.

To be together with someone, takes some level of resources to sustain both lives, which in this age, are much easier to purchase, than to find, and in many cases, both people go in separate directions to acquire whatever resources they need. This takes away from the time they can spend together, which is really what love is about. Love is about looking outward in the same direction, sharing your life / experiences with someone else, not gazing at each other. The more luxurious of a life that is desired, the more resources it takes, which in turn means more time spent acquiring these resources (in the form of money today). In this context, there is an inverse relationship between love and money.

But somewhere along the line, people started going for money first, before love, and even further down the line, some people stopped going for love completely, focusing just on the luxury and money aspect of life, possibly forgetting what love even is. This is one of the downsides to being such a technologically advanced civilization (n.b. there are many benefits to technology), the huge selection of luxuries.

One of the more recent technological luxuries that has become very popular is the TV. It is a form of experiencing almost anything while cutting out the need to move more than a single finger. It provides instant gratification for our visual desires, and if anything, hinders the development of patience.

Patience being one of the key components to any healthy relationship. If you lose your patience with someone, it often results in anger and even yelling, which clearly don't strengthen love.

I believe that looks do not matter when it comes to love, that it is what's on the inside that counts. Personally, I think I'm one strange-looking, ugly-mother-fu*ker. But when looking at yourself, of course you're going to see your own flaws. Everyone I've ever talked to can easily list off some things they're unhappy with about their bodies. Luckily, it's not even what other people think of your looks, which is nearly always a much better opinion than your own, but it is who you are that matters. It's your personality that shines through in love, not your physical form, which is always changing, and deteriorates as we age.

If anything, love gets stronger with time, not weaker. For me, the times I've fallen in what I've considered love so far (still being new at a lot of things), have started off based on physical attractiveness, but then lead to a deeper connection with who the person is as a person. It is this deeper connection to the "who" of the person, that true love is based on. If there is a connection between people on many levels, sharing lives together should not be an obstacle or something to struggle with, but a joy so far beyond words, the closest we can get to expressing it properly is with "love"

So I'd say it's best not to judge based on looks when dealing with love, as looks are but one door to the same place. And in many cases, physical attractiveness comes with emotional love, or after you get to know someone you previously weren't attracted to.

If you look for them, you can find a lesson to be learned from anything and everything. If you're unhappy with yourself, you can work to change what you're unhappy about. Our bodies adapt to what we repeatedly do, so if we change what we do, our bodies will adapt accordingly given enough time to do so. The initial transition period for anything is always rough, but once your body has made the transition (preceded by your mind making the transition), it is a lot easier to continue to live how you want to live / are living to cause whatever change you desire.