Is friendship necessary for romantic love?

At AskPhilosophers there is a question about love and friendship .

Is friendship necessary for romantic love? Is sexual attraction necessary for romantic love?

Alan Soble answers it no and yes .

I think the "no" answer is right, but that is because I tend to think of friendship along the lines of perhaps Aristotle and C.S. Lewis, while my understanding of romantic love places more emphasis on the "romantic" than on the "love" (were that not the case, there might well be something pointed in the question after all). I might go farther and claim that friendship and romantic love are incompatible, or tend to diffuse or undermine each other.

Nicholas D. Smith says that yes it is necessary.

First, although I think there are probably many different instantiations of what we might reasonably call "romantic love," I am also inclined to think that these--like instantiations of "human being" might be flawed in certain ways. A flawed human being (morally, physically, aesthetically, or medically) is still a human being. But if one asks, do human beings have two legs, I think the right answer is still "yes" even if not all actual human beings happen to have two legs. That is because when a human being does not have two legs, we do not think of their condition as the ideal--all other things equal, we would all prefer to have two legs, rather than none, one, or more than two. So I take your question not to be about whether there could be some romantic relationships in which those in the relationship were not friends, but rather whether a romantic relationship in which those in the relationship were friends would be part of our description of an ideal version of such a relationship. So...yes, certainly, I think that friendship is necessary for (an ideal of) romantic love, and I would regard an example of a "romantic love" in which this was lacking as a flawed example of such love.

In my opinion , it is not necessary . Love is more than friendship .There are certain areas where friendship and love overlaps but love involves more than those areas.

Silent Love

I see them everyday . Talking with each other without words .They talk with eyes.They talk with gestures .And it seems pure.Purer than what i see in the eyes of couples on bike . There is a joy .They are expressing love without saying a single word. And this love make me smile .This love make me feel a part of their love .

Everyday in the morning i go to fruit -juice shop . There i saw a girl and a boy talking with each other with hand gestures. The girls talks a lot (like always).She use a variety of hand gestures and boy just smile and sometimes say something .I enjoy seeing them talk in such a lovely way .

Death of my loved one - part 1

Two years ago ,something happened in my life which changed a lot of things in my life .I was not able to sleep for some days .Everything I had in my life I lost that day . Since then ,i have seen a lot but when you loose something you loose it.

So what happened that day .?It was a good day . Little cold than usual days . I wake up in the morning .I started my computer . It showed boot error . I thought may be i forget to connect power cable or bus correctly ,so i tried again to connect hard disk . But even after trying for next half hour , i was not able to get past boot error screen.

After spending next 2 hours at my friends computer to check whether it will work there or not and doing all error checking , i realized this :" My hard -disk has crashed " . I know that it has crashed but i refused to believe it for some time . It is law of nature that all hard -disk will crash one day .Still no body thinks that this will happen to his hard -disk .

All softwares , all songs , all games gone in one second . But it was not only for them i was crying .I was crying for my 20 movies that i have stored in my hard - disk . Those movies that i have collected form various pirated CDs and friend's HD . I have stored them safely so that i will watch them when i will have time. For last one year i was collecting movies .Always collecting movies thinking that when i will get time from my studies i will watch them with my friends . But i never got time . All time that i had i spent in collecting movies ,songs ,softwares and games

And what i lost was memories . Memories of my efforts .My collection of songs and software was
something to show others . Whenever a person came to my room .,i always tried to show him all softwares i had , knowing well that he don't know what they are . My hard disk stand for what i was . Now i have lost everything .

I had more than 5000 songs . I have hardly listened half of them .Still i stored them . Why ? Because i can . Because all my friends use to store a lot of songs . I stored songs in various languages . Punjabi , garwhali , tamil ,kumaoni ,bengali etc . Why ? i used to think that one day someone will come to my room and ask me do i have song in this language .And i always wanted to have everything .

I had hundreds of softwares . Most i never used . Some i thought i will use in future .Some i had stopped using .Still i stored them as i did not want to loose them . It was junk for others but for me it was organized .I used to think that one day i will learn flash so i had all flash versions . I had adobe photoshop though i never tried learning it apart from trying to morph aishwarya rai with me .

I had thousands of wallpapers . Wallpapers i have never seen .I know that i will never see them .I will never use them for desktop .Still I stored them . They were collection for me .They stood for my ego .And with crash of my hard disk , my ego crashed .

I spent next two days crying ,thinking and dreaming about hard disk . Every body around me knows that my hard disk has crashed . I don't know how many more days i would have cried if i had not seen this dream .

(To Be Continued )

Love at first sight

What is love at first sight ? Is there any such thing or it is just a romantic dream ?

Lets see what happen when we see a person . He/she may look attractive to us . Now what is the next step ?It depends on whether there is any communication between them or not.

1. In case of no communication we forget him/her . Sometimes we remember , but with time new faces replace him/her.
2. Sometimes a good conversation may happen . Both will feel attracted toward each other . Now they may spend some time with each other and share their feelings. After some time , they realize that the relation is not going smooth for one or other reason and they call it off. In such cases we generally call it crush or infatuation .
   
3. But it may happen that the person involved keep on having a good relation , with time they realize they are in love . And now comes the declaration of love .

Now if we will backtrack the third case we can proclaim such love as Love at first sight .

A beautiful zen story

There was a little boy living far away from in a village..He had no friends..His dad brought him a pet turtle to play with.

Soon the turtle became his best friend and soul mate. He was with the turtle whole day.

One cold morning he noticed that the turtle was not moving and had recoiled in shell whole day it dint come out. Father finally thought he was dead. The boy was devastated. Totally in shambles.

Father could not not see his little boy suffer. So devised a plan to divert his attention. Father told the son to make a big funeral for his turtle. Bring flowers , make arrangements , call people . "come on , start to work" said father.

The boy set about in the arrangements totally focused to have the best funeral possible for his turtle.

The evening came..the boy had worked very hard for the funeral .He was so excited about it. So many people ..little kid. Suddenly in the middle the turtle popped his head out! He wasn't dead at all!

The little boy stopped in his tracks looked at all the arrangements and people gathered..he was so excited. And suddenly the turtle popped his head out! Dismayed he looked at his father and said

"Papa.. can we kill it? "


Moral:

" Is it you I love, or is it the joy I get from loving you?"

GIRLS ARE BEAUTIFUL AND GENTS ARE INTELLIGENT

Someone posted a thread in Orkut with this question ::why we see that "GIRLS ARE BEAUTIFUL AND GENTS ARE INTELLIGENT " ?

I replied in this manner ::

I don't think "GIRLS ARE BEAUTIFUL AND GENTS ARE INTELLIGENT " is true even if you generalize it.

You can call anyone beautiful or intelligent depending upon your definition .We generally find us unable to express ourselves correctly so in simple terms we say "hey that girl is beautiful" , we may mean different at that time . But beautiful encompasses a lot of qualities.

similarly for intelligent . Whom will you call intelligent ? But what you seem to say ( as I think) that boys have more logical skills. That is a biological fact . Similarly girls have better communication skills.

one more reason why we find girls beautiful is because that is our nature . To search for a girl. May b girls don't find other girl as much beautiful as we find them

BTW , the person with highest IQ in the world is a female .

I have thought a lot about intelligence and beautiful . One of the reason is that I have been called intelligent sometimes (really) and I have been asked many times " hey is that girl beautiful ?"( my answer is always no ) .

and what is intelligence ? It is very easy to give some rules for determining it , but it will never be complete . It is very important to see things in their relative frame . Nothing is absolute .

We say someone getting 90% is intelligent . Is that so ? That is more capacity to remember and write articulately . We generally think in short-term , so a decision which may look intelligent now may not look in long-term . What will we call such decisions . And most importantly , what about persons who renounce everything they have and follows a different path . was Buddha intelligent?

and beautiful . What is beauty ? Everybody has his/her own concept of beauty . Even if we will keep definition of beauty strictly physical , at different times ,at different places , different people have defined it in their own way . This is too much of stereotyping.

Living alone

I love living alone . Dreaming and think about this and that . It gives me time to
understand things that are happening around me .

But for last few weeks it has become a problem . Maybe I need change or maybe it is just a phase . But these days I am not living my life . Instead of flowing like water it is drifting slowly and slowly.

Life can be very dull or life can be exciting . It all depends on what you want .Maybe change is all that I want . When you want change in your life , all you need is a trigger . Everything you have built in past few years will change .

A new start , going into uncertainty . That is life . Unknown .. Uncertain ...Fun..

sex and god

google trends is a new feature added by google in its ever-developing list of giving people new ways to search and see information . It provides normalized results for a query term and you can see how people all across the globe are searching .

i tried to find new ways of using it . One of the most common search is sex . I tried to compare various terms with sex , but sex was too dominant . One interesting result is comparing sex with god . Sex wins .

At last gauri comes with a term that defeated sex ( at least in india) . guess what ? It is india .

choosing a wife

One of my freinds asked me which type of girl you would like to marry . i told her that i dont have any specific list . i would like to know the girl and love her for what she is .

But some of my freinds have a list of features their wife should have . These are

1. loyalty
2. loving
3. should give respect to his parents

Above is the most sought after qualities . Some want working wife while some prefer house wife . For some the list includes intelligence also , though it is not a priority.

This page gives some more qualities of a gud wife based on bible !

This link adds some more qualities based on Islam like character , child-bearing , virginity etc.

girls like dog

i told gauri that in general , most popular pet among girls is dog . He immediately corrected me -" no it is cat " .
so my theory of love remained unfinished . But that is a gud question . I better google it .

a luv story

my heart was beating faster than it can . i told her " i love you ".

we both looked into each other's eyes . she was first to break silence .
she replied "i dont think so " .

i wasted no more time " you should . Think " . and left.

she remain standing there wanting words and love and proof ...