must agree with Synikul here. Loving others more doesn't mean you have to love yourself less.

True. I agree. Reworded: To have love of oneself and to love another in harmony takes a measure of control. How may one go about doing this in a continuous manner throughout their life? I realize that this question can be taken in a trillion directions. I suggest that someone take one direction and we discuss that until it exhausts itself and someone bring up another facet.

The golden rule. To love others is to have that love returned to you in greater measure.

That sounds like the way a certain cultural group (the Rashaaya Bedouin) residing in Egypt operate. I'm thinking of balanced reciprocity with the potential of outgiving your giver in order to gain status/prestige (obligation of greater reward/return) from them. If this cycle continues, it continues to grow until one party is unable to meet the demand anymore and the relationship dissolves between the two parties. In the case of lovers, this is where the love would end. Are you saying that love between two people is also fated in this way?

umm....nope

Keep fluffing and I'll poke your eye out with one of these sharpened forks.

I think it depends on the degenerative state of their mind.
To begin with, something like 1 in 3 people suffer from a mental illness: depression often accounts for this, but it can be anything from Prader-Willi syndrome to dementia, making it very difficult to lump everyone with a mental illness into one group.

Peopl with depression rarely love themselves, but they can love others. However this love is not often good for either person and detrimental to the relationship, or it can be an obsession disguised as love.
I don't have experience with all depressed people on the planet but from what I have seen relationships in which one or both parties are depressed are rarely functional, and most don't last without some bind of marriage or children or fear (mental/physical abuse), and even that doesn't always hold it together.
There are though, always exceptions to any rule, and I'll probably be disagreed with on this point.

I have to go to work so I'll see if I can do some more later.

great. clarify then.

Self-love is definitely required for someone to have the capacity to love another person in a healthy manner. Those that lack a beleif that they are good, worthy individuals who are deserving of love will be at a disatvantage in many areas when it comes to their relationships with others.

Erm can't make it any clearer than the golden rule. There's no limit to it, no 'running out of love' or trying to 'outlove' each other. True love knows no bounds.

To truly love someone else, a person must first love themselves..
When they do, they can love others..
And there isn't any limit to how many people a person could love when they get to that point..

You sound like you're getting your lines out of the 'book of cliche' lines...no offense..I get you and all..and agree... but the point of this thread is to expand on the ideas and possibilities of these supposively "great phrases of wisdom" (concerning love)...

Human beings (perhaps all beings) behave a certain way to experience pleasure and/or to avoid pain. Love is just how we do this while co-existing with other humans.

So love is merely the sensations of experiencing pleasure and pain with another human being? What about pleasure and pain being "one in the same"...?

There are a lot of otherwise good people out there who have suffered from common but painful childhood traumas and regrets that leave them feeling that they are defective humans who are not worthy of being loved. Or, worse yet, they become fightened of being loved out of the possibility that they will be hurt again. It's extremely hard to work through those feelings and not everyone has that ability.

true love is what happens when your not having sex..

I still love many women.. ex's included.. Hell, i love Dy's wifey!! I won't sleep with her, but she is deserving of my love..

And yes, i know it sounds like lines from a book.. Actually, the whole thing is an adaptation from "Time Enough For Love"...
But it is factual... And the easiest way to say it...
*see my post above this one

I originally read the book back in the seventies.. And it helped me through those trying HS years..
Hmmm, come to think of it, i still miss Laura from my freshman-junior years.. Never got together with her, but if anyone i have known deserved love, she did....
She had this tendancey to write cursive backwards.. *sighs*

I've thought about something like that myself. I would agree that Love is tied together with pain, the emotion is so strong that it can't help but evoke the feeling no matter how pure and honest the relationship. Not only that but I have come to beleive that there is a high probability that you will be hurt by your partner in the end. Most likely unintentionally. So for me, the question is if the emotional turmoil that love brings and the likelyhood of being hurt is worth the positive aspects of sharing yourself with someone else.

I hope I didn't do anything to your post Quiet...... I accidently clicked the edit button instead of the quote button.

Two demerits for you.....

The biggest harm to love is jeleousy.. That is the insecurity aspect of love.. Means you need to look at yourself again and find out why..

Concerning to Love Oneself

Finally.. something I can work with that's without "snarkyness"...Thank you.

I agree. Now to find a balance amongst all this chaos is what? Impossible? Why does our judgement of self-love (what it is to love oneself properly) seem to be overwhelmed, and in a lot of cases, won over, by extreme actions of lust and jealous charades and cold abuse?

How do we juggle this inherited masochist in all of us? I'm generalizing that we're all masochists purely for the sake of arguement, mind you...

Being in control of one's senses and decisions in terms of love and maintaining a healthy lifestyle concerning things like school, our jobs, etc seems to be one of the "distractions" and/or "reliefs" from these feelings. But, which is which (distractions or relief) and how can we know when to go back to giving our Love it's rightful attention? What are healthy ways to do so? Furthermore, is this where a partner comes in to play?

LOL snarkyness.... i like that...

So do you actually want a logical definition of love and it's aspects?? And how to deal with those 'aspects' in a logical manner...
I can attempt that if it's what your looking for...