True Love Essay, Research Paper

Before you are able to criticize love, you must experience the emotion first. Like Shakespeare says, It is better to have loved and lost then to never have loved at all. Some people have had good experiences with love and some have had bad experiences. Love can teach you a lot about yourself and how you interact with other people. People can share different kinds of love, but when do you know if it s for you and if it s real? You first have to understand that people interpret love different ways and that there is no one definition to sum up what love is.

In the story What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, the character, Terri, talks about the love she had shared with her former boyfriend, Ed. She explained how he loved her so much he tried to kill her. If her old boyfriend couldn t be with her he didn t want to live. He had no reason for living. He was that much in love with her. Mel, her current boyfriend, couldn t grasp that concept of love. He didn t understand how someone can be so madly in love with the other that they would die for the other person.. He thought the whole thing was crazy.

There are three types of love that can be pointed out in the story. One of them is obsessive love. Ed was so obsessed with Terri that he wanted her all to himself. He became sick in the head and did hurtful things to her and to himself. He once dragged her around their living room floor by her ankles proclaiming his love for her. He also would threaten her. Once, he even drank rat poisoning because he couldn t bare the thought of living with out her. It s like he had so much love for her he just didn t know what to do with it all. Eventually, that drove her away.

Another type of love described in the story is sympathtic love. When Ed was rushed to the hospital for drinking rat poisoning, Terri wanted to be there right by his side. She felt so bad for him because he had no one else to care for him. She felt she should be the one to be there for him. This man was so dangerous and threatening, people would say she d be out of her mind to want to be there with him. Terri was so blinded by his ways, she didn t know better. People like Terri are so fixated on love and romance, they ll believe that person could do no harm to them. These people need to wake up and realized that this type of relationship is not healthy. This kind of love will only bring you harm by ruining your self-esteem.

The other love shared in this story was between an elderly couple. They were both in a car accident and were hurt pretty bad. The man s wife was badly hurt. Her whole body was wrapped up including her face. This hurt the man so much. All he wanted to do was see her. See her beautiful face and caress her soft skin. But he wasn t able to. This saddened the man so deeply he cried. That type of love is so emotional. It is so true and pure. The couple was connected in such a way that no one else could possibly understand. Like Mel, he had no idea how to understand this love because he never had it.

The different types of love shared throughout the story are very different. The obsessive love made Ed do things he normally wouldn t do. He inflicted pain on Terri and made her feel like a prisoner. He did such hurtful things to someone he supposedly loved so much and cared for. The sympathetic love was misleading and untrue. Terri wasn t being true to her self because she really didn t love her ex boyfriend. She only felt pity for him and she mistakened that for love. Love is not supposed to be jealous or hurtful. It s supposed to be kind, healthy and real. Like the love shared between the old coulple. It is obvious that with all the different types of love that have been explained, there is no one true definition of love. You can t define it because love is different for everyone.