This is probably going to be a long thread, I think I've become disillusioned to the idea of romantic love, and I'd would like to have some outside perspective. I've been thinking about this topic for a while, my thoughts are pretty jumbled on the topic, so I hope as I start writing this post I can make clear my thought process on this subject. So to begin here's a video from the school of life on Arthur Schopenhauer, this video predominantly covers Schopenhauer's views on what we refer to as "love". Thanks to anyone who takes the time to read “I was gripped by the misery of life as Buddha was in his youth when he saw sickness, old age, pain and death. The truth … was that this world could not have been the work of an all-loving Being, but rather that of a devil, who had brought creatures into existence in order to delight in the sight of their sufferings.” - Arthur Schopenhauer So why am I starting with this quote, not only because its the first quote in the video, but because it ties into this next one. "There is only one inborn error, and that is the notion that we exist in order to be happy... So long as we persist in this inborn error... the world seems to us full of contradictions. For at every step, in things great and small, we are bound to experience that the world and life are certainly not arranged for the purpose of maintaining a happy existence... hence the countenances of almost all elderly persons wear the expression of what is called disappointment."  - Arthur Schopenhauer In the Western World we have an obsession with the pursuit of happiness, we are a collection of self-indulgent, individualistic societies where everything is about happiness, and specifically your happiness and that you're special. We hold this collective and childlike notion of unconditional and romantic love, that somehow, someone will love us for who we are, despite our faults and that this person will look into our soul and see the true version of who we are and love us for it and love us without condition, without hesitation. This (I believe) is bullshit, what in any way, by observing reality, would lead you to believe this, besides, I don't know, maybe a Disney movie. All love is fundamentally conditional, why? Because we are animals, as covered in the video, we are governed by what Schopenhauer refers to as the "Will to Life", but takes many different names, the Darwinian process or if you believe that god created man and the animals, god has clearly imparted us with a nature, so its gods imparted nature. It makes no difference what you call it, we are controlled by meta physical forces outside of our direct control, nature, gods will, the universe, Darwinism, blah, blah, blah... The name its given doesn't matter, what matters is what is. When does one to stop to think why one does what one does, or why one is even reading this post. The answer is, you don't, for the most part throughout our lives we are blind to why we do what we do. The only real brief lapses in this are meditation and consciousness work e.g. psychedelic experiences. In the becoming of a sage as mentioned in the video. These are seemingly the only time we get a pause from what is our continual striving to fulfill our biological imperative. We are slaves to this biological imperative. This biological imperative is not compassionate, it is not caring, it is not paternal, its brutal and does not care for you, or your happiness. To realize this just look out our fellow animals/mammals, and see how uncaring an uncompassionate they are even to their own offspring, IF the circumstances lead them to believe that there own offspring are a detriment to their reproductive success. How are we to learn our own biological imperative if we don't look at the primitive behaviors and patterns of others imperatives. One such attempt at securing the biological imperative is lion infanticide, which perfectly illustrates the brutality for which we as creatures, strive to pass on our genes, and remember we're under the exact same fundamental pressures by nature, a nature which by its nature does not care for ethics. https://africageographic.com/blog/understanding-lion-infanticide/ As mentioned in the blog, when a new coalition of males takes over a pride, in doing so killing the alpha male lion, they almost always kill the prides’ cubs, since they are not biologically related and do not want to spend energy ensuring that the other lions’ (now killed) genes will be passed on. In addition, female lions will not be receptive to mating while they are nursing, so killing the cubs enables the male lions to procreate. After the females cubs are killed the female shows heightened sexual activity, being more active in initiating copulations and seeking a greater number of mating partners as to increase the likelihood of her reproductive success (practically getting aroused by the fact that the new male lions killed her cubs). If the male or female was to develop a conscience for infanticide, what would be the likelihood of their reproductive success, it would be drastically diminished. Why, because a moral conscience is maladaptive to a lions biological imperative, so a lion is conditioned by nature to not care for ethics. As in many ways we are also, not conditioned to care for ethics, especially not to be actually cable or even care for abstract notions of unconditional love. The idea of unconditional love is a helpful tool, a generally new tool, an irrational tool, but one which in many ways compels us to keep the human race going. “Why all this noise and fuss about love? Why all the urgency, uproar, anguish and exertion?” he asked. “Because the ultimate aim of all love-affairs… is actually more important than all other aims in anyone’s life; and therefore it is quite worthy of the profound seriousness with which everyone pursues it.” The romantic dominates life because “what is decided by it is nothing less than the composition of the next generation…the existence and special constitution of the human race in times to come.” Most people have this idea of romantic love, because it serves as an unconscious ego defense mechanism, why does it defend the ego. Because it makes us feel special, and it makes you feel that your impulses and biological imperative matters. But it doesn't matter, neither does the person you "love".  We'd much rather believe all this bullshit about love than the reality. The bullshit is just more palatable for people to buy than to accept the reality, that their lives aren't special, that you're not special, you're not going to find you're soul mate, there is no such thing as a "soul mate" to begin with. The reality is this - probably, in all incredible high Vegas odds, nothing of any significance will ever happen in your entire boring life. This reminded be of a post I just read on the forum, which in part sparked this post. https://www.actualized.org/forum/topic/45296-why-are-you-guaranteed-to-get-one-girl-to-sleep-with-you-eventually/ Why is it likely that you'll eventually get a girl to spread her legs for you, because its our nature, its biology, its why we even fucking have instinct and inclinations to do anything in the first place. They all exist to get you to the point that you "spread your seed" and "leave a legacy". But why even bother, especially if there's no such thing as romantic or unconditional love, and all your doing is what dozens of billions of people have done before you. The truth is this if you care about "leaving a legacy" and having a family, eventually, yeah a girl will be nice to you, and for some reason she'll like you, you'll fall in love, she'll probably break your heart, later on in life you'll settle for less, find a new girl, she's not so much of a looker, not high on the personality scale but she's stable. You can start a family with her and you'll push out rotten kids and you'll get some awful job and you'll give up your dreams and sit in a cubicle for this family, but for what really. Have you done anything special, pursued anything special or transcendent, do you think your going to be the exception to this rule, find the perfect magical wife who actually cares about you more than lets say her car, or have a kid who grows up to cure cancer or become the next Nikola Tesla, your not, your just like every one else. Romantic love is nothing more than a narcissistic fantasy that we delude ourselves into believing, if its not please tell me why not, I'd genuinely like to know. I like my narcissistic fantasies intact. So I'm going to end this post with another video and some quotes   Now give me one example of anyone who meets those four standards The quotes : "As rain pours through poorly thatched roofs, so does desire overwhelm the undeveloped mind." - The Buddha "I have yet to meet a man who is as fond of virtue as he is of women." - Confucius "The difference between the worldly and the saintly … depends solely on the elimination or not of sexual desire." - Buddha Thanks for reading Godspeed & Godbless