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//6C//

Growing up in a contemporary, privileged area, the notion that courtly love is something noble and far more meaningful than lust has been pushed onto me from all sides of society. Hollywood often portrays love as a conqueror above all, pulling on the heartstrings of viewers. Pop music often reflects on unrequited love of another. Last but not least, Shakespeare’s works are shoved down our throats in school, one of his most famous works of course being “Rome and Juliet”.

So what merit is there to “courtly love” when compared to plain and natural lust? First of all, there is a code for chivalry, giving it a sort of organized nature in contrast to lust’s primal and chaotic characteristics. Another bit worthy to note is that courtly love is not to change based on the fulfillment/consummation of the lover’s desire, when lust ultimately has one clear goal. Yet, aside from the stated differences, courtly love still wears quite the heavy albatross around its neck: the fact that acts of courtly love often pertain to acts of adultery.

I suppose that it is significant to note that courtly love began really only among the aristocracy during medieval times, as the aristocracy can be said to have far too much idle time to be up to any good. Naturally, adultery had long been rather commonplace in history; however it is with courtly love that something becomes amiss. The fact that the highly-educated aristocracy was the group to enact the code of chivalry combined with the notion that the aristocracy was likely also the group to record the events and history of the time seems to be an awfully suspicious two-some to me. Though it has survived in its ideals, I do not believe that courtly love can be held as any more morally acceptable—effectively only making lust more socially acceptable, as the plebes will follow the patricians.

B

Love, or thinking something is love is not an easy thing experience, or write about. Love is a lot of things and comes with a lot of complications. It is nearly impossibly for a relationship to be perfect one hundred percent of the time. No matter how good of a person the two people are in the relationship, there will always be something, or someone in the way that makes things more difficult than they need to be.

Pain wouldn't be pain if it didn't come from something significant. For example, if a relationship never mattered or reached that intense level, then a break up usually shouldn't be too much to handle. But if it were the opposite, and the relationship was considered "true love" then it no doubt would have a negative, painful impact on the two partners.

But through my experiences, you don't quite have to be in love to experience this pain. As long as the other person was an important part of your life for quite some time, almost the same amount of pain can come through. Specifically for me, it was thinking that you're in love and having both sides in the relationship say it and pretend it, while probably just hoping the constant thought and words would turn it into actual love at some point. This was painful and confusing due to how significant the relationship was to me. But the argument could also go both ways in the sense that the relationship was a significant part of my life because it was painful. So in reality both make sense, but I think "pain because of a significant experience" comes first.

B

Love is a really confusing subject because it is such a complicated emotion. This is perhaps because love is not a single emotion but a combination of many different emotions. Love is what causes the greatest happiness, joy, and, best of all, the feeling that someone wants you more than anyone else in the world. However, it also causes the worst emotions. The person who you love is the person who can hurt you the most, make you the most sad or angry, and cause you the most pain. Because love is such a strong emotion, the person who you love is the person who holds the most power over you. So to say that your experience with a certain person is more significant because of the pain doesn't quite make sense to me. It seems that the only reason your lover is able to cause you so much pain is because they are so significant to you that they have complete control over your emotions. Therefore, I believe that the cause of the pain of love (which is different than other kinds of pain because emotions that are caused by love are stronger than other emotions) must be the experience not the other way around.

Question 6B

Even though loving a person in the end can hurt, it is not the paine that a person feels that measures if what that person actually felt was love or how significant that love was. The amount of emotional pain that people feel is a result of love and not the other way around. People feel emotional pain after a realationship ends because they put themselfs out there on the line for the sake of love and for the person that they really cared for. They create this fantasy of what love is or could be even if they are a gernerally realistic person. Then when the loving realationship ends, unlike in all of those romantic comedy's they have seen so many times before, they feel the emotional pain. It is not the act of loving a person that ends up hurting them but, the emotions and time that you put into the realationship that ended up just being a waste of time and effort. Overall love can cause much pain but, its the love and feelings that cause this not the paine measuring the amount of love.

6B

Is pain from the significance of love? Or is the significance of love because of pain? Both are true in different ways. Let's start with the first question. Pain can some from love in many different things. Love is a strong commitment and it puts out feelings, thoughts, and desires in the open for two people to share. By doing that it instills a lot of trust in the other person, who can easily betray the other's trust by using that against them in a painful argument or betraying those feelings by lying or cheating on the spouse. So basically, pain can stem by what your spouse can do to betray the other's trust and feelings that have been instilled in the relationship. However, pain from love doesn't always come from spouses cheating, lying, and betraying each other. It can also come from the opposite, like significantly caring for him or her and constantly worrying about him or her. It also comes from caring more about the spouse than he or she cares about you and even unrequited love. There are many different ways like that where pain stems from the signifiacnce of love. However, the significance of love can come from pain too. If a couple goes through a really hard time with lots of loss and lies and get through it together while remaining strong, that makes love really significant and it's stemming from pain. Also, losing a spouse is another reason why the significance of love comes from pain. Grief can overwhelm someone, but also help them realize how important the spouse was to their lives. And as I mentioned before, if a spouse betrays the other by cheating, lying, or fighting him or her, that not only agrees with how pain can come from the significance of love, but how the significance of love is from pain. So both sayings go either way because love is pain. You put in a lot of trust, hard work, and commitment to keep the love going. Even if the spouse does nothing wrong to betray the other, it is still pain because the spouse is always worrying and caring for the other, and in fear of the pain that would occur if something bad were to happen to the other. Despite that both sides of the argument are true, I think I agree more with that pain comes from the significance of love because it seems that with so much effort put into a committing relationship, there is bound to have a lot more pain that comes with the effort.

B - "Caught in a Bad Romance"

Pain and love always go hand-in-hand, but the bigger question is whether our love is significant because of the pain we feel, or do we feel pain because the love was significant? That sentence, however, sounds very awkward and confusing, so here is an example. Lets say your married and your wife leaves for 6 months for a trip to Florida and you're left alone in your house. You will probably miss her a lot. You could feel that your pain of missing her is because your love for each other is so strong and significant OR you could feel that your love is sufficiently great because of the pain you feel when she leaves.

Love requires you to open your soul to another person, which in turn gives them the ability to hurt you, by say, leaving you or cheating on you. And if you do experience this let down, you will obviously feel pain. Some people may say that the reason you are feeling this pain is because your love was significant. In a serious relationship or marriage, each person puts a lot of effort into the relationship. The relationship also brings you happiness and you experience great things with your loved one. Other people may say that your love was so significant because you are feeling pain now that it is gone. Once the person has hurt you, you feel pain because the love and experiences you shared with each other have disappeared. This suffering that you go through is supposed to illustrate the significance of your relationship.

It is hard for me to decide which side I agree with because of the complexity of love itself, but I would say that I think we feel pain because the love was significant. Love is an extremely powerful emotion, with the ability to consume your thoughts and actions. It can even change your entire mind-set and way of thinking. When you are in love, you also share many special and significant experiences with your partner. Once that feeling and those experiences are ripped from you, you will most definitely feel extreme pain. And if your love had no significance in your life, wouldn't you not feel any pain once it ended? I also feel that if pain makes your love significant, that means pain is always a part of love, and that is untrue for those couples that "live happily ever after."