Thick and thin. My ex and I used to say that to each other. I broke up with her to sleep with a chick who lived closer. My exact reasoning was, "If I switch, I'll get more sex." But she also emotionally manipulated me into it, too and pulled on my sympathy to lure me away from the prettier girl, probably just a power play on her part, realizing that a beautiful girl chose me, so she wanted me then. The whole "wedding ring" paradox with women: when a man gets married and has the ring, he gets hit on by women 100x more: validation of quality.
Then the new chick, she went to the military and fucked a bunch of military men. I don't blame her for that. They were tough and all. I was not at that point. Her best friend also told me she had not been a virgin, though she had told me she was. And that she partied a lot when I wasn't around.
But. Sure. There's plenty of proof that love exists. Now. How you define it, that is the key. You can feel such powerful love that you would die for a person. It happens often. Historically speaking that has been the male role, and they were happy to die for their women often. Likewise, women took the risk for both by bearing children which often resulted in death. And, on top of that, the woman dies for the child. So the man dies for the woman and the child; the woman dies for the child.
But what exactly is this powerful feeling that pushes us to die for others? I don't know exactly. Perhaps it means more, but to me, I have always viewed it as a meager expression of the need to perpetuate the species. Yes, it's real, but anything that is more beneficial the the survival of the species (me, getting sex more often, increasing the chances of reproduction), or my ex (getting more sex in the military by a bunch of different tough military men who would produce good offspring), most behavior is driven that way, naturally.
The cultures, they influence the ways in which we express that, and often that can be encouraging defending women to the death. There's of course oxytocin and vassopressin bonding chemicals that get released in the brain. Women have massive amounts of them for bonding with their children. You can feel it. The first stage, the honeymoon stage, is the stage of what feels like "love". But it is simply being high. It is the body and brain encouraging reproduction. After 2 years, the relationships tend to become much more difficult. Many old married couples talk about wanting to murder each other. People take it as a joke, but I think it's legit. You get bored of each other, everything becomes known, and you lose the drug-like high, but you gain irritation at their idiosyncrasies. That is the common development.
So I always endeavored to only stay through the honeymoon period. The one time I tried to extend beyond that, all Hell broke loose, and it was a bad decision.
At the same time. Women can die of a broken heart syndrome when their lover dies. Men can too, but less often. The bond is real. And powerful. I knew one girl, gorgeous, who wanted to ctb after her boyfriend died. It was tragic but beautiful at the same time. I've had my issues with women, often believing that they purely use men for profit or as useful tools to obtain status, power, money, or just humor, whatever it is. But I forget about that poor girl when I think those thoughts. She loved him so much that she wanted to die since she couldn't be with him anymore. And women of course often think all men care about is sex. Maybe we're both right and wrong.
The bonds are real. The love is real. I just don't know if that's a mutation of a natural drive to perpetuate the species and survive.....or something deeper. Most of my loves, they have been deep and pure, and I have wanted to die, myself, after losing them. Except the last one. She was an asshole.
