Research Paper What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

Love is unknow. Eros; an attraction based on a sexual desire, Philos; friendship love, or common interest, Storge; the natural love of a parent for their child or family love, and Agape; the unselfish love for the good of another. These are all Greek words and there definition of love. There are many different kinds of love; from the love of a mother to the love for car, love has no boundaries, but true love between a man and a woman can last a life time. Some may say the feeling of love is the most wonderful thing about life.

Love also comes in different cases and scenarios such as the inseparable love, the violent love and the love that never dies. Raymond Carvers “what we talk about when we talk about love” tells us why love can be so beautiful but yet risky at the same time, Mel and Terri are a couple in love with each other and they are married, but they both had broken relationships with their previous love partners. Nick and Laura are also married and are in love with each other, they also had previous love experiences.

But do these characters experienced true love or even know what true love is or is it just lust and mostly physical attraction. From the physical to the sentimental or even the violent type of love, true love has no limits; neither Mel and Terri nor Nick and Laura ever experienced true love because they both had broken relationships or had been divorced with their previous love partners. The two couples are engaged in a conversation about love and are caught up in trying to figure out what love is.

Mel McGinnis is a cardiologist in his mid-forties, he was married and has kids in his previous life, and he was very much in love with his ex-wife, but that all ended after his divorce. Mel who spent five years in a seminary thought real love was more spiritual than anything else. Mel says he doesn’t care for his ex-wife anymore, “there was a time when I thought I loved my first wife more than life itself. But now I hate her guts” (352, McMahan). He does not know why he feels this way and wants to know what went wrong, what happened to the fire that once burn so brightly.

When a marriage union just suddenly ends we tend to ask questions like whose fault is it, were the couples truly in love each other? But in this day and age a man and a woman can be in marriage but not necessarily in love with each other. This shows that love is much deeper than two people coming together to spend their entire lives with each other. Mel may have moved on from his ex-wife Marjorie but he is certainly not madly in love with Terri whom he’s been with for five years but only married for four.

Mel controls most of the discussion as the evening progressed, “an indication that he is obsessed with the topic. Mel insists that the conversation be directed at one point; the definition and nature of love” (Bruccoli). Mel defines love as two main different types, the “physical love, that impulse that drives you to someone special, as well as love of the other persons being” (McMahan, 352), this type of love is among most couples as true love starts with a physical attraction because that’s all the soon to be lovers know about each other.

The other kind of love that Mel described is the “sentimental love, the day to day caring about the other person” (McMahan, 352). When a couple is in love, they may say the words “I love you” on a daily bases but they spend more time showing each other how strong their love is and expressing their feelings sexually and emotionally. Mel’s current wife Terri also had a previous love encounter, her lover Ed, was more of the violent type of lover, he would beat her and drag her across the living room while screaming about how much he loved her.

Terri believed that that was true love and she strongly defends it against Mel, who thought that love was not supposed to be violent, “Mel cannot understand his action as an act of love. Love cannot coexist with hatred in his dogmatic mind” (Bruccoli). Ed’s love for Terri was so strong that he was stalking her after Mel and Terri started dating, Ed even threaten Mel’s life. Ed was obsessed and more so infatuated with Terri, but Terri did not feel exactly the same way for Ed. Love is something that has to go both ways, couples usually have the same strong feeling for each other because when one partner loves and care