I've been searching for online novels and as I went along, I have already visited tens of websites. And I happened to drop by
here. Well, the contents are the following:
LOVE TO THE 4TH DEGREE
I believe there are four stages of love. I’m no doctor nor do I deem myself a relationship expert, so this is all just my opinion. Yet I feel this doctrine may go down in history as an understanding to what some humans can never understand or feel.
The four stages are:
1st Degree: Physically ? which we usually feel first. This may also be contrived as lust, but down right it is a physical attraction.
2nd Degree: Mentally ?the secondary stage which creates intimacy. You care about this person in a genuine matter and want to do things to make them happy. For men, this may be the peacock stage where he’ll go out in the middle of the night and get you the chocolate shake from McDonald’s or for the woman who will actually get you a beer out the refrigerator and not cast you a ‘get it yourself’ look. You may feel this first if you have met the other person on the phone or without seeing them physically. Just like the 1st stage, you may still be able to walk away from this person like you’re dropping a bad habit with no regrets and no looking back. Once you are mentally in love, you feel a sense of comfort-ability with the other person and like Terry McMillian says, ‘that’s when you exhale.’ Now I must also add that you may have a co-worker or a male friend and you start with mental love, jump to emotional and then bounce to physical, too.
3rd Degree: Emotionally ? this is when love becomes self conscious and you actually feel the love you have for this person on a much higher plateau than the physical or mental could ever make you feel. This is when you say I love you or feel you must verbally express love. This is also where the cross road to true unconditional love can grow or the road to obsession, insanity and murderous jealousy can be ventured. That road can be chosen only by the person who you’ve decided to love and/or by you. That person’s actions and reaction can turn the tide from beautiful to ugly. In most people, going any further than this 3rd stage may frighten them and make them feel they have less of control (because the next stage must be experienced with a full sense of trust in the other).
4th Degree: Spiritually ? this comes after a culmination of the three former stages. In this stage not only are you in love but your soul is loved! You are so deep in the feeling of being in love that time is irrelevant unless you are with them, you do not feel complete without them and before them, life did not seem important. Your eyes are opened to the beauty around you and without them you feel you cannot go on. If the good road is chosen (see Emotionally) The wonderfulness to this is that there is a good level of security and trust between you and your lover. If the bad road is chosen (see Emotionally) the ugliness of love is shown.
Now we all can say that we’ve been in love, but how many of us have really been in love to the fourth degree? You must also take note that just because you’ve experienced the first, second, third or fourth degree there is never a guarantee that the other person is feeling the equal degree at the same time you are feeling. (We’ll address that later.)
Whether it was for a person, a passion or even an object, the four stages of love can apply to each.
For me, I can honestly say I’ve never felt the fourth stage of love with another person. It’s weird, but I can write abut feeling it so passionately in the stories I create, but I can honestly say I’ve never felt my life has been incomplete without another.
Yet I want to be. What’s worse is that I want to be in the fourth stage and married to someone because ? this may be an only woman thing ? but it would make me feel better about being in this degree of love.
I came to this realization shortly after I left my husband. Actually it was the night of and I was sleeping in my bed for the first time alone in three years and listening to Heather Hedley.
I wasn’t upset because I walked out of my marriage ? oh never that ? I was upset because the one time in my life, I had the opportunity to reach the fourth stage, it was lost. Because he decided to unappreciated me, physically and mentally abuse me and in the end disrespect me in front of my children I lost out on my chance to experience my fourth stage of love.
But you say, ‘Sylvia, you can get married again.’
(breaks squealing loudly) HA!… Not! The idea of marriage in my mind at this time is unequivocally unwanted.
In addition to this, in the fourth stage of love (as stated above) you must release control of your own self and you unconditionally trust that person. The saying is true when they say you are falling in love. Because when you fall you have lost control of yourself because you would have prevented the fall if you were in control. What’s wrong with love is that strangely you want to lose control. Matter of fact, the more control you lose the more magnificent love makes you feel.
Taking this into account, since I do not like to lose control in any situation and the marriage factor, I have come to the conclusion that I probably will not reach the fourth stage any time soon.
Should I just give up and resolve to finding love in my story books. I won’t say that, but I sure ain’t looking.
Time constraints, my personal commitments to family and writing, along with the sheer boredom to the same thing, makes it difficult for me to even say sure I’ll go out and date.
And since I work all day on the phone, the idea of coming home and talking to you on the phone or speaking to anyone is not the highlight of my day, since I’ve had droning in my ear all day long. So just getting on the phone and saying well how was your day or I actually missed you enough to call really doesn’t come to me at all. (Which is why a lot of guy friends have asked me, ‘why haven’t you call?’ LOL.)
Does the prospect of not getting to the fourth stage depress me?
No, because I’m in love with other things in my life. I’m in love with my God, my children, my writing talents and myself. I won’t accept the fact that I probably won’t get to the fourth stage because that would depress me to know that and since I’m also a selfish person and I want what I want, I tell myself maybe it will happen and I just have to concentrate on doing what I’m doing and let love fall where it may.
And one thing I have learned in my life is that what I want to make me happy may not come when I want it, but it’s always right on time.
