B

b. Just because experience of loving someone can hurt us emotionally, is the emotional pain itself just a matter of coincidence or is it a special sign that the experience is more vital in some way? Perhaps another way of looking at the question: is the experience significant because we feel pain or do we feel pain because the experience is significant?

It's no lie when they say that love can hurt, but even if you truly feel emotional duress during a relationship it doesn't mean that it's love. I'd say that the experience is signifigant because we feel pain. Well, it's significant in that you learn from it, but it's not more "vital". I once cared about someone so much that it hurt when we couldn't be together, but in retrospect, it wasn't love. I had mythologized him into what I concieved at the time to be my "soul mate", when in reality he was far from ideal. He was my first thought when I woke up in the morning and my last thought before I went to bed. My emotions took complete hold over me and I was an emotional mess. Though he told me that he felt the same way, a week later he was telling a close friend of mine the same nonsense. I think you could say that I loved the idea of him but having only a short time together that I didn't really know him well enough to actually love him. I believe that any painful emotional experience is signifigant as something to learn from in the future and possibly avoid but it is possible without what I consider to be true love (which I have yet to experience).