Love... What is Love?

Raymond Carver seemed very interesting.  He did not write very much and was not a published writer until later in life.  The alcohol content and even just the mere mention of alcohol surprised me.  I went to a small private school where the only literature we read truly was just some boring dry poems and short stories written old boring Christians.  I never realized that true literature would be more realistic.  The most alcoholic content that I ever read about was all the mead from the story of Beowulf.  As for the cursing; it too was a surprise to me, but it was not overbearing.  I feel as though it fit into the story well. I noticed that the more gin that was flowing the worse their language got.

Love is not always great and wonderful. TV portrays love as something perfect and wonderful, when in all reality it can be very painful.  There are so many different types of love and this story takes one form of love, a love between a married couple and expands it to multiple different views.  The “love” that Terri talks about is not real love in my opinion.  She can say whatever she wants but how can someone say that they love the other person when they beat them.  That is abuse not love and it is very disturbing that someone could call that love and not see it for what it truly is.  The mature love that was spoken about with the couple that had moved on from other marriages but still loved the first spouse was perplexing to be honest.  Aside from being forced to divorce I do not understand why a couple would separate if they love each other.  It is interesting that both love their first spouse more than their current love.  If not for love, why get married?  The other type of love; the type of love with the other couple having been divorced already but finding each other and truly loving each other more than anything if what I feel is the best example about love.  True, both couples were hurt in their first marriage but two of the people moved on and were able to find a partner that they truly do love. 

Do we truly understand love? Is my opinion of love different than your opinion of love? Why is it, that everyone looks for love, but so many get hurt by it in the process? All intriguing questions and questions that I do not know the answer to. Maybe the second question is the meaning of the story.