None of the descriptions in classic literature make any sense to me at all, so I thought I'd try Hubski. Please answer if you're in love, whether it's new or old, happy or chaotic, gay or straight, long distance or living together...
I'll be super honest about this. This is not going to be a short explanation, but more of an essay of my experience. I hope me sharing this doesn't bother anyone. I'm pretty young and I don't think I know exactly what I'm feeling. This is made worse because for a long time I primarily had just accepted that I would not really be in a relationship with anyone for a long time. I've never been a very attractive person, and at about 13 I realized "I don't think anyone is going to be very interested in me, and I have other things I can be doing than pursuing relationships. Because of this, I don't think that I'll be in a relationship for quite some time, if ever." Rather like you have accepted the fact that you cannot fly, I had accepted that I was not going to develop a relationship. I'd gone years without worrying about it. It was a fact of my life, a part of me, that didn't trouble me and didn't worry me. It was a problem I'd put off indefinitely and would deal with later. This all changed quickly and recently. I had fancied a young lady for a while, but I'd never told her. Eventually I felt terrible with myself because I'd never had the guts to tell her how I felt, and I just wanted to get it off my chest. Let me tell you, the moment she said "I feel the same way about you" was one of the greatest moments of my life. Now I feel a constant warmth, like a hug but perpetual. When I think about it I feel a buzz like a summer breeze in my mind. I don't know if this is love. But I know I never want it to end. EDIT: I feel as though I could talk about this for quite some time. These are entirely new feelings for me, and I very much enjoy trying to quantify them. It is peaceful, in that it brings a strong force of relaxation and content to my otherwise anxious, worrying thoughts. However, it is also a feeling of unsurety because I don't know what I'm doing. This is a part of myself I have never explored and I feel I must tread lightly, while at the same time wanting to abandon myself to these feelings.
For me it's obvious why the heart is depicted as the center for love. It's here, in the chest where I feel a great wave, a rush of feeling when a moment pulls the curtains away and shows me the love I feel for someone/thing. It's as if my torso decided to remind me that it is still there and serves a function beyond physiology. I swell up and get filled with wonder, awe, amazement, happiness and sadness all at once. The sadness comes at the end when I realize that this is a moment and that I will soon forget to be in it and will likely revert back to the way I was before, in love but with the curtains drawn.
Ah yes, but is not love in itself a physiological concept? What more is it then a primal drive to reproduce? Evolution deemed the feeling of "magic" that goes with love brought people to continue their species better, so now it's found in nearly all of us. But, I'm not a personified image of evolution or biology. I am a human, and damn do the butterflied and buzzing in my chest feel exactly like what you describe. The complexity of being in love is vast. You overthink and you stumble and you get nervous, yet every moment feels like pure magic. It's impressive, but it's no surprise so much art is based off of love. After all, what more is art than an expression of our humanity? When one of, if not, our biggest drives as humans is "love", of course that's going to manifest itself in our art. Even the negative parts feel almost.. inexplicable. Indecipherable. Surreal. I'll sometimes think during the holiday season, "man I wish I had someone to be with next to this fire"
or when I'm under the stars I might say out loud to my only company, the open field "if only I had someone else to share this view with". What does that mean though? Is it magic? Sure as hell feels that way. More interestingly though, is the underlying psychology (or, specifically, applied biology) of love. The one that gets me the most is a phenomenon that's always prevalent. Humans are social creatures and being social is rewarded. That cute confident girl who can be friends with anyone? She'll subconsciously force her way into everyone's heart. When you see someone so happy, so confident, your brain comes up with subtle excuses. "Oh, we have x and y in common. We're perfect" but in reality that's just confirmation bias your brain produces after it's set it's mark on the 'evolutionarily perfect match'. etc. etc. and so on. What's my point? How much of love is logical? Not very much. I don't know, maybe I'm just a bit resentful since I'm fairly timid.
No, you are on to something here. Love is not logical, if it were we would only pair up with people that complimented our weaknesses but many people end up with people like themselves that exacerbate their shortcomings. Logic plays no part, in fact I would reckon that for the most part it is convenience that plays the greatest role.
Sometimes love
is really just a (g)love
comfort for the cold
( This is like saying
that ain't amour,
it's just (g)lamour.)
Sometimes you wear it
Sometimes it fits
Sometimes it doesn't
All garments
get old
tattered
But when it is just that: L-O-V-E
(With no hidden letter
Preceding the matter)
Then it is like butter
Melting
In the frying pan
Or the sharp pain
of a babe
biting on tender nipples
Yes, it is like Milk
Warm
And Nourishing
Or the hot unshed Pulsing Blood
of a dear Son
held down in Sacrifice
The Sultan of the Hearts
Mixes a specific potent mix
For each specific Lover
Love is sweet and bitter wine
poison
potion
Part Pain
Part Pleasure
Always to treasure.
I wish I had a badge to give you, Saydrah , because this thread is giving me hope, even theadvancedapes struggling to make sense of being dumped. I haven't been in a relationship for a few years. I kind of gave up. I'm middle-aged, kind of weird, a dreamer, got a big nose and crow's feet, got one kid still at home, bills I can't pay and a non-career filling coffee cups for southwestern yuppies wearing bolos and tooled boots. I'm nobody's fantasy. But maybe! You folks make me believe, at least in the reading of your accounts.
I'd rather have the comment than a(nother) badge -- the thread's having the same effect on me, though for rather different reasons and at a totally different stage of life (although I too do have a big nose). I've always been better at other people's relationships than my own, but I'm at a weird place in life where I'm in a relationship, I'm happy, I'm fond of him, but I'm not in love and I don't know if I'll get there, even though I could see myself raising adopted kids with him very happily. I'm not sure how I'll act on the thoughts that have come up as part of this thread, but I don't feel like I need to know that to be happy and hopeful while reading these comments. If so many different people with different wants feel so much, I'm sure that I have felt all these things--even though I can't remember them in the "feel it again" sense now--and that I will in the future.
I've been in love a couple times in my life. After my first long term relationship ended as a youth, I went through a long period of many years where I think there was a severe power imbalance in every relationship I had. I was really happy, but just not as engaged as my SO. Time and time again I'd date, then something would happen where I would lose interest (sometimes for good reason, sometimes for reasons I didn't entirely grasp). The ending was always the same though, -I would end it, usually months later than I should have. In every case my SO was devastated. I almost can't describe it with words. I want to say that over-the-top is the understatement of the year, but that isn't accurate and it really belittles the legitimacy of their grief. It was just like a massive tsunami of pain that I created rising from the other person and slamming right into me. I felt horrible every time, but I knew it was nothing compared to their grief. So this kept happening. It got to the point where I seriously was beginning to wonder if I was fucked up. I had a number theories ranging from a fear of commitment to possible insecurities that made me sub-conciously choose only girls who would be on the powerless end of an unbalanced relationship. Countless theories that weren't doing me any good...at the end of the day I still could not find a girl that I needed as much as she needed me (p.s. years later I diagnosed myself as a "fixer" which explains a lot). Of course, then it happened. Of course I had no say in the matter. Of course she was into me...just not as much as I was into her. I was fucking powerless. I had never felt so completely at another person's mercy as at that time in my life. I had never felt more happiness from just a cocky smile from across a room, nor more pain from...well, there are too many scenarios there to list. And it unraveled slowly and messily and gave me the best and worst times of my life to that point on its way down. Mostly the worst though. And I had no idea just how far down could go. Farther than I thought, at any rate. I clearly remember near the end, lying on my kitchen floor, sobbing in the fetal position, thinking "So this is it. This is what it feels like." And in that moment a kind of thankfulness and joy washed over me and mixed with the pain that certainly wasn't going anywhere. I remember saying "Ok, thank you." still curled up. I knew in that moment I was capable of love, engagement, presence, putting myself out on a limb, emotional involvement, and all of the other things that I had feared were absent or muted in me. So that was just a tiny contrarian slice of what love has felt like for me in the past. Love can feel wonderful, but when it isn't returned, it can be devastating. Even so, to this day I appreciate her for absolutely destroying me and making me see that there are people out there for me at the same time. I was scared that I wasn't capable of really putting myself out on a limb emotionally to the extent that a healthy vibrant relationship requires. I guess to sum it up, love felt illuminating, merciless, intoxicating and indifferent at least once for me, but most importantly, it was there. P.S. I've had awesome happy good love for years now with my fiancé who needed no 'fixing,' -I'll leave it to others to expound on the virtues of the good stuff ;)
This all sounds so familiar to me! Well, at least the part where I somehow don't understand how someone gets so attached to me, and I can't truly reciprocate the same feelings. I have also been through a horrible break-up where I simply couldn't comprehend the pain that she was feeling. Though can you elaborate a little further on the concept of a 'fixer'? I haven't really heard that term before..
Basically I'm very nurturing in relationships. As a result, I think that some of my past relationships have been ones where girls with problems/issues gravitated towards me and I them. Like two complementary puzzle pieces. For me, it feels good to take care of someone, but it took me a bit to realize that if there was not a balance, I wasn't going to get what I needed out of the relationship long term and I'd probably end it, which isn't good for either of us. That's exactly what was happening. Luckily that's all been sorted out, -wisdom with experience and all. It's easy to overlook red flags sometimes because companionship feels good and, well, girls can be really cute and stuff, but once you actually notice a pattern it's pretty easy to break it if need be.
Sex: male Relationship status: just got dumped. Alright, my feelings on love are going to be coming from a slightly darker place, since my girlfriend dumped me about 10 days ago. I'm not sure if I believe in love anymore. Part of me stopped believing in love a while ago, before the end of this relationship, but now it seems to be taking deeper root within me. When I was growing up I believed in love in the most cliche of ways. However, disappointment after disappointment has sort of left me believing that the type of love I had idealized does not really exist. Love seems to be completely conditional on certain things, which I don't like, since this is not the type of love I have wanted to develop. Also, I feel like I've only really experienced what I would define was limerance. After a certain period of time, the girl seems to gradually lose her interest in me. So, I guess what I'm saying is, I may not believe in love because I don't believe anyone else has actually been in love with me, in the truest form of the word. And I find it hard to believe you can be love, when someone else doesn't love you. I would call that more a form of infatuation or obsession. Something else, but not love. However, if I had met someone years ago who loved me the same amount as she loved me when we were in a stage of limerance, perhaps I would be answering this post differently.
I feel like your perspective is an incredibly hard one to face, and I really want to thank you for sharing your thoughts on this right now. As mentioned above I'm in the opposite situation: within the last month I and my recent partner have found ourselves tumbling towards the first real relationship either of us have experienced. I must say, both of us are extremely cautious people, and we've discussed exactly what you mentioned: maybe what we feel will pass, maybe it will not hold up under stress, etc. Maybe our assumptions about our feelings are wrong in the first place. However, we mutually concluded we'd rather try this, live our lives, than have never tasted happiness. We'd rather try and fail than not try at all. I do believe that love exists and can exist, even if it hasn't for you. And I truly hope that you find it :)
Of course, I would never suggest otherwise for you and your partner. And I hope it all works out! I've seen successful relationships before. I'm mostly speaking from personal experience.
Love is not a life sentence; love is not successful only if somebody dies. Those are two pieces of advice that were given to me when I realized I needed to leave the relationship with my first love. I've also experienced limerence (and, curiously, I remember it MUCH more than I remember love right now) but I don't think that you necessarily experienced limerence instead of love just because you weren't the one to break things off. I think perhaps you simply experienced love with someone who could not love you indefinitely, rather than someone who didn't love you at all. This thread and an external conversation on the same topic helped me realize that the reason I have trouble either remembering ever having been in love or crossing that boundary now (but limerence is easy!) is because I'm threatened by the fact that love makes people willing to automatically sacrifice to put the other person's happiness first, and in past loving relationships I did that to my own detriment and changed things about myself that it took me a long time to recover. There's a point, I think, in a relationship where even if you love someone, you have to stop and give some thought to what continuing to love them means, and whether or not you can sustain the feeling of their happiness being more essential to your happiness than individual fulfillment is. When I left that first loving relationship, I was elated. It was hard to say the words and break up, but within days of doing so I finally felt that I could breathe again. That doesn't mean to me that I never loved him -- it means that I let love feel like a life sentence, instead of a choice. It was a lousy relationship in a lot of ways, but it was good in other ways, and I really do believe it was a love match, but it was one where I came to the point of choosing love with one of the millions of people in the world who I could love, or the ability to be a version of myself that I'm proud of. The fact that the two couldn't coexist doesn't make him wrong, bad, or any of that, it just meant it was time for an end. Maybe that's what is happening in your relationships. You just come to a point where the other person does love you, but can't both keep loving you and be the person she wants to be outside the relationship. That doesn't make you wrong or unlovable, it just means you haven't met someone yet for whom who she wants to be as a person is the same as who loving you would make her become. I think that person is out there for everyone. I think there is someone in the world who will love me to the point of modifying themselves automatically over time, without thinking, to make me happier--and who will get to that "stop, look, evaluate" point and say, "Wow, I love the things that I've added to my character in this relationship." I believe that I will get to that point with someone, too. But I think that's really hard to find, and that it's endurance and compatibility, not love, that gets a relationship past the "stop, look, evaluate." Every love seems to come to that point, and being unable to pass it doesn't make it non-love.
Thanks for that response. Very thoughtful, and you brought up some great points. For some reason, I have trouble understanding love, and the emotions associated with it. I feel like I can make sense of a lot of things, but with love I just start to get confused. Well, I am confused right now obviously. I'll keep searching, but I don't think I'll be ready to put someone else before my own interests and happiness for a while.
I totally relate. That's where I am right now, too. I know that putting someone else first right now would mean sacrifices I'm not willing to make, so I'm not sure I'm far enough in my own evolution to be in love. That doesn't mean I can't keep enjoying my relationship and considering it "loving" if not "in-love," for as long as the other person is willing to tolerate my not being in-love, but the big epiphany of all of these descriptions of love is that I don't feel them right now not because I'm incapable of any/all of them, but because some part of me recognizes that I AM capable of all of them and that I need a little more time to become a person I'm ready to offer to a love partner before I WANT to feel those things.
Hopefully the person you're with is in the same space psychologically. If he/she is then I'm sure it will mature over time. In the end, that may be a healthy approach to a long-term bond.
For a lot of reasons that are his business and not mine to share, I don't think it's exactly the same, but I've gotten comfortable with the fact that either possible outcome will end up being good for both of us. If things work out and I can be in love in a selfless way in the future, I really respect his character and trust him to be a person who will accept my love and return it. If not, I think the relationship has helped both of us learn about ourselves, and we're both people who have a history of being able to let go of resentment of past relationships and be friendly toward ex-lovers, so I think if we separate eventually we'll look at our relationship as having been a positive.
Hm. It is a weird part of my character that it is impossible for me to be friends with a girls who have broken up with me. I cut them out and never speak to them again. I don't know exactly why I do it. With girls I've dumped, I don't cut them out, but I don't feel comfortable talking to them or having any type of relationship with them. I think I feel that way because of guilt.
I can completely understand where you are coming from. How can you have ever been in love if it's so easily discarded? I'll be honest, I love my wife very much but I don't think I knew what the purest form of love was until I became a father. When I wrote about love here in this thread it was regarding my love for my daughter. You'll find someone that loves you though and it will be the kind of love where you know it's gonna last, where you know the two of you will share a life, build something together and someday be able to look back at it and go, "we did a damned good job". -You're a cool guy, it will happen. if you want it to
Ya, basically my feelings are coming from your first sentence. Both of the long-term serious relationships I've had, ended with them leaving me quite easily. I can imagine having a child is a different type of love, and I can also imagine that having a child will create a bond between you and your partner that will make you stronger and able to raise a good family. I really didn't want to be the downer on this post - but I thought I'd share my thoughts on it for a different perspective. Obviously these thoughts could be conditional on my emotional place right now.
I really didn't want to be the downer on this post - but I thought I'd share my thoughts on it for a different perspective. Obviously these thoughts could be conditional on my emotional place right now.
You're not being a downer. Most of us have been in a similar situation. It's no fun and it definitely shakes your confidence in "love". You'll jump back in to the saddle and fall in love again, we advanced apes need love. It's a biological imperative.
I think I have a rather unique experience compared to other people as she is the only girlfriend I ever had and I am the only boyfriend she has ever had. We have been together for almost 7 years, and we know we will get married in the next couple years. I knew she was the one from the very beginning, as in literally, so you could call it love at first sight. To get to your question, love is like completion. We can tell each other everything and I mean absolutely everything. There is also absolute trust. So for example, access to each others bank accounts, credit cards, etc. because we know each others character so well that we know the other has such high moral standards. There's a lot more but I'll keep it short and sweet for you.
It's a stabilizing feeling, but above all it's been a selfless warmth that takes over from time to time. It's knowing that there's a person out there that you would do anything for, and that person would do the same for you. It's hard to explain but it just feels right, at the time.
Sex: male.
Status: started dating about two moths ago.
Do I love her? I think I'm getting there, but slowly. It seems that when I get a crush on someone it's just mind-blowing. But this has gotten milder and milder during the past ten years. It also seems that the people I initially have crush on are usually some people that don't want to date me, and I think its cool. All this crush thing ever has done to me: it made me a stalker once(not a very bad one, I sent her four e-mails and that's it). This is the third time I'm dating. My first and least serious dating lasted for two and half months. Second was very intense and lasted for two weeks. This one is least exiting, but most "warm" experience so far. How does it feel? Actually like nothing. I'm engineering student but not the most typical one. I usually feel very strongly about stuff. Being with her feels just natural and relaxing. But when she is away I miss her. I usually don't miss anyone so I guess this is my way of knowing who I care about. The weird thing is that I don't trust my feelings in these girl things much anymore. Crushes to some random girls feel lot stronger than meaningful relationship with someone who I actually like very much as a person, now that I know her. However I do feel very strongly that I have to be honest to her. And I'm confident I'm going to develop more feelings to her. Feelings can be wise but they can also be very stupid. So I would not advice people to do as their heart says. I think if your heart and mind tells to do something, only then it's worthwhile.
It's almost an inexplicable thing, because love is in all of the emotions. Love is in the solace I feel when I hug my girlfriend after getting home from a long day of work and classes. Love is when my mother would spank me when I was a little kid because she knew I had to be punished for what I had done, even if she didn't want to do it. Love is the anger you feel when you know someone is being treated poorly, because you realize you have a deep loving for everyone and sympathize with the person being treated poorly. Love is is the joy I feel at the top of a top ridge when hiking, feeling the wind pass by me. It's not that being in love is a singular instance of emotion, but rather, love is in everything and always. What does love feel like to me? It feels like everyday life. Love is in my heart as I type this honestly, and love is in my perception of the world around me.
It's like the relaxation of a muscle that's been tense all your life, and you didn't even know it was there.
I almost forgot! I'm not sure what you've been reading, Saydrah, that has failed to describe love adequately -- but the following poem, sung by one lover about another, represents what I believe to be the greatest love story ever told in literature. The sentiment, "It was all worth it, for this," encapsulates love, and Tolkien (for of course it is Tolkien) does this more elegantly than aught else I've read."Farewell sweet earth and northern sky,
for ever blest, since here did lie
and here with lissome limbs did run
beneath the Moon, beneath the Sun,
Lúthien Tinúviel
more fair then mortal tongue can tell.
Though all to ruin fell the world
and were dissolved and backwards hurled
unmade into the old abyss,
yet were its making good, for this---
the dusk, the dawn, the earth, the sea---
that Lúthien for a time should be."
When I feel love I feel as if I'm with an extension of myself. Sharing thoughts with the object of my love feels like I'm just thinking them out loud, like there's no loss or disconnect, and no shame either. Everything is open and comfortable. There's no need to entertain, but enjoyment comes from sharing thoughts anyway. I've felt this in a Platonic sense, with friends, or romantically, with my girlfriend, but both have a lot of similarities. When you want to get to romantic love, take that idea of sharing thoughts, add some physical attraction and multiply it all by feeling able to do this forever and completely trust the other. That's what it's like for me.
This is a little off-topic, but I just made a huge comment about love on a theology post in case you were interested in the topic from a different angle. I'd write more, but for now, it feels like physically overwhelming happiness, and that will have to do.
Not presently in love, however the feeling when it hit me was...comfort. I feel like when I love someone in the way of a relationship that the main feeling that I get out of it is comfort. When in love I have felt happy and in "the correct place" in my life at that time. It might come from some primal instinct where I want to have a mate and it feels good knowing I do. But it also comes from the ability to relax and focus on other pursuits in my life, knowing that I have a love to support me. Simple creature comforts, but it feels good all the same.
Are you able to call up that feeling in a nostalgic way now, when you're not in love? (I'm having this really odd realization tonight, which is why I asked, that I have no emotional memory whatsoever of ever being in love, even though I have memories of all of the peripherals, and knowledge that at the time I meant it and had those feelings.)
Yes, but not quite the same depth. Knowing that you're connected to someone who feels those same feelings adds another level to it. In my opinion at least.
Some times love is kind of like a warm-ish glow that kind of just burns slowly inside of you; other times, it makes me feel like I've been hit by lightning and that I could punch mountains out of the way - extraordinary, ecstatic happiness.
I've thought about this myself and I don't quite know. I'm a little surprised that the vast majority of responses have to do with romantic love - something that I haven't experienced as of yet. I would say that I love a number of my friends and family, but the emotional connection seems distinct from the romantic love of a significant other. A lot of these descriptions are so romantic and idealistic to me, even exaggerated - but I want to emphasize the to me. I honestly wish I felt this way about people, right now I just don't. I don't know if it's a good or bad thing, or if it's something that can be good or bad, but it's just who I am at this moment and I'd like to believe that other people experience romantic love similarly, which is to say a lesser scale than described so wonderfully by people here. As for non-romantic love, I like to think that I derive happiness from their happiness, that there is a mutual concern for each other's wellbeing, that there exists some type of spoken or unspoken kinship. Perhaps that isn't so much the feeling of "being in love," so much as it is a list of true statements that describes people I love. As for how I feel around these people, a combination of relaxed and connectedness that doesn't exist with strangers - that some invisible wall that we put up in front of others is taken away.