How do you know when you love someone?

[CJ]

What would you risk for love?

[Thinking Aloud]

Not only do you just want to fuck someone, you also want to watch them sit and read, listen to them breathe, find out about their childhood hopes and fears, share concerts, books, music, films and plays with them. When you are in love you can find the way that the object of that love opens a can or picks up their mobile phone fascinating and beautiful. That is more than desire.

Biologically it is a brain chemical response to a potential sex/life partner but that doesn't make it feel one jot less incredible - just like knowing how a rainbow is formed doesn't reduce any of the wonder that you feel on seeing one.

It is a remarkable feeling - it doesn't come around all that often: embrace and cherish it when it does.

Prior to getting married, the future Mrs TA and I were asked (by my church ) to attend a one-day course with a bunch of other couples, to make sure we knew what we were getting ourselves in for. (It was run by nuns, who of course, are experts in marriage issues, but I digress.)

One of the tasks we were given was to write a list of all the things we'd like to change about our partner. We wrote a couple of sides each. When it came time to go round the group, all the other couples looked bashfully at each other and said ... "well nothing really, I love him/her just the way he/she is". We looked at each other and laughed. As we'd been together for five years, we'd already figured out all the stuff that annoyed us about each other, and also that we'd never be able change a thing about the other.

Being in love can give you that "just the way they are and nothing else matters" feeling - the key to long term love is accepting that your partner isn't perfect, that they have their foibles, that you won't be able to change them (although being aware that they may change themselves); and that you have your own faults that they will find equally annoying! If you can accept each other despite each others' imperfections, and maintain honesty, the spark that drew you together will stay alive through just about anything.

[JacksSmirkingRevenge]

What would you risk for love?

I have absolutely no idea. I think that would depend on how 'sick' and illogical said condition had made me.

At one time I would (and did) risk a great deal for whom I thought was the perfect partner for me.
A combination of age and certain experiences has given me a somewhat cynical streak now so I tend not to let anyone get too close these days. - Nor do I allow myself to get smitten anything like so easily as I once might have done.





I'm a 'Cynical' old Hector.... :hum:

[Bella Fortuna]

Romantic love manifests for me in a turning inward as well as an unquenchable desire to be with the love object – endless thinking, enacting scenarios in one’s mind, seeking to be what pleases them, wanting to write and write and write…

The heat of passionate love is the other’s constant conscious presence in one’s mind, nearly to the point of obsession. It’s the not minding losing oneself to be subsumed into them, willingly leaping into the ocean of them to drown. It’s wanting to do nothing but reflect their sunlight, and hopefully have that mirrored back. It’s physical lust for that specific person, emotional longing for inseparable union with them, and a vulnerable hunger for acceptance of oneself by the person one adores.

The greater, longer-lasting love comes with time and experience – day-to-day living and intimate knowledge of habits, attitudes, and all the small things that will either reinforce or break down the initial wave and newness. True, satisfying compatibility can only be tested over time and finding out that neither person is perfect, yet being able to accept if not embrace those imperfections, knowing that they are ultimately extraneous to a solid intimate foundation of trust, tenderness, and respect. While life may get comfortable, in real love it is never boring. Passion and intensity can be brought to the surface when correctly roused… and the person who truly loves another seeks to keep those waters stirred instead of letting them still and stagnate, despite the routines and responsibilities of mundane life. It is rare and to be treasured if we ever find it.

[CP]

What would you risk for love?

There are two people I would die for without question, because their health and happiness means so much more than mine. Everyone else I would at least hesitate for, and attempt a rudimentary cost-benefit analysis. Not coincidentally, these two people are the only ones in the world I also consider myself to love in any significant way; for everyone else it's largely a good friendship (I suppose I love them, too, but not in any way exceptional enough to be worth mentioning).

[Existentialist1844]

edit: my question was answered.

[Trolldor]

Har har.

I know I love someone when not seeing them and seeing them hurts exactly the same because there's little difference between the two.

[Hermit]

I'm intellectually attracted first and the intensity of my intellectual response is manifested physically. I get turned on by a kindred intellect ... ie I find it sexy/sexually attractive. It's the two in combination, the intellect and the sexual attraction, that elicit a 'love' response in me ... sometimes ... other factors play into it ... and all of these can shift and change over time ...

^^^ What she said.

Romantic love, CJ, is a metaphor to me, much like when someone says "I have 'feelings' for you. Hormonal. Trick of nature.

My great love began quite cerebrally. A meeting of minds - an intellectually based admiration - expanded in scope with astonishing rapidity. The relationship quickly went on to sympathy, empathy and lust in multi-stranded fashion. I don't much like the word because of the way it's so frequently abused by bullshitters, but 'synergy' comes to mind when you finish up loving someone on so many levels.

[RESiNATE]

Love; a many splendoured thing...so someone once said.

There are different types of 'love'; love for your children, love for a hobby or interest, and love for the opposite sex.
I have experienced all of them.

I define the word 'Love': 'an unconditional acceptance of the whole of a person/thing/circumstance'.

There have been two women (thusfar) during my life that I have loved in terms of my definition.
The second woman that I fell in love with was someone that aroused me both physically (I wanted to shag the bejesus out of her) and intellectually (we helped each other to understand ourselves). She and I would be able to sit in silence with each other and not feel that we needed to speak. Often, if we were watching TV or something, we would laugh at the same time with the same thoughts - not obvious thoughts, but tangential and obscure ones. We didn't need to have sex to qualify that love - in fact, we never did have sex...although most of the text messages that we sent each other were of the kind that would shock even the most irreverent of folk lmfaooo.

Love is oblivious to science, reason, and logic. Poets have tried to define it since poetry began, but to no avail. This 'feeling', that we have ALL experienced at some point in our lives, makes us act wierd, or do crazy things ... some even lay down their own lives for it.

Then comes that thing that women say (women in my case because I am male):

"I go for a bloke that has a nice personality, not how good looking they are".

Well, excuse my language, but that's just a whole sack full of bollicks!

Not that I have a high opinion of myself, but if that were true then I'd be beating them off with a spikey stick everytime I went out. Thus far it hasn't been the case and I usually end up beating myself off...sometimes with a spikey stick lol :-(

You see, we ALL go for the pretty ones - it's a genetic fact. I've yet to meet anyone (myself included, I'm sorry to say) who bypasses the Jessica Simpson-esque woman in favour of testing the personality of the woman that looks like Hilda Ogden (google her to see what I mean).

If George Clooney and I entered a bar at the same time, I would be willing to bet a considerable amount of money that I don't even have that I would be the one going home alone. How is it possible to gauge or evaluate a person's personality without interacting with them at some level? And without that initial "Phwoar, look at him!" first impression the exploration of personality cannot take place.

Still, that's my insecurity talking...getting me all wound up and indignant lol.

I think that lust is instant and love is something that grows and develops.

I'm an old-fashioned bloke with old-fashioned ideals.
I remember walking with the afore-mentioned 2nd woman along the path, but I noticed that I was walking with her nearest the roadway - I gently manoeuvred her to the inside, to which she remarked at how gentlmanly I was...shucks lmaoo

As to the 'feelings'...
Love can make my chest hurt so bad; it has made me want to laugh like a raving idiot; it has sent me to the depths of despair; it has made me want to throw everything away just to be with that person; it has incited music, poetry, and defiance. All those things and so much more that I have not the vocabulary to express.

I wonder how many people that are in a relationship can honestly say that they are in love with that person as per the defintion that I propose?

Maybe 'love' and 'relationships' don't work?
Or, maybe enduring relationships are the very thing that embodies 'love'.

I have only experienced what I would call 'love' twice, if I am to subscribe to my definition...and none of them was with my (ex)wife, if I am being brutally honest.

Res...

[Achtland]

what you discribe cj is how i feel about most of the people in this world that i consider my friends, rather than people i get on with.
i was going to say that i have never been in love so couldn't make a valuable contrabution, but now i am not sure i have not been in love with someone but i didn't know it?

[Clinton Huxley]

To CJs list I would add infuriation. Only someone you are besotted with has the maximal ability to drive you absolutely INSANE!

[Ace]

Love is a complicated thing and can also be hard to explain. I've felt it, I've lost it and I have missed it.

It was katie who taught me love. Before she kissed me I was shy and affriad about doing anything intimate in public. After she gave me that peck on the lips I was no longer shy nor affriad. We never did break up, we lost contact because I had to move to another town. Never saw her since. Some years later I managed to return but to find that she was no longer there. So I decided to look for another. I eventually saw her but with another feller and I decided to walk away before she spots me. I decided to leave her in peace with her new boyfriend. I'm not disappointed because I can't expect her to go on alone without anyone. Just as longs as she is happy. That's all that matters.

I can't quiet explain the emotions of love.

[CJ]

Love is a complicated thing and can also be hard to explain. I've felt it, I've lost it and I have missed it.

It was katie who taught me love. Before she kissed me I was shy and affriad about doing anything intimate in public. After she gave me that peck on the lips I was no longer shy nor affriad. We never did break up, we lost contact because I had to move to another town. Never saw her since. Some years later I managed to return but to find that she was no longer there. So I decided to look for another. I eventually saw her but with another feller and I decided to walk away before she spots me. I decided to leave her in peace with her new boyfriend. I'm not disappointed because I can't expect her to go on alone without anyone. Just as longs as she is happy. That's all that matters.

I can't quiet explain the emotions of love.

If you didn't talk to her how do you know she is happy? You don't. Why did you really walk away?

[FBM]

I haven't felt romantic love in at least a decade, but back when I did, I had pretty much all the mental, emotional and physical reactions described above. There was an article in the local newspaper a while back that said researchers had pretty closely isolated the hormone(s) responsible, including oxytocin, and that the reaction fades out in most couples after two years. If I can find the article, I'll post it here.

Edit: This isn't the one I read, but it's talking about the same study: http://www.femalefirst.co.uk/relationsh ... ce-42.html

Romantic passion fades after two years

Rome, Feb 2 Two years is all you get for a passionate romance before your hormones fail you, says a new study.

The study, which showed that different hormones are present in blood in various stages of love, found romantic passion fades after two years.

Researchers in Italy used blood tests to establish the levels of a variety of hormones in volunteers - some were just starting out with a new partner while others had been in an established relationship for years.

They found that a nerve growth factor called neurotrophins exceeded normal levels in those enjoying the love-struck early stages of romance. But it was missing from the volunteers who had been settled with their partners for up to two years, reported the online edition of Daily Mail.

Scientists from the University of Pisa found it had been replaced by oxytocin, which they nicknamed "the cuddle hormone", in those who had been together for several years.

Oxytocin is a chemical known to induce labour and milk-production in pregnant and new mothers.

Indo-Asian News Service

[Ace]

Love is a complicated thing and can also be hard to explain. I've felt it, I've lost it and I have missed it.

It was katie who taught me love. Before she kissed me I was shy and affriad about doing anything intimate in public. After she gave me that peck on the lips I was no longer shy nor affriad. We never did break up, we lost contact because I had to move to another town. Never saw her since. Some years later I managed to return but to find that she was no longer there. So I decided to look for another. I eventually saw her but with another feller and I decided to walk away before she spots me. I decided to leave her in peace with her new boyfriend. I'm not disappointed because I can't expect her to go on alone without anyone. Just as longs as she is happy. That's all that matters.

I can't quiet explain the emotions of love.

If you didn't talk to her how do you know she is happy? You don't. Why did you really walk away?

Because she was already in a relationship and she did seem happy. I didn't want to mess anything up.