I accept that you can control what you do in response to actually falling in love, but do you think you can actually control whether you fall in love or not? Can you stop yourself falling in love, and on the other side of the coin can you make yourself fall in love?
Do you think as a young child it is possible to be in love with someone of a similar age? How common is it to be in love with anyone other than your parents when you are young? Isn’t it a more a case of forming attachments to older figures rather than it being emotional love?
I suspect that there’s very limited “control” over one’s “falling in love”. I do think one can “stop oneself from falling in love”, in cases where it’s very clear that the prospective inamoratus/inamorata is (for whatever reason) not a wise choice (I base this on personal experience; I’ve forced myself to not fall for women that I would otherwise fall for because they had drug habits or other shortcomings that I knew I couldn’t live with over the long run).
I don’t think that one can make oneself fall in love, no more than one can make another person fall in love with one–either it happens, or it doesn’t.
I think one can control one’s circumstances and avoid situations that are likely to lead to love developing, but I don’t think you can use force of will to actually stop it if the time and place and context are all perfect–the time to decide not to fall in love is when you meet an inappropriate person and recognize that they are the type you could fall in love with. In that case, you have to avoid establishing any kind of one-on-one relationship with them. It’s hard to fall in love without any sort of unique knowledge about the other person.
As far as kids go, I wouldn’t ever presume to dismiss someone else’s emotions. In my experience, falling in love is fairly easy–it’s everything else–the practical stuff, and the being able to build a life together that makes both of you the best people you can be–that’s hard. Intensity of emotion has no relation to duration, and kids can feel as strongly (or stronger) than anyone. However, small children presumably lack the lust component that many of us associate with “romantic love”, which I think is a significant difference.
If children do lack the lust component why is this? Does it suggest lust comes from nurture rather than nature (ie it is learnt rather than something we are born with)?
I recall very well the first time I fell in love at the age of nine. Delightful little neighborhood girl. I had dreams about her, and in my daydreams, I pictured myself rescuing her from some dire predicement, or saving her when lost in a cave, a la Tom Sawer/Becky.
I was not that shy, but it took a lot to make myself talk to her, then we began to play together (no, not “play around”), but then I moved away, alas.
I fell in love frequently from then on until the real thing came along and i got maried (57 years ago).
I believe that you always make a choice to fall in love. You may not always realize it at the time, but somewhere in the process of becoming acquainted with a person (sometimes only after you know them for a long time), the idea that you could fall in love with that person comes up and you then either accept or reject the idea.
The thing is, once you’ve made that decision it’s hard to go back. And typically the decision presents itself in such a way that it seems natural and a good idea to fall in love.
Ultimately it often seems like we don’t have a choice.
I’ve always been perplexed by adults of a certain age who find themselves stuck in romantic predicaments with people they never should have developed feelings for to begin with. I think every teenager ever has fallen in love with a friend who didn`t return their feelings. But that sucks so you grow up and decide not to get mixed up with relationships that are just going to be trouble.
So as an adult, I don’t fall in love with friends, or my friend’s girlfriends, or interns - even though they are so begging for it. I understand that once you have serious feelings for someone it’s difficult to extricate yourself from them. What I don`t understand is how reasonably emotionally intelligent adults so often seem to have trouble avoiding it in the first place.
So yes, you can stop yourself from falling in love by deciding not to.
On the flip side, I think extremely stressful situations can lead you to convince yourself you have feelings for someone you didn’t before. It’s not like a light switch, but it’s possible.
I’m not sure that kids do lack the “lust” thing, it’s just that, not knowing much about sex, they manifest it differently. They clearly crave physical contact with the object of their affections, even if it’s just pushing or pinching or dipping pigtails in the inkwell.
As for stopping yourself from falling, it’s theoretically very easy; step away from the crazy. In practice, it’s NOT usually that easy, even for reasonably well-adjusted people. Humans are funny, and what’s more, they’re all differently funny. Some of them have white-knight-syndrome, some of them crave the drama, and some of them just can’t seem to learn any better.
And I don’t think you can make yourself fall in love, although lots of people seem to be pretty good at convincing themselves that they’re in love, but I think that’s a different thing.
I think that, at least for some people, the very feeling of “falling in love” (and the feeling of “being in love”) is so intensely pleasurable that it simply short circuits the rational side of the brain. Basically, it can be an addictive process.
Earlier this year I came about >< this close to falling for a woman (surprising the crap out of me and almost breaking my vow not to do such a stupid thing ever again). We almost hooked up, though she broke the encounter off in mid-almost-hookup because she still had very intense feelings for the guy that she “broke up with” in October (we’d met in late December, our “almost-hookup” took place in late January, and it turned out she was still seeing him even when we were casually dating). She was very well aware that the guy she was still in love with was a manipulative, alcoholic, serially “adulterous” bastard (scare quotes because so far his cheating was on fiancees and steady girlfriends; he’d not tied the knot with any of them yet), but she described the rush she got from him as “an addiction” (her words).
All I could do was advise her to get counseling if she felt she was addicted and wanted to break the relationship, and perhaps get involved with Al-Anon regardless (either to get support to help her break with him, or to get support to deal with him if she decided to stick with him).
I don’t know if she’s still seeing him or not; she’s not volunteering the information, and it’s none of my fscking business. I suspect she is and just not complaining about him to me anymore.
Because I was dating a nice guy who, on paper, seemed perfect for me. I just didn’t love him, and didn’t know why. I haven’t had a lot of men willing to date me (I can count the total number of men I’ve dated in my life on the fingers of one hand), so I tried to make the best of one that was. That’s why.
I “sorta” understand where you’re coming from now, in that I see “intellectually” what you mean. I can’t quite fathom the emotional turmoil you must have been going through, unfortunately. The closest I’ve ever been to your situation was to break off one or two “relationships” because we had different “goals”; in those cases I’d have been very happy to be “friends with benefits”, but it was very clear that the women in question wanted more (as in, committed-relationship-and-eventual-marriage) than I wanted to give. I didn’t feel I could live with myself if I used their feelings towards me as a convenient means of getting in their pants, so I broke those relationships off rather than take advantage of them.
When I’m going to bed alone Yet Another Night, I sometimes wish I hadn’t been so scrupulous, but overall I know that was the right thing to do. Still, the thought of trying to force myself to love them never even crossed my mind. And it wasn’t like I was that much more popular with ladies than you’ve been with men.
I also see where Anne Neville is coming from, without really “getting” it. To me, the rush is the whole point, and you can’t force that, or fake it. It’s either there or it’s not.
That wasn’t really it for me. It was more that I hadn’t dated anyone in two years, and I hadn’t yet accepted that I might be single all my life. I eventually did accept that I might be single all my life but there are worse fates, and shortly afterward met Mr. Neville. Life’s funny that way.
I don’t think you have a choice about who you find attractive. If someone ticks all your boxes, then you are going to feel an attraction. However, what you do about that attraction is under your own control.
I think a lot of people misunderstand attraction and infatuation for love.
People will talk about being in love with someone they are not in a relationship with. That is not love, that is infatuation. To be in love with someone, means (to me) that you are in a close relationship with them, where you have shared personal aspects of yourself, and they have shared personal aspects of themselves, and you find each other deeply appealing and become, or want to become, a part of each other’s lives.
So as far as I am concerned, I believe that it is possible to stop yourself falling in love, by not engaging in the behaviours that enable you to move from infatuation/attraction to love. That, to me, is where choice and personal control (or lack of) comes in.
I don’t think it is possible for children to feel the same feelings of romantic love that adults do, simply because children do not have the same concept of sharing your entire life with another person, that’s just too ‘big’ an idea for young children to ‘get’, in the same way children are unable to understand mathematical concepts that teenagers and adults can.
Children are, of course, capable of forming very strong, intense relationships, but the basis of these relationships is not to share a life together, achieving common goals and realising ones own potential whilst encouraging the potential of the other. It’s more that Bobby has a PlayStation and his mum lets us play for as long as we like, so he’s now my bestest friend in the whole world.
Yes I aggree, I am sort of in exactly the same position at the moment. I have been going out with a guy for over a year who is, apparently so perfect for me, I like him so much in every way, and I feel he likes me equally…he even accepts and understands my funny quirks and problems. However the big BUT is that I don’t think I love him. And i really really wish I did. But I don’t, and that makes me very sad.
