Yesterday I heard on the radio while driving home, that a person falls in love on an average of 6 times in their lifetime. Made me do a headcount, and I am at #5. Where are the rest of you dopers at in a numbers count? Elaborate if you must…
I really try to be good but it just isn’t in my nature!
I’ve only really fallen in love once so far… I guess I’m saving up for later in life.
Either that or I was so heartbroken when he left me that I’ve just never recovered and gotten up the nerve to do it again. I mean, I’ve done it again, but …oh, never mind.
It’s funny… Maybe we do fall in love six times a year, but once you find the one love which supercedes the others, you wonder whether the other times actually WERE love…
Yer pal,
Satan
I think I am on #4. But I got it right this time, for sure. The thing is, this kind of makes the previous three seem not at all like “the real thing”. Therefore, perhaps I should answer, “Once, and only once.”
I’ve certainly had #1, no doubt, none of the others, either before or after, have even come close. Will it happen again, maybe, if it doesn’t, ah well, at least I experienced it once. IMO, once only.
Let me correct that. Twice, once in 1979, with MUFC ;).
I may get shot for this but here goes…
I think there are a few different kinds of love. Even between and man/woman; husband/wife; boyfriend/girlfriend; mother/father.
I’ve been in love three times. But the relationships have been so varied as to have affected the kind of love. All involved passion, sacrifice, support, friendship, commonality, and all the other traits which make up the encompassing word “love”. But some traits were stonger in one of the relationship than in the other two.
So the short answer is “three.”
The long answer is “three – kinda.”
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Twice, both in the last five years. Both of them also ended badly enough that while I would really like to be in love again, I’m a little gunshy.
I have to agree with you guys. Although right now I’m not involved with anyone…I look back on past relationships and I can vouch that it wasn’t really love in the true sense of the word. I think there are different degrees of love just like you said Chef. There is also a difference in loving someone and being “in love” with someone. The most wonderful relationship and the lasting one is where you have both. You can love many people and you can fall in love with several people but I think you can only have both with that one special person in your life and that person has the same feelings back for you…which equals soulmate. If you think you’ve found your soulmate and they aren’t willing to give just as much back to you as you give to them (and there are no excuses the love is either the same or it’s not the same)…I daresay it’s not your soulmate but just someone you wish were. I haven’t found that yet.
“Do or do not, there is no try” - Yoda
I don’t kiss & tell, not that any one can agree on what ‘falling in love’ means. Discussed before extensively but never defined.
“It’s funny… Maybe we do fall in love six times a year, but once you find the one love which supercedes the others, you wonder whether the other times actually WERE love…”
Yeah, right, dude, 6 times a YEAR for you maybe 
hehe. Satan’s fickle. 6 times a year? Wow!
I have been in love twice, although I have had 5 serious enough relationships, 3 I ended because it simply was not love. I have never had a relationship end badly. I am still in contact on a regular basis with 3 of my exes, one of whom is the boys father and lives 2 blocks away. (A little too close for my personal preference, but the kids like it.) So, I am still looking for that one. I assume I will know it when I feel it.
If your head is wax, don’t walk in the sun.
-Benjamin Franklin
I have, and it’s amazing.
I’ve been in love twice before, and it was good (sometimes…), but as fuzzy-wuzzy wisely noted, there IS something bigger and better and I finally found it. Today, I’m not only in love with someone, I also Love and am Loved in return. This is it. I mean, this is the big IT.
I had no idea a relationship could be this deeply fulfilling and perfect… takes my breath away.
Big Bad Bob
I agree there is a difference between being in love, and loving someone. I have several close friends who I love very much as they are important people in my life and I don’t shy away from telling them that I do love them. The same goes for my family. I always tell my sisters and brother I love them and I tell my son daily as well.
We are, each of us angels with only one wing,and we can only fly by embracing one another
I have loved several people, for several reasons. I’ve been in love a total of once.
“Buffalo Bills? Oh, yeah. The guys that always snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.” --WallyM7
Twice,here.But I Really like you,Drain. 
Twice. And both times, I’ve only realized it after the person has taken themselves out of my life.
But so help me, if it comes within my power and circumstances to do so, I’m gonna fight like a cornered mongoose with a Tabasco enema to get one of 'em back.
He weathered a firestorm of agony and did not break.
And while Yori raged against his unbending
courage, we took Kyuden Hiruma back.
His loss is great, but so is the gift his suffering brought.
-Yakamo’s Funeral
THOUGHT I was in love 3 times. Once was as a teenager, it was puppy love, I think most of us have experienced that. The other two times were in college, 5 years apart (I did a 7 year stint trying to find myself. I’m still looking). Looking back, I see that I was not really in love with any of them. Now I am sick of the whole thing anyway. I’ll leave the love stuff up to the rest of you all.
Well, I thought I’d been in love a couple of times, but then I really fell in love, and realized it had never been like that (like this) before. But maybe that’s a function of maturity – I’m finally (and for the first time) in a relationship where I’m comfortable both loving and being loved, and that was the “click” I heard when it all fell into place.
Excuse me, Bob and I are going to go off into a corner and moon over how fabulous our respective S.O.s are.
Jodi
Fiat Justitia
I think it’s about maturity, just like jodih said. Mature love is a WHOLE different thing (and I wasn’t mature enough to understand that until only the last year or so). Of course, BOTH parties must be at a stage in their lives where they ARE mature, and know how to (and want to) give when they take, or it’s just another (doomed) romance.
Having said that, I’d like to tell jodih “You GO girl!” Hope you’re enjoying the ride as much as I am!