I’m curious about behavioral changes that falling in love causes in people. How did meeting your SO change you 1 year, 5 years, and even 10 years after meeting them. Did you become more extroverted? Pursue your dreams? Just generally walk around with a big grin all the time?
I’m in love and my life is just so awesome right now. I feel more focused and alive then ever. I feel she helps me bring out my true potential. I’m excited to see what five years will bring!
I read an analogy once that I think is very appropriate. It’s along the lines of love being a fire. When it starts up, it burns hot and furious and consumes everything. But later, it dies down. The true test is whether it goes out or whether the embers keep glowing and keep you warm for a long, long time. Or something like that.
SWMBO and I have been together for 16+ years. My life is much better because she’s in it and I spend every day trying to make her feel the same. Our embers are glowing.
We’ve been together 13 years, this spring.
Love has matured us. The day in and day out living together and accomodating each other and living with someone who really isn’t anything like you makes you grow up or makes you give up. We have grown up.
Love has made us more introverted. But what people used to call love, they now call co-dependency. I like to call it interdependency.
Made me sarcastic and a bit bitter, but expanded my horizons a great deal. Also, a boost to my self-esteem in general, since before her I had accepted the universal truth that no girl could ever be interested in me, ever. Which was oddly comforting, in a hopeless way.
Now I know that they can : they just don’t - worse feeling 
As for the years that followed, well, to quote La Bruyère, “One loves well only once, and its the first time. The loves that follow are less involuntary”. I’ve been with other girls since, but never lost myself in love like I did with Her. I’ve become too cautious and guarded now that I know too well what’s at the end of it. For years I reckoned it was because I must have still carried a torch for her, but we met again, became sort-of-nostalgic-friends, and it just wasn’t there anymore.
So, I don’t know. I get by.
My SO and I will have been together for 2 years this March. Having him in my life has changed a lot about me.
He helped me realize what I was looking for in a relationship, and what role I want to play. I feel like I’ve found someone that is more uniquely in tune with who I am than any other person I know.
I used to tell people that I’ve had a lot of sex, but never really felt like I had ‘made love’ more than a handful of times (and then I really think I was being generous). Now, I feel like we make love most of the time, and even when we just have sex, there’s something more there than gratification.
In that way, I think I’ve changed pretty dramatically. Where before I could have sex with just about anyone at the drop of a hat - because I could easily separate sex from love - now I think I wouldn’t be able to just have sex anymore unless he was somehow a part of it.
I could go on - but let me just say, the changes in me have been pretty substantial.
Well, let’s see, when we met I was desperately trying to keep the whole world at arms length, to keep from being hurt again. Somehow this odd fellow managed to worm his way in under the radar, no easy feat as I possess a formidable will.
Then I thought, “Well this is fun, I’ll just ride the ride and enjoy it till it ends”. He was my travel companion and we had remarkable experiences together, learning, growing, sharing, wandering freely.
One day I realized I was a better person because he’d come into my life. He challenged me sometimes, he nudged me sometimes, he supported me at times and sometimes, he flat out carried me through. I used to be a closed person and he kind of reversed that, I am now a very open person.
Through all of our trials and adventures he has stood shoulder to shoulder with me and been every bit my partner. Y’know that line at the end of Titanic, it’s so true for me, “He saved me in every way one person can save another.”
I know that love and respect would only be concepts I understood on a intellectual basis, but for this man. Sort of like the difference between understanding what ‘visible minority’ means and the actual experience of it.
We are both ‘one of kind’ types, as our friends would surely confirm. That we found each other seems as unlikely as winning a lottery.
I’ve always had commitment issues, but honestly, after 25 yrs together, I’m thinking I could actually marry this guy. If you knew me, you’d realize how much that sentence truly says.
My wife is my inspiration to be the best person I can be.
I felt in love with her well before she with me. I knew. She, on the other hand, took some convincing.
One day she asked me, “What would you you do if I were with you?”
I said, “Spend every day of my life convincing you you made the right decision.”
I live by that to this day, and work very hard to make sure every action I undertake I undertake for the right reason and for our mutual betterment.
Dunno if this counts…but since I lost it about a year and a half ago…I can’t seem to find it anymore, and don’t know when it will ever return
Made me less selfish. I’m not in love right now, but my relationships have taught me the value of doing things because it made someone else happy, even if it has no immediate gain for me. They’ve taught me how to be more considerate for the feelings of others, and really try to see the world from someone else’s perspective.
Also (and probably obvious): self-confidence. If someone can fall in love with me - in fact if I can have had three people say ‘I love you’ to me and mean it - then I’m not a lost cause after all! This isn’t to say that my relationships are the basis of my self-confidence, but in one particular respect, that is, on whether or not I’d ever be able to be in a functional relationship, I feel much more certain.