Once. I met her in high school, she was 16 and I was 17. The word soul-mate makes me throw up a little but we have been together ever since. It was 45 years yesterday.
Romantic love? Once. I married him. Then, not quite five years later, we divorced.
Once (I think), it didn’t last.
To clarify, I love(d ) my husbands (current almost 35 years) of course but not that way, which is probably why those two didn’t last. Intense infatuation? Psychosis? :eek: It was crazy-making.
Four times:
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My best friend in college. It ended shortly after we started having sex.
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An older man who was a coworker for several years.
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My current partner, together for over 26 years.
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My first chorus director, for several years within my current relationship (I lusted with my heart, not with my body).
There were a few intense infatuations that I had high hopes for, but really, properly, in love? Not yet.
Once. I married him and we’ve been happy for more than 20 years. If you ask me how many men I’ve kissed or had sex with you’d get the same answer. I found my heart early and he’s never let me down.
As I’m now processing my divorce… I’m starting to think… zero.
If you had asked me a year ago, I would have said that, of course I love my husband. But, now… I’m really questioning if either of us actually loved each other, or loved what the other represented, or loved some version of each other that was in our heads that wasn’t real. sigh love is complicated.
I hope to be in love. I’m a romantic like that.
Thanks to those for sharing their experiences of long term romance. I long to have one and I am 64.
Twice.
We were engaged and less than a month to the wedding when she was killed. Other driver was convicted of intoxication manslaughter and served less than 4 years.
It’s many years later and Mrs Iggy and I are married in all but the formalities. Immigration legalities make it easier if we wait to make it official until I can find a decent job back stateside. Anyone hiring!? 
She can then enter the US on a fiancee visa and change status to stay while she applies for the green card. Less time apart that way.
Either twice or never. I have been married twice and both times thought I was in love. I made every effort I could to foster both relationships but now that I live alone I’m not sure that I was ever what other people call being in love. I still care deeply for the two women I married and see both of them regularly, but I care deeply for a lot of people, including coworkers and neighbors, and go out of my way to help them all.
Now that I live alone I really enjoy it. With a bit of distance from my marriages I wonder whether I was just in love because, that’s what you do; find someone, fall in love and get married. Did I only try to be a good partner for pragmatic reasons? I’m sure that if I could travel back in time to talk to pre-marriage me I’d caution myself about concentrating all my emotional and spiritual energy for years on one person.
Whenever I try to explain these feelings friends think they are gloomy but I find it encouraging that I can do the right thing by people without really being in love.
This. Only it was more than a ‘few’ infatuations. I do, however, seem to be evolving an intense friendship with someone.
I count four, if I leave out one-sided infatuations.
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Lasted about a year and a half in college. She broke it off after she graduated (a year ahead of me) and went on to medical school. This one hurt a lot.
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Totally unreciprocated, at least in a normal boyfriend/girlfriend way. She was dedicated to Jesus, and loved me like a brother but she just was not into boyfriend/girlfriend relationships. Lived in the same house at school for a semester. Very friendly, funny, intelligent, and beautiful. Very frustrating situation, really impacted me emotionally.
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First wife. Not 'til death did we part, after being together for 18 years and married for 14.
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Current wife. Married for almost nine years.
I thought three times. The one in Jr. high and the one in high school I no longer think wer love. When I met my wife 37 yrs ago that was different then the first two. So once.
I think being in love is a combination of loving the other, loving what they represent, and loving who you are when you are with them.
I had the usual high school relationships. I do not think I had a clue about love, but I sure understood lust. I met The Incomparable Sunflower five days before my nineteenth birthday. That was almost forty two years ago. We are very much in love and very happy together
I’m 64
I have loved and have been loved.
Never the same person at the same time.
Googled some names from way back - found very depressing obits each time.
Not going there no more.
Yes, I do wonder about the paths not taken; don’t we all?
Once. the one that got away. She went on to marry someone who didn’t appreciate her. I was content to believe her happy and now it depresses me to think she was under-loved all those years. Sadder still she can’t leave him without alienating her family and family comes first. I use to think my feelings for her were overblown yet 35 years later we crossed paths and the level of emotional intimacy was still there. We could always talk about anything and that hadn’t changed. Just holding her again was like having a few moments relief from a dull headache that’s always there and ignored. We’ve both aged with time but when I looked into her eyes I saw the same young spirit of our youth. Thinking of her still makes me want to go out and enjoy life and at the same time melancholy for not being able to share the experience with her. I suppose we will always have Paris.
You just described my mother - 42 years in hellish marriage to a nasty, stupid, mama’s boy.
While exchanging love letters with the man she loved and could have married. Don’t know why they didn’t, but I’m guessing she wouldn’t “put out” and he found someone who would (tiny, tiny, burg - everybody knows everything) and she got pregnant, forcing the marriage. Mother did NOT handle the rebound well…
Kids: This is a morality play. Lots of lessons…
Engaged – got dumped.
About to get engaged – dumped her.
Engaged, married and still with her. Seventeen joyous blissful years. Which, out of a total of 39 years together, ain’t that bad. 
Now if we want to talk “lust” instead of “love” ------- there was a day back in 1977 when I may have hit triple digits on that day alone. What can I say? I’m a man, but I can change, If I have to, I guess.