Just once and we have been married 13 years now. 
Once.
The relationship failed but I can’t seem to shake the feeling, so I’m skeptical that there’ll be a second time.
In love? Maybe seven times. Did it go anywhere? Only once.
I’ve been in love with my husband for so long (almost twenty years), that in retrospect, it’s hard to say if the first two times I really was in love. Sure felt like it at the time, but of course it turned out to be nothing in comparison to what I feel every day for my husband.
But what the hell. Let’s say a total of three.
Hmm…we’ll say twice.
And I’m not letting this one get away! He’s a keeper, he is.
Five times for me. And I’m keeping this one.
Twice. Plus one massive infatuation that lasted over a year, in spite of the fact that the woman was a pain in the ass.
Just once, and I’m not totally sure about that one. It was certainly stronger than anything I’ve felt before or since.
Three. I kept the last one.
Twice – my husband, of course, with whom I have been in love for 20 years now.
And my first boyfriend, who dumped me and broke my heart. To a certain extent I never got over it. You know the scene in Four Weddings and a Funeral where Andie McDowell is ticking off her lovers and she says something like, “Number 3. Broke my heart. Years of yearning…”? That scene always makes me cry. I had a lovely half a year with this guy and he was, prior to dumping me, an excellent boyfriend. He was my first love, and my first lover; unfailingly kind, lots of fun, and made me feel valued and sexy and beautiful. But all the good times are burned out of my memory by those post-dumping months of yearning… I never remember him without sadness. I recently found him on line and got in touch – he was in bad shape when I saw him last (his mother had died recently; and he was having some serious trouble with substance abuse) and I’ve always hoped he got his shit together. We were able to catch up and it turns out he did get his shit together and has had a happy and productive life. Nice to know – but it still makes me blue to think of him. So silly. 
I have different levels of love…
Twice I’ve been in love so deep, I think of it as ‘I’d die for you’ love.
But only once was I in love at the level of ‘I’d kill for you’ love.
(No, I’m not joking. That’s really how I think of them.)
Once. Just once. About 14 years into my marriage.
Don’t tell my wife, ok?
Once.
In 1960. For twenty minutes.
I’d say 4 times.
I’m wavering on whether the first (during high school) was more crush than love, but while it’s not the mature kind of love I’ve felt since, it was more intense and personal than lust or the other, shorter-lived crushes I had before and since.
Exactly. It’s so amazing that it just doesn’t seem possible you’ll get that lucky again huh?
I know precisly what you mean.
I think once.
I wouldn’t have considered it “love” until it ended and I felt so utterly lost and alone and sad. We were together for almost three years - we started dating when I was 17. He was much older. I think feeling so heartbroken had something to do with some sort of transference - I was never close to my parents, and had only been in high school relationships before, and here was someone I could finally turn to when I was upset and who would just hold me and stroke my hair and make me feel okay about everything - when most people are upset, this is when they want “mommy”, but I never had that kind of relationship with my mother. So losing that did feel like losing a parent, in that sense. And part of it was the fact that, as cheesy and it sounds, I grew from a girl to a woman while we were together. Seventeen through twenty are some very life-changing years. I found out who I was while I was with him. When it ended, I felt so lost - if I only became this person with him, who was I without him?
I never considered it “love” because I didn’t feel like I’d kill for him or die for him. I did know I didn’t want to lose him, but the way you feel like you wouldn’t want to lose a friend, or pet, or something. And the fighting, dear Og. Our screaming matches were so terrible. I guess you could view that as a sign of passion, but the way it made me feel was so far from love. These weren’t just average arguements. These were cruel verbal attacks from both sides - “I know you well enough to know just what to say to hurt you” type stuff. I felt it wasn’t love because I knew we could never be together for the rest of our lives - after one fight that led to him doing something so out of character (throwing a drinking glass at me, of course not really at me, if he’d wanted to hit me with it, he could have… it hit the wall a couple meters from my head), I knew the relationship was altering us both negatively. That’s when I knew it was over.
Wow, that was supposed to be short and sweet. Guess I’m still kind of reeling inside from it. It’s been what, a year now?
I suppose when I do fall in love next time I’ll know if that was love.
That makes me feel much better about my answer, which is: Never.
I’m 24.
Twice. Once in my mid 20’s with a man who was my best friend for 3 years before I realized he loved me. After 3 days of confusion after I did (my self esteem was pretty much non-existent in those days and it never occurred to me that someone *would * love me), I realized I loved him too. Not long after that we got engaged. To make a long story short, my life blew up in my face and I left Hawaii, where I’d met him. We rekindled things, but it didn’t survive the distance. When I fell in love with him, we promised no matter what happened, we’d always keep the friendship. Ultimately, I lost both.
The other time has been within the past year and a half, to a wonderful man. I could go saccharine on you, but I won’t. It is better this time around, and if my old love turned up on my doorstep this moment, I’d tell him, sorry, but he missed his chance and I am spoken for. With no disrespect to others’ SO’s, husbands, etc., this gentleman just may be the most wonderful man in the world, at least for me.
CJ
:Vanishes into a puffy pink haze:
Twice so far. Neither worked out…
Once.
We’re getting married in 6 weeks.
I thought I’d been in love before, but once I met this guy I found out differently.
This is proper, true, unconditional love.