Questions about love

In My Humble Opinion
1

  1. How do you determine the difference between “love” and “like a whole bunch”.

  2. Do you believe that there’s such thing as “falling in love”? If so, what does it feel like?

  3. When did you first fall in love?

  4. Is love always a positive feeling for you? Or does it bring with it negative emotions as well (like fear)?

2

  1. I’ve never really tried to make that distinction. But I think if I did it would amount to something along the lines of completion. As in, I really feel more complete with this person in my life, we really click together perfectly, or something similarly cliched but nonetheless true. “Like a whole bunch” is just liking somebody a whole bunch. There have been many people in my life whom I liked a whole bunch, but I didn’t necessarily want them around all the time, nor did I necessarily want to have physically, emotionally, or intelletually intimate relationships with them.

  2. Yes. Lot’s of longing coupled with a long-lasting endorphin high.

  3. I kinda-sorta fell in love as a teenager. I all-the-way fell in love around age twenty, and I’ve been with the object of my love for most of the two decades since then.

  4. Usually. As far as negative emotions, these for me have had more to do with occasional frustration than fear. Love is wonderful. Twenty years with a lover sometimes is not . . . for a lot of different reasons.

3

  1. How do you determine the difference between “love” and “like a whole bunch”.
    A lot of the time, love is something you do, not something you feel. It’s the will to keep doing that tells you you still love somebody.

  2. Do you believe that there’s such thing as “falling in love”? If so, what does it feel like?
    There’s falling in lust, which a lot of us are familiar with. Obsession, euphoria, horniness. Eventually that wears away and, if you are committed and well-suited to each other, slowly a feeling of being pair-bonded will grow on top of the friendship/camaraderie and physical attraction that remain. As you build a life together, there’s also a sense of partnership in the business side of living.

  3. When did you first fall in love?
    I first fell in lust when I was fifteen. My first relationship that matured into bonding was in my early twenties. It turned out to be ill-advised and caused me a lot of pain when it ended. I met my husband when I was almost 28.

  4. Is love always a positive feeling for you? Or does it bring with it negative emotions as well (like fear)?
    I’m never scared of the love my husband and I feel. It never makes me sad and it never makes me angry. Like Charlotte in Sex and the City, it makes me happy every day–maybe not all day (because life gets in the way), but every day. For me, there’s still no question of any other life option being preferable to what we have right now.
    That other relationship that ended badly–that love began to make me sad and angry after the relationship had already begun to dissolve… basically once I’d accepted, in the back of my mind, that it really was about to be over.

4

  1. I think the easiest way to describe it is the result. If someone does something annoying, it will make me like them less, but it won’t make me love them less. Liking is about how well the person fits your personality. Loving is about how much you value them.

  2. Falling in love is an amped-up, hyper-aware sort of love. It can be a little on the obsessive side. It makes spending time with the object something you’re driven to do–almost a hunger.

  3. When I met my late husband. I’ve only been in love twice.

  4. Love has a big component of fear and loss and anxiety for me. Fear of bad things happening to the loved one. But there is a much larger element of contentment and joy and stability.