Are some couples more in love than others?

[LeopardSheet]

I love my husband, I’ve never doubted I’m in love with him and we have a great relationship (don’t fight much, best friends, good sex life, make eachother laugh, want to grow old together) but we are fairly low key about it. We don’t do public displays of affection or write deep declarations of love in birthday cards/Facebook statuses etc. A lot of my friends are similar with their partners-very happy together but if you spend time with them they just seem like 2 friends together mostly.
Then there is the occasional couple that are so obviously in love you can see it when you spend time with them-they can’t keep their hands off each other even after years, you can tell by the way they look at each other or they write gushing Facebook posts, refer to eachother as soulmates etc.

Do you think that this is just a personality thing (some people are more expressive than others) or do you think these couples have found a connection/deeper love than average, standard but still in love couples. And the rest of us don’t know what we’re missing because the love we have is still amazing and we’ve never experienced this “higher” level?

I ran into an old friend recently with her “new” husband of 6 years and I was quite surprised by the chemistry between them/the obvious love was like a cheesy movie. Apparently it was love at first sight when they met too. I looked up this friend on Facebook and her profile was full of gushing messages and photos of her husband.
When I knew her years ago she was married (and I knew her with her university boyfriend before that) and she was always quite a private,low key person not the type to be dramatic/romantic and never did public displays of affection with her partner.
In case this sounds negative I don’t think it’s a bad thing at all, it’s lovely to see people in love.
Does anyone else see couples that seem to be more crazily in love than other (happy, also in love) couples? Do you think these people are just very lucky and actually are more in love or are they just more public/expressive about their love and their feelings for eachother are the same as couples that are more quiet/less romantic with eachother but still happy?

More noticeable in second marriages in my experience

My friends who are the most 'in love' and all over fb etc are the ones who have ended up divorced.
Genuinely happy people have no need to show everyone else how happy they are.. they just are!

I've always assumed it's a personality thing. I'm not a gushy person and in every relationship I've ever had it has become more 'friends' over time, even when it has begun very passionate. I don't respond well to overly touchy people and once the initial chase and honeymoon period is over, it would annoy me if my partner was always touching me and needy.
Having said that I think it is utterly amazing when you see an older couple still clearly in love and holding hands and looking into each others eyes etc, I think making a bond like that must be very special and quite rare.

I think it must be a contrast thing, the only couples I know who do this it's their second or third long term relationship or marriage and they must feel a real difference in comparison to their other relationships and therefore want to show it, fair enough but it's not for me.

I love my husband to death, he is the most incredible man in my eyes and we're very affectionate with each other, but I feel no great desire to gush about him publicly without persuasion. I'm 100% content and secure but I like to keep our marriage just for us.

I love my husband but dont think im in love with him. I often meet other couples who are together as long as us (over 25 years) and they seem to be more in love than I am, but I just accept that. We're happy as we are.

I think it's personality based. Introverted people will never be as outwardly affectionate for instance but are generally known for typically having deeper feelings than extroverts. Your friend has probably been influenced by her new partner, perhaps he shows love in a very showy sort of way and that makes her want to reciprocate. Saying that, I do think naturally more optimistic and upbeat people will find it much easier to create a happier relationship than two people that perhaps consider themselves realists.

I don't really think how people are around others says much about their relationship. My partner and I are very gushy and affectionate at home, we love the cheesiness, but wouldn't even hold hands in front of people we know (we would just going for a walk but not while hanging out with people) and I would rather die than put a gushy post on Instagram haha. We both just too awkward and introverted for any of that.

I’m curious to know what makes you think you love your husband but are not in love with him?

@fairycakes1234 This was meant for you. ^

Funnily enough the one couple who appeared more in love than anyone were the ones that got divorced in our circle. They covered it up so well, maybe that was the aim of it. Always touchy feely, he would refer to "my beautiful wife" etc. Left her for someone else.

Some are more in love or better suited.
DP and I are one of those very happy couples. We just compliment each other and I crave his company. We are very happy and both feel so grateful to have one another.

No one knows anything about what goes on behind closed doors so it's impossible really to tell who's in love or not. What you see on the outside or social media may or may not be sincere.

I don't much care how anyone else sees my relationship. We know how we feel and that's all that actually matters isn't it? We have never been tactile in public, even in those first heady months of lust. I only ever discuss my marriage with my closest friend and DH doesn't at all as far as I know. We have never needed to seek outside confirmation of how we feel, but it's ok with me if others do.

I don't think there are levels of love that we go through, just that we are all different and express it in different ways. I love my DH as much now as I did when we met over 40yrs ago but no one else would necessarily know, or need to know, that.

My parents. They don't write Facebook messages or anything like that but they have always been so in love. Everyone comments on it. I used to find it strange growing up seeing how relatively 'cold' other peoples parents were towards each other.

The only downside is I now have exceedingly high expectations for my relationships!

Myself and DH are the type of couple who are extremely low key. Been together 15 years but not the gushing over each other type.

I sometimes wonder if the couples who are very public with their love are trying to make up for something, the extremely public and OTT love on social media is a bit odd.

@Einszwei

My parents. They don't write Facebook messages or anything like that but they have always been so in love. Everyone comments on it. I used to find it strange growing up seeing how relatively 'cold' other peoples parents were towards each other.

The only downside is I now have exceedingly high expectations for my relationships!

This made me think of my grandparents but the opposite way round. My dad talks about how he remembers going to a friend's house as a boy and being astonished that the parents spoke kindly to each other. My grandparents had a really difficult relationship and I think it was quite a toxic environment. So sad. I'd take gushy love over the war of attrition that they fought for forty odd years any day.

I think it’s lovely to have grown up with parents who truly adored each other, I didn’t have that. Dh did and I have never met any other man who loved his father as much as he did. Unfortunately dhs father died at a relatively young age.
Looking back I don’t recall any of my friends Parents having super relationships. Lots remained married but that doesn’t mean they were happy. Quite a lot seemed to just go through the motions.

My exh was very affectionate in public, he'd put his arm around me, hold my hand, cuddle into me etc when we were with friends. It hid a deeply insecure side of him that struggled socially so he was in effect clinging on to me. At home he barely made eye contact!

I don't think public displays of affection (especially on social media) are necessarily the sign of a strong and stable relationship.

Both. Some couples are more in love, some display their love differently.
DH and I are very touchy, lovey, I adore him, I love him more than anyone in the world, I'd give my life for him. He's like the other half of me. We're physically touching most of the time, it just feels natural.

DHs parents on the other hand seem to more tolerate eachothers existence. I don't personally think they do love each other

And we know couples who I think do love eachother very much but live independent lives kind of parallel to one another.

But we don't know what others think and feel so there's no way of knowing who loves someone the most.

Totally agree with others that that the most ‘loved up’ FB posters are often the ones who are the most insecure. My ex was the type to post about ‘my wonderful wife’ while in reality he was cheating and was a total cunt to me in real life!