To think a large percentage of couples aren't In Love!

[Aquarius1234]

Those that are in relationships that started in the last 5 years.
Would you say your in love with your other half?

Or its just good enough and you get on Okay and didn't have any hangups about getting into a serious/ sexual relationship.
Neither of you had issues that meant it would be difficult to form a proper relationship..

my husband and I have been together 23 years, married for 19. We are more in love now than ever. We have 2 girls, 13 and 9. We kiss and cuddle multiple times a day and he tells me all the time how much he loves me, as I do him. Right now, I am battling stage 4 bowel cancer, and he has been my absolute rock. That diagnosis has not changed how we are together, but it’s definitely made me aware how lucky we are. My friends tell me all the time how much he adores me. Sex is not what it used to be, obviously- but it was until my diagnosis. I know how amazing our relationship is and am so thankful, as I couldn’t get through this without him. He’s been with me to every single appointment and literally cherishes me. I have a major surgery coming up, to remove the cancer in my bowel and fit a stoma, which I know is going to be awful but I know he will make it more bearable. Sorry, that was not really part of this thread, but I’m up with major pain and can’t sleep 😫

What evidence is there of 'a large percentage' not counting on here or social media it seems there is a lot of these threads making grand blanket statements but not explaining where the information comes from to make them

10 years. Deeply in love. There is nothing else like the hug when he gets in from work. It soothes the soul.

None of those things are 5 years old.

m just curious whether it's fine to not be in love with whoever your dating/ in a relationship with.
Of course it’s fine, love is not a day one thing. Everyone in long lasting marriages began in a relationship they chose to be in but were not in love, that’s not a new thing.
I probably wasn’t “in love” with my husband until about 2-3 years in.

Husband and I have been together over 40 years. I still love him madly and deeply. He loves me too! We may argue on occasions but always tell each other how much we love them every day. I cannot imagine my life without him so I presume this is what true love is......you find your soul mate!

Because dating and relationships seemed to have changed so much in recent years.
Blame I Phones / instagram/ face time/ whats app , whatever. Online dating. Check lists.
Is nothing organic or worth meaning

The method by which we meet people and get to know them might have changed but people aren't any different.

I have two teenagers and despite all the new tech I don’t seem anything very different happening than when my DH and I were teenagers and first dating.

The answer is, yes, not everyone’s relationship is perfect. I certainly know couples who have been together 20, 30 or even 50 years who might have been more happy with someone else.

But life is complicated and not only just about one thing. People can build fairly happy, contented lives in those kind of relationships.

Grande passion isn’t always the best basis for a relationship either.

As with a pp I married my best friend, we’ve been together for more than 30 years and are still in love. In fact we love each other more now than we did as teens.

There’s a reason the traditional marriage vows say “for richer for poorer, for better for worse, in sickness and in health”. Those promises matter. They matter every day, because you have to keep them every day, all through the poorer, the worse and the sickness.

As for why some relationships work better than others? Not everyone marries their best friend.

You have to really like each other to make it through the rough years. And you have to work really hard at keeping your promises even when it would be easier not to.

I think love changes over time.

I think it’s a lot of pressure on couples (and tbh a factor in people doubting their relationships) that romantic love always needs to be ‘lust’ basically.

I’m 36 and have been with my husband 22 years (married 11). We certainly aren’t the same young teens that we were when we met. However I did know at that age that this is the person I want to grow up, be with and have a child/children with.
I love him and I think as we have grown I love him more on a deeper level. I did fall in love again when we became parents as he is a lovely Dad and the bond he and our daughter has is amazing.
We struggled with infertility prior to having our daughter and now she is 6 there is no sign of us being blessed with another child. But I know I am very lucky to have our family.
I do still get butterflies when I see him especially if I’m meeting him in public/picking him up from somewhere and vice versa. I just can’t not smile.

Your question seems to be about can you date someone you’re not “in love” with. Of course, you have to get to know someone. You can fancy someone, you can like how they are. You certainly don’t need to be in love with them immediately.
BUT, in my opinion if you don’t feel like you have very strong feelings towards someone after, maybe a couple of months, he/she is not the one.
It may be, he/she is good enough for right now, but love just turns up.
One day you just realise you love your person. You’d rather be with them than anyone else, every time you see something interesting you want them to see it with you, you trust them, you trust them to be honest and you trust them to have your back. You care about how happy they are, as much as you care about your own happiness. You really, really like them and you envision old age with them.
That is love for me. (33 years together)
You absolutely won’t have that immediately but if you can’t even imagine what I am saying, then you need to move on xx

I have been married & divorced and I can honestly say, I'm still waiting for my love 🥰match.

I thought myself in love in my early 20s and as that de Berniéres quote shows, I made a decision. A poor one, as it turns out, but I desperately wanted it to work. Since splitting up I have fancied men and it's been lovely but it soon goes away and you find there's not much of substance there. It is a temporary state of madness. I have been through limerance as well. Nothing deeper than that.

There's a therapist on YouTube called Jonathan Decker who says that you have to make choices about your relationship every day to make it work. Love isn't magical, he says, it's a state of feeling that we choose to feed snd maintain, and that's what makes it deeper and more meaningful. Communication is key in any relationship (I had poor communication in mine) and is one aspect of what keeps it going. So I think that the giddiness is good, but short-lived, it's what comes after that matters. You really find out compatibility as time wears on.

Love evolves. You start off "in love" - which let's be honest, is often lust based. You then go through the trials of life together and the love deepens to real love; not as exciting by any means but it's still love.

In the past, you went to a party, chatted to someone, and after kissing on a couple of dates you'd think you were in the early stages of a relationship

Now, it does seem quite different, meeting loads of strangers on apps, communicating with several people at once, expectation of sex straight away, unsure whether you're exclusive until you have the talk

The expectation of sex so early in relationships concerns me as someone thinking about "getting out there" again. I'm quite traditional in my dating outlook and don't want to have sex on the third date, or earlier!. I want to find out who the person is properly, first. Also, dating more than one person at a time sounds exhausting. But I am 47 and shy, with an unfortunate relationship history, so maybe that's clouded my attitude. Dating is hugely different now to when I was younger.

Married 20 years and, yes, we love each other. It isn't the intoxication of being 'in love' that characterises the early stages of a relationship, it's a deep bond that comes from knowing someone inside out. We are still openly affectionate, e.g. will hold hands when we are walking. We have developed lots of shared habits, routines and private language/jokes - that kind of thing can only happen in a long relationship.

I agree with you

I guess all you can do is make it very clear what you're (not) offering and adhere to that. Good luck. Your approach is entirely valid

5.5 years here and things are great. When you are on the second time around you are better at picking I think

Longer than 5 years now (7ish) but still just as in love. I think I am lucky tho and he is my soul mate. I trust him completely and I’m only worried about him dropping dead on me. I think part of it is that we are very lucky when it comes to family support. Our families get on and also there’s loads of people willing to have our kids while we go away (we return the favour for DB and SIL, also dog sit for in laws).

That’s why I always tell people to be careful before they burn bridges with in laws and siblings… having childcare options is key to keeping the relationship spark alive imo. Obviously if you’re partner is a bum no amount of child care matters, but I think time alone is a make or break factor for a lot of relationships.

The relationship I had just before I started dating my husband was really awful - my ex was emotionally abusive and it ended with him cheating on me and threatening to get me deported, etc.

My husband and I were already friends, but after that split, I began to see him in a different way - and I think, had I not been through such a nasty experience, I might not have appreciated exactly how perfect for me he really is.

However, I can say without reservation that he is my PERSON. I love him, I'm in love with him, I love everything about him, I trust him, I like him, I everything him. We have been together for 9 years, married for 3, and I am just never, ever tired of being with him. He's my best friend, my partner in everything, my biggest fan - and I try to be those things for him too. It's a quiet, steady kind of happiness and love - not the showy Hollywood kind - but it's perfect to me.

I like to think that there are a lot of couples in the world that have this - I really hope there are! 💕

We are 18 years in -
I have lost count of the amount of times he has made me laugh, I can count on 1 finger the amount of times he’s made me cry.
We make each other’s lives better and make each other better people.
We’ve grown together, rather than growing apart.
We can rely on each other but we don’t ‘need’ each other which means we stay together because we actively choose to, no one is trapped.
We came to the relationship with similar values and similar ideas of what we wanted the future to look like.
We align on all the big topics (kids, jobs, houses, finances, politics) so there isn’t much beyond every day domestic shit to cause friction.
We wake up and choose each other every day. That’s love

That heady 'in love' feeling usually lasts - at most - for about two years. After that, a different kind of lasting love begins, which imo is way more enjoyable. It's calmer, it's based on support and respect and trust and kindness and fun and enjoying daily life together.

I've been reading All Fours by Miranda July [spoiler alert] in which the main character, going through peri-menopause decides to have an open marriage so she can explore her sexuality. This morning I was thinking - if I did this, what sort of man would i want to meet? Someone kind and gentle with a really dry wit, who has interests and passions similar to my own so we can do stuff together. The kind of man who is genuinely turned on by my middle -ged body. And then I thought - that's DH, then. I'd just be hunting for a replica of him. What would be the point?

We've been together 30 years and although that intense, permanent physical lust has died back a fair bit, what's replaced it is really precious to me. I always felt a bit edgy in those first months of a relationship - it was always too intense for me. I used to think: I love my life too, you know. I don't want to spend every minute in bed or on the phone with one person. I like balance.

One thing I have noticed is that people who have issues with each other in the first six months of the relationship are probably fundamentally not suited. I remember a friend falling in love at roughly the same time as I met DH. About 4 months in, she and her man started going for relationship counselling. DH and I were still wide-eyed and soppily obsessive about each other at that point. By 6 months in, both she and the man were pretty bloody unhappy but really trying to 'work things through' whereas DH and I had just got engaged.

When DC each met their first serious partners there were issues within 2-3 months. They limped along for about a year to 18 months and both relationships ended badly. When they met the people they are with currently, there were no major issues and still haven't been, two years in. I have another friend who had issues early on, she married the man and they are still together 30 years on, and she is still unhappy about how he treats her. But if I'd been her, I'd have walked after three months. She just clung on, and he was too much of a lazy lion to stop her. Early issues suggest to me that something is too much like hard work.

We’ve been together for 24 years, married for 20 and I’m deeply in love with him. All evidence suggests he feels the same way about me.

I’d hate if that feeling of love and passion went, but I think we have a very strong foundation and bond and that our relationship would be able to continue happily without it. Hope that never happens though.

He’s my very favourite person and the one I look forward to seeing every day.

I love my DH with all my heart. We have been married over 50 years.

Married for 17 years. Sometimes we’re in love, sometimes we’re just mates but we are always good partners. We are a team, we work as a team, play each to our strengths in this team and always support one another. It’s not always been easy but I think having a shared sense of values, respect and appreciation for one another, a good dose of emotional intelligence and working on our communication skills has seen us through most storms.

There’s no way some of the couples I know can be in love.

Ranges from separate beds to one of them being obsessed with someone else.