Love is a decision?

[ALittleStranger]

Do you agree with this?

It's what a friend said to me recently when I was recounting the niggles I have with my BF. The "why it's great for now but I don't see a future with him" vagueries.

She reckons that love is a decision and that after a certain point you just have to decide to stop fighting the what ifs.

I sort of agree. I know that I've definitely never allowed myself to just wallow in a relationship and roll into the future. I'm always rationalising why he's Mr Right For Now.

The only problem is I've known that no past relationships has been someone I should have gone the distance with. I still keep hoping that I will meet someone who makes everything click into place in my head.

What's realistic, do people just "know" or have I got to learn to turn off my inner critic?

Love is an action, not a decision.

I don't think deciding to just settle is the same as love.

Love is all the things you do for someone because you know it is worth it, and they are worth it to you, not because you have decided that they will do.

When a person is right for you, and worth putting the love in for, and you want to put the love in for them, and they enhance your life, that is true love. You won't have any 'what ifs' or any niggling doubts.

but you could have niggling doubts from previous experiences and precious relationships, and you do have to make the effort to not tar all future partners with the same brush. That is sometimes the hard part. It took me a while to trust my DP, not because of anything he did, but because of past experiences. I do now trust him!

If you have doubts about someone, then no 'decision' is going to make you happy. Dating is about discovering the person, in a variety of situations, and working out if you want a long term future with them. It's absolutely fine to decide someone is 'Mr Right Now' (as long as you are not deceiving them about your intentions) and it is absolutely fine to decide that long term monogamy isn't for you.

If however you are coupled up, the 'love is a decision' mind set might give you the resolve to get through a transitory bad patch. I hope however it is never used to rationalise a failing relationship or downright abuse.

I consider it more of a realisation than a decision, as it's quite subconscious.

If it's the right relationship then you just realise that certain things aren't as important as you perhaps thought they were. Or it confirms that things are important.

I don't think you can just decide these things, feelings are felt not decided.

Most of us don't decide whether or not to love. But, as in the expression of loving someone 'warts and all', what we can (or should) decide is how many warts are acceptable before the love just isn't enough to sustain a relationship.

I've adopted a policy of deciding not to love! For various reasons, I'm given to loving practically everyone. It eventually sank in that this made my life fill up with people who were 'taking' love. By making clinical choices to detach from them, there's more room for folk who won't take the piss.

Stranger, I wonder if your friend was thinking about arranged marriages? The principle there is that you've been pre-selected as a compatible couple, and you're both expected to 'decide' to love. When it works, it works well. It's heavily dependent on a wise selection, though.

I used to think this- that if a man was nice and normal and reasonably attractive then i could decide that this was A Good Thing and love him.

I met a few perfectly nice men whilst dating but knew that there just wasn't any chemistry. When i met my current partner the difference i felt in that i was instantly comfortable around him, wasn't sticking to 'rules' etc was very noticeable.

Love is not simple!

No it's certainly not simple. There is tonnes of chemistry with my current partner so when people talk about settling as overlooking the lack of oomph it doesn't resonate. I think it's more an awareness that there is 5% missing and that's not letting me embrace the 95%.

Garlic it is most relevant to arranged marriages but she was talking about romantic love.

The intentions question is interesting. I would argue I have made my intentions very clear, but isn't this board (and real life) full of people ignoring that and hoping a partner will come around and often being proved right? Is it my job to police his optimism?

I think love is different with different partners, outside influences, family, kids etc all have an impact on relationships.

I've had 2 long term relationships as an adult. I was married for 8 years (together 6 before that). We had 2 kids together but he was immature, couldn't understand my focus on 2 small children, he was crap in the house and with the kids so I resented that, withdrew and he left. He regrets his actions and has grown up a lot since, he's a great dad now.

I've just ended a 6 yr relationship, I was deeply in love with him, fancied the pants off him. We had a great life as a couple it truly was fab, holidays, weekends away, lots of fun times. But he resented my children. Never bonded with them and many times downright disliked them! This changed my feelings for him, I couldn't continue to watch him bully my children. My youngest DS was copying his angry behaviour.

So love shifts I think, according to how life moves on! God I sound like I'm rambling!

It is definitely not your job to police his optimism. You have a duty to be honest - with yourself and him - about your feelings & intentions, is all.

Women in the 21st century are perfectly free to choose not to couple up. Not so long ago, getting married & staying married was a woman's only destiny (unless she opted out of social life altogether.) The pressure to put up & shut up, therefore, was intense. This gave rise to all the sage advice about 'deciding' and 'good enough' and not leaving yourself on the shelf.

i was instantly comfortable around him, wasn't sticking to 'rules' etc

I don't think you should settle for anything less than this - with sexual chemistry, obviously :)

Because less than that is worse than single!

If there's a missing 5% then of course you have to exercise judgement about whether that's liveable or enough to scotch the relationship long-term.

On these boards and IRL you often see the phrases 'he's a nice guy ...but' 'he's a great father.... but' 'I love him but....'. And it doesn't matter if the 'but' is alcohol dependency, marathon golf sessions or the inability to remove a sock and put it in a laundry basket. If it's a but that will land you in the divorce courts one day, it has to be taken into account.

I absolutely believe that love is a decision. The kind of love where you care deeply about someone and put their happiness first. You may have fun with someone, have great chemistry, feel in love etc but having a long lasting love is something you constantly have to work at.

It obviously helps if you find a good, kind person to love and you genuinely like them. Friendship is the base of it.

I think it depends on what the missing 5% is concerning.

I can't turn off my inner critic, so I didn't when I met my husband. I was besotted by him, but realistic about his foibles and failings. I married him despite these because I wanted to be with him. Some people are able to be less critical than others.

Some are less critical but, let's be honest, others are simply desperate enough and have low enough standards to put up with anything for the sake of having 'someone' in their lives. :) They don't just overlook little foibles but they deliberately ignore some very serious failings.... even when others point them out at length... in order to rationalise why this totally wrong person is 'the one'.

This is a thought-provoking thread. I can see how my choices at 22 were influenced by a desperate urge to settle down and get married despite some glaring incompatibilities. These became untenable by the time I was fifty but by then I had a lovely family and financial security.
I see young friends with higher standards refusing to compromise and still single at 38 with all probability that they will never meet anyone who will meet their minimum requirements and therefore won't have a family.
Now I am old and picky I will only share my life with someone I really appreciate on all levels. No Buts!

I have been angry at DH a few times but said to him "look, I'm still angry but I know I will forgive you, so I'm going to say I forgive you now and that will speed it up"
it works every time.

I think that is also a decision to love, rather than fight. with my kids too. or anyone, really.
when you feel "I don't like you right now, but I know I love you, so let's go with the permanent knowledge rather than the temporary feeling"
So yes, I think being loving and to love is a conscious decision at times.

Is that what you mean OP?

I agree it's a realisation. It's the point you realise that despite whatever irritating niggles there are you can't imagine not having them in your life - the point you realise that you're happy to compromise over things.

I think cog has hit the nail on the head in that it depends on what the missing 5percent is and is it quite different for every couple.

My ex was useless at getting jobs done, that I could live with other stuff I eventually couldn't.

Everyone is different but I don' think I would want to be in a relationship where the good parts were being overshadowed by the bad. That is unworkable and can often lead to resentment.

You aren't obliged to tolerate anything-however trivial-that' one thing I've come to realise.

Looking back, I "decided" to love my STBXH.

We had been friends for a long time, I'd always fancied him and we had chemistry. When we were both single, we kept ending up in bed together. All our friends were thrilled and wanted us to be together, but I ended it because I knew that we were just incompatible.

A few months later we were having a drunken chat and getting cosy again. I still fancied him, I cared for him and knew he was troubled and sad and I sort of decided then and there that I would make him happy and that I would love him.

We were happy for a couple of years, I fell inlove, we got married and now four years later, we have split. It was inevitable.

When I was desperately unhappy and trying to muster up the courage to leave, I kept googling " what to do if you don't love your husband" and kept coming across things that said "love is a choice" which just made me more sure I had to put up with the emotional abuse and then I found mumsnet.

I think that yes, if you want to get married etc, you have to decide, this is right and this can be forever, but you can't decide to love someone forever.

I sort of agree with her, but not fully. I think a lot of emotions are down to conscious decision making. I love the quote from Lincoln, "Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be."

Of course that's far too pat to apply in all cases. No amount of conscious will is going to make you happy if you've just lost a partner or a child, or had your home repossessed, etc. But barring big life events and extremes, I think it can hold. A lot of life is simply perspective, although there is more research coming out now to suggest that temperament can be determined physiologically.

I know that while I've been not been able to manufacture love, I've certainly been able to make the decision to stop loving someone who has nothing to offer but hardship.

I don't know if any relationship can ever be 100% right though. We might be a social species with a natural gravitation towards pairing up, but people are individuals, and as such will inevitably have their own needs and wants that couldn't possibly be in tune with another's at all times. I think it's easier to deal with those mismatches if you have well-developed lives outside the couple relationship so that the differences become something to celebrate and keep things interesting rather than something that causes friction.

(But I'd LTB for leaving his socks on the floor. )

It's only the right decision if both participants agree, if both participants work together, if both are willing to compromise and to try.

If one half of a partnership decides to love, and make whatever efforts or sacrifices are necessary to make it work, and the other half just accepts it all as their due and believes everything works without any effort from them, then it will not work. The 'decider' will end up miserable and resentful.

Thanks for the responses, lots of food for though.

Zing I mean more the choice to fall in love with someone, although I do believe that once you have committment you do have to make an active choice to work at it.

I don't want to go into detail about the missing 5%, but it's not socks or any bad character trait. But an analogy would be that it would be like me always thinking I needed someone musical, and then meeting someone who wasn't musical but offered other things I hadn't realised I'd appreciate so much. But music is still an important part of my life and I still want to surround myself with musical friends.

Dahlen I think that Lincoln quote is excellent and possibly what she's getting at. She's watched me over the years make up my mind that no partner or prospect will go the distance.

I guess it depends on whether you could get the missing 5% from friends, and more importantly, whether it felt ok to do that or whether it would just give you a sinking feeling forever that you couldn't get it from him. Also on how important settling down in a traditional family unit is to you.

I am generally not a fan of this kind of self-flagellating advice women give each other. I think we don't have great language to describe this stuff, and we'll often be talking at cross-purposes, e.g. people will say "Nothing's perfect" and "You need to compromise", but they'll omit to mention that they "compromised" on things that didn't matter a damn to them, that the precise combination of things their partner offers is perfect for them. In the same way that people might spend a fantasy lottery win on Rightmove while being actually very satisfied with their two-bed terrace because it's so near the shops and the kitchen's so sunny etc. They haven't really "compromised" because they're not really lying awake at night feeling tearful because they don't have 16 bedrooms and a minstrel's gallery.

I don't really see the point unless it feels good and right.

Interesting one, this. Awful lot of it depends on what your definition of love is.

I guess for me it's a mix of feeling, action and judgement.

Feeling of love and connectedness .. but that sure as heck isnt going to be there all the time.

Action ... to behave in a constructive way even when you'd rather kick him out of the house right that minute. To make an effort to do things for him. To keep trying or to be open to keep trying when you would rather not.

Judgement - to know when you need to draw the line. Real love isnt pouring yourself out when your effort is going down the drain on someone who'll just soak it up and never reciprocate. that's foolishness and lacking in love - love for yourself. A tiny example is always bringing him a coffee and him never bringing you one; a big example is trying to change to please someone who always puts you down and never treats you with respect no matter what you do.

Because I don't think you can love someone else properly until you value and respect yourself just as much as them, (sorry for sounding woo-woo). It's a balance. You can't put someone else first (except a small child or someone who has become severely ill etc) in a relationship, as a general rule; you have to value both his needs and your own equally.