Do you feel 'in love' with DH/P every day?

[pinchpunch]

I love my OH very much, but sometimes I panic that I don't feel madly in love with him all the time. I appreciate him and wouldn't want to lose him, but am finding it difficult to figure out what long term relationships are really like, once the initial 'falling in love' bit is out the way.

I worry a lot about this and am unsure how to fix it - I don't want to force things if they're not right, but equally don't want to throw away something so good.

Does anyone have any advice? Thanks

I think I'd be more in love with him if I lived alone in a little cottage with nothing but cats and honey bees for company and I had time to myself. Then he could come and visit and we could seduce each other, enjoy each other, say goodbye and then have a chance to miss each other. Constant domesticity has the same effect on romance as salt on slugs.

My DH works long hours and is very messy around the house and usually running late so tbh when he's not here, I'm more annoyed with him than enamoured.

But when he gets home and the children and house are sorted and I'm cuddled up to him on the sofa, I just look at him and touch him and smell him and think about how much he and the children have changed my life and how happy I am to be with him. So yes, I really do feel in love with him. Every day. Even though he is the most irritating man I have ever met.

Yes totally, 10 years in and still. He's amazing and I am very lucky. Re vaginal orgasms though.... what are they?

Yes. We were married last year and have been together for six. He makes me laugh every day and he's incredibly sexy. My heart still flips a beat when I meet him. It's moved though from being the fluttery/new thing to warm, sexy, cuddly, close, familiar, settled, secure and safe thing, but the transition was a slow one. I knew he was the one for me when I still felt the same way about him as when we first met a year in. I adore him.

That 20/20/60 rule sums me and my DH up perfectly. Together 17y, married 10y, 2 DC.

And we are Bear (him) and Peanut (me) it'd make other people sick if they could see it (mostly behind closed doors, as it should be). But the best bit is the fact he's my best friend and the only person I can spend a month with 24/7 (i.e. when we're on the road) and don't feel bored, tired or anxious with. He's the only person with whom I've ever been able to sit companionably in silence with other than my siblings and parents, I think that's how I knew he was meant to be family.

I have just got in from a hugely long busy shift at work. DH has gone out for a quick nightcap with his mates who had popped round as soon as I got in.

Laid out waiting for me when I got home were my favourite pjs warmed on the radiator, slippers & a large vodka & tonic done just how I like it. To me that sums up love after 20 years together, 10 of which married.

I am in love with him all the time but That doesn't mean i like him all the time....

We have been together 12 years and you ask above how i know it's not just a really good friendship - i dont want to have sex with my friends!

The holiday / social measure is also how i judge from previous relationships. With DH i would far rather go out the two of us or on hols just as a couple than previous partner. His company is enough for me. When i was not in love with someone i would rather be in a group of friends than with just OH.

Thats not to say I am a social recluse we have a very good social life but I dont need friends around to 'fill the gaps" or make an event more enjoyable and our idea of hell is holidaying with others so we would have to share our time together.

bonsoir REALLY?

"It gave me a lot of understanding to learn that quite a lot of women out there think it quite normal not to feel in love with their DH/DP and never to have vaginal orgasms."

Yes - if they are never having those super close super agreeable feelings that only men can provide no wonder they bitch, moan and withdraw and prefer the company of their children and girlfriends!

Oh well I am sorry but vaginal orgasms are a must for me! IMHO they come excuse the pun easier and more intensely when you are in love so the two would go hand in hand!

the Pink song True Love sums it up the ups and downs of love quite well
I love the line
"you're an asshole ,but I love you" :)

We have been married for 30 years this year. I do love DH in a romantic way still. There is a chemical reaction when we snuggle up in bed and I smell the back of his neck, it is just like a happiness drug to me. We have become empty nesters this year and now we are settled into the new routine it is like turning back the clock to our early married life again. Oh yes, I am very in love with him, every single day.

27 years. I have no idea what being 'in love' means but he's my best friend and we rattle along nicely. I want to grow old with him. (Good job.... because I am!)

It is completely unreasonable to expect to feel madly in love all the time. That is a heightened emotion which by definition is temporary.
I can't help the feeling that you are over thinking this.......

Higgle I get that chemical bonding thing from my DH's smell too and he says the same about me. Have never mentioned it to anyone irl as I think it makes me sound like a weirdo. Neither of us pong particularly, as far as I'm aware.

The following is one of the readings we had at our wedding. It's by C. S. Lewis, and sums up our relationship perfectly:

"Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there are also things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling. Now no feeling can be relied on to last in its full intensity, or even to last at all. Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last but feelings come and go. And in fact, whatever people say, the state called ‘being in love’ usually does not last.

If the old fairy-tale ending ‘They lived happily ever after’ is taken to mean ‘They felt for the next fifty years exactly as they felt the day before they were married,’ then it says what probably never was nor ever would be true, and would be highly undesirable if it were. Who could bear to live in that excitement for even five years? What would become of your work, your appetite, your sleep, your friendships? But, of course, ceasing to be ‘in love’ need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense — love as distinct from ‘being in love’ — is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God.

They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other; as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself. They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be ‘in love’ with someone else. ‘Being in love’ first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. it is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it."

That makes me feel slightly less nuts for wanting to stick my head in DH's armpits and take a big whiff if I'm feeling a bit stressed - it's like aromatherapy but better, honestly!

Or have I gone too far

I've never had the urge to sniff DP's armpits, but I do need lots of hugs and cuddles - first thing in the morning and to say goodbye for the day, first thing when he gets home, last thing at night and probably a good cuddle on the sofa in the evening (other commitments permitting...).

They're never really B.O. stinky I should add - they just smell like him but a concentrated version

I think it's quite normal to want to get very close to the people you love. I find my DD's smell very reassuring too. She really likes a group hug with DP and me at the same time.