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Relationships

Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

What is love?

19 replies

Fluffybrain · 11/08/2014 22:23

Can anybody tell me what it is? I know what it is to be loved by parents, siblings, children and friends. But what is it in a relationship? The people I have loved in relationships haven't loved me back. I want to know what it is supposed to look and feel like.

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happyandsingle · 11/08/2014 22:29

I find this a really sad comment to make. What makes you so certain that your partners in relationships have not loved you.

Fluffybrain · 11/08/2014 22:49

I can't be sure that they didn't. I suppose my XDH may have done but he never said it or showed it if he did and immediately found someone else straight away after I ended it. Someone else told me he did but he cheated and lied to me and behaved badly towards me and I never really felt like he loved me even before all that. How do you know if someone loves you?

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Joysmum · 11/08/2014 22:49

Love is where you love the other person more than yourself and put their happiness as your top priority. Their job is to do the same. If anyone feels they aren't happy and need to make themselves happy it's because their partner isn't doing what they need to.

lavenderhoney · 12/08/2014 00:26

Oh, how I love you, let me count the ways.. Its a sonnet by Elizabeth barret browning, look it up- its very good. You could read up on love and see how it means so many different things to so many different people. Ovid is good as well.

Being in love with someone who loves you right back is love. It means never being scared to show love or be yourself safe in the knowledge you are loved for who you are.

The trouble is, your upbringing and " footprint" by your parents often distorts your ideal of love.

Isabeller · 12/08/2014 00:29

I found this short book very helpful: How to love and be loved

lavenderhoney · 12/08/2014 00:33

Your expectations of love and how you think you should feel is indicative of how you perceive love. So listen to yourself and write down what love means to you, for it is very difficult to imprint on a relationship.

I have someone I love very much, and he loves me. We are unusual in our ideal of love is mirrored. But we are not together through many reasons. But we are comfortable with this love:) there are no expectations ( not affair, don't panic fellow mn) - see, we are happy being in love but not in love:) and yes, he is very very hot as well:)

Over 15 years now, of love. Read love in the time of cholera. That is love as well.

Fluffybrain · 12/08/2014 06:31

Thanks for the tips. Will have a look. I just read a plot overview for Love in the time of cholera and the guy sounds like a psychopath. Maybe I have to actually read it. I am not much of a reader these days. Maybe because my DXH was and admitted that he would rather spend an evening in bed with a book than in bed with me. I would fall asleep listening to the pages turn each night. Books were what kept him from me.

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VeryLittleGravitasIndeed · 12/08/2014 06:35

Love is not enough on it's own though. You need respect, trust, intimacy... Without those things, all the love in the world won't give you a good, lasting relationship.

Fluffybrain · 12/08/2014 06:42

Agree with this VeryLittle. With one I had respect and trust but no sex or intimacy. With the other had sex but not trust, respect and faked intimacy. Still not sure about the love bit. I loved them.

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CogitoErgoSometimes · 12/08/2014 07:43

I think, very simply, that when you feel loved, you probably are loved and vice versa.

The important thing - without wishing to sound 'woo' - is that you love, like and have confidence in yourself. Be assertive, have very high standards of acceptability & be clear about what you want out of a relationship. Judge partners by those standards and be ruthless rather than compromising or grateful for attention. Don't buy any crap about 'showing love in their own way' - if it's not your way, it's not love.

Ultimately, if you have even the slightest doubt about someone else's motives or feelings, you get shot rather than allow them to stick around, chipping away at your self-esteem. Which I suspect is your real problem...

Fluffybrain · 12/08/2014 08:07

Yes Cog agree with this too. I'm not sure how to build my self esteem. I am horrified each time I look in the mirror. It shocks me each time that I am uglier than I thought I was. Doing things like having therapy and starting a course and doing yoga etc so I'm not sitting on my arse hoping to magically feel better.

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Anniegetyourgun · 12/08/2014 08:19

lavenderhoney , this one

Fluffybrain · 12/08/2014 08:34

Thanks Lavender. I read this. I can relate to it in the way I love. But don't think anyone felt that way about me. Unfortunately I think the way I love leads me to stay with someone who doesn't love me. I know I need firm boundaries and higher standards but a life of ruthlessness and loneliness doesn't appeal either.

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Anniegetyourgun · 12/08/2014 08:44

I bet if you saw someone who looked quite like you in the street you wouldn't think "oh, poor woman, the ugly stick had a real outing on that one"; it's because it's yourself that you judge harshly. A good friend is a pleasure to be with because of who they are, and will look nice to you because they are associated with good feelings.

Doesntaddup · 12/08/2014 08:53

My recently bereaved aunt wrote to me "love isn't a feeling, it's an action", meaning that no matter how many times a person says 'I love you' or 'You are my world', if their actions don't mirror this, these are empty words. My DH talks the talk, but he is capable of causing immense pain to me and harm to our family without experiencing any true remorse, and then goes on to repeat the behaviour. I would be happy to have someone who showed that he loved me by the way he treated me, even if he never said the words.

MumBoots · 12/08/2014 09:58

Agree with Doesntaddup

Love is a verb. Its what people do, how they treat you (with respect and care) and how they make you feel about yourself.

I have come to the conclusion that the feelings you get in the first flurries of 'love' have nothing to do with love. They're lovely feelings, but they are quite chemical and based on sexual attraction and bonding. The love is what happens down the line, when two people know each other very well warts and all and put each other first.

kaykayblue · 12/08/2014 12:06

I agree that love is a behaviour. But it is also a feeling. There is a heartbreaking sketch in a film called "Paris je t'aime", which is a series of short and unrelated stories.

In one there is a married man who is having an affair with some young bimbo. He is planning to leave his wife, but then she tells him that she has incurable cancer. He decides to leave his hussy, and take care of his wife, pretending to love her until she dies, so that he isn't causing her pain at the end of her life. There is a lovely line in it, which says (and I'm summarising) "he did everything he could for her - he pretended to be in love, and so, eventually became a man in love again".

When his wife dies he is left genuinely heartbroken.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say with that depressing story, is that it is possible to simply pretend to be in love. Jesus, there are enough threads on this board of women who have husbands that they genuinely believed loved them, but it turned out they've been having affairs, or shagging whores, or all sorts. That isn't love.

In my view, true love is where you can't imagine doing anything to cause pain to your partner. Because seeing them in pain would be unbearably painful for you as well. And more than that, doing something which you know would hurt them - even if they might never find out - fills you with shame and sadness.

And for that feeling to be reciprocated and not taken advantage of.

I see people have been making book recommendations - the one book that sort of encapsulated my idea of love was "The Time Traveller's Wife". The relationship between the two main characters isn't perfect - they struggle at times - but their love is absolute. I would strongly recommend it.

parisinspring · 12/08/2014 12:24

kaykayblue that was such a great post.

JaceyBee · 12/08/2014 12:40

Ugh, I hates The Time Travellers Wife, she was wet and he was just creepy and gross!

But that aside, great post Smile

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