To love or not to love?

[Coquelicot1986]

I am interested to know if people think you either you love someone or you don't? It is black and white, clear cut - if you need to ask yourself the question then it can't be love, love stares you in the face, love is evident OR do you love partners in different ways and/or in varying degrees. I think in the past I have thought the latter but now I think I was making excuse for not really being in love, now I know what it is (for me). Love is excessive, love is extreme, when you cross that line from liking someone to feeling excessive and extreme, is that what love is? Someone close to me says his wife loves him more than he loves her, is this really possible or does this just mean he doesn't really love her? Thanks for reading.

I think a lot of people confuse infatuation, or "limerance" in the lingo, for real love and chose partners who fire up their dopamine receptors but who they know deep down don't really love them. I've done this all my life and am struggling to break the habit. That's not love, although it can feel a lot like it.

I think real love can grow from fairly modest beginnings -- you can start off liking someone a lot but not really sure if you actually fancy them and this can grow into a deep, fulfilling love.

And I think you can be hit by a thunderbolt by someone who takes your breath away and find true love. Not very often, but it does happen.

So to answer your question, no, I don't think its quite that clear cut. There's a lot of shades of feeling encompassed by romantic relationships which run the gauntlet from raw sexual appeal to deep, enduring love and everything in the middle.

But I do think there has to be something -- not necessarily huge, floor-shaking sexual passion but at the least a spark, a sense of curiosity, an attraction about someone, which marks them out as being noteworthy or different from the herd. Otherwise they are just a friend who you are pretending to have a relationship with. Ultimately, trying to trick yourself into believing you love someone just because they tick all the right boxes is a fool's errand.

And to answer your question, it does sound as if he doesn't really love her. Or at least as if they are quite ill-matched in terms of the intensity of their relationship...

Is this man the person with whom you have found What Love Is?

Yes I think there are different types of love. First dh I love (still do) care about, has a special place in my heart because he is dcs Df but have never had much sexual attraction for. (Unsurprisingly we divorced) my current dh still gives me butterflies after two decades..and the sexual attraction is huge.