Did you fall in love with your partner?

[ThinkIlikeit]

I am thinking of the relationships I have had over the years and I can only remember actually falling in love with one of them. I grew fond of the others, maybe even felt love, but not that overwhelming powerful in love feeling, not even with the man I married.

I think you can probably have a good relationship without it but wondering how many of you are with someone you fell in love with and how important you think it is.

Once a steady love, that turned into a caring and nurturing type of love. Another love grew from friendship into an intense love.

I have been in love twice.
The first time was I was 17. We had known each other as friends for a few years and always had a chemistry (or hormones at that age). The first time we were able to set eyes on each other in a romantic way we spent eight hours just sat talking and holding hands and kissing. Every minute apart was horrid and every moment together was electric. We split up when I was 20 but we are friends to this day and I still do love him. We don't work as a couple but he is a dear friend that I can always rely on and even though we don't speak much anymore we touch base often enough. I still to this day would say that I love him but it isn't a romantic love anymore. I can't explain it.

The second time was with my DH. It was more of a slow burn. I was fond of him at first but worried about the lack of the intense feeling I had for ex. It was only when I had a tough time in my personal life after a good long while and was presented with the possibility of losing him that I realised just how much I hated the idea of my life without him in it. It gave me genuine tendrils of panic and made me teary and it just hit me all at once like a wave. It feels different to my first love. Less intense and exciting ... More comforting and soft. Peaceful. If I try and picture the future everything has him in it. I know I would live on if I ever lost him but the picture is more grey and less beautiful.

That sounds pathetically soppy, which I am not. I don't need a man to complete me. Life would be fine without him. grumble

I'm also gobsmacked at people who have married people who they weren't in love with.
Marriage can be hard, especially with small children. Everyone has rough patches. If you start off without the foundation of having been in love, how do you get through the tough times?

I've been in love three times. One boyfriend was a slow burn, I loved him, then I went off him...I think because the physical attraction was never strong enough if I am honest. Second was someone I was head over heels in love with, but it was emotionally abusive and he cheated on me, so that was that. Then my husband, who is my best friend and a partner and a wonderful father. It's not perfect (differing sex drives) but I still love him and we are a team.

I know someone who is getting married imminently, has been cheating on his fiancée for 2 years (with married woman) and when I said why would you do that if you are in love and getting married he just said "I've got to settle down".

Is that why people marry people they don't love? (I assume you don't cheat on someone you love...seems all wrong somehow). Because they feel a need to settle down? Society? Someone to come home to? Not sure

Yes definitely the urge to settle down for me. Also I had been madly in love but it didn't last so I figured friendship and companionship and shared interests would be enough. There were feelings there but not that heady in love feeling or mad passion.

Weren't worried though what might happen if you fell in love with someone else? (To those that happy to settle down)

That would be my worry.

I'm completely and utterly in love with my 2nd DH after 15 years. I loved my first DH, a sweet, kind man but wasn't in love.

I met 2nd DH 15 years ago at 36 and it was a HUGE set of feelings and emotions. ....still is. He's an amazing husband and step father, the best friend and companion I ever had and our physical relationship is so much fun, satisfying and full of love.

I've never said all that before, except to my sister, but, honestly, my relationship with him brings me .....mostly....pure joy and my DC adore him too.

We're very normal though and yes, we fall out and he often drives me crazy but he's a great guy.

I don't really believe in it. In the sense that I think what people call 'falling in love' is just a combination of physical attraction, personality attraction and a bit of luck/circumstance thrown in. Love exists, but the falling in love feeling is a biological/evolutionary hormone rush to get us to reproduce

^ I agree with you 100% Eolian.

I have never "fallen in love" but I believe in the sort of love described in Captain Corelli's Mandolin, where two trees grow together and their roots entwine so that eventually they become one tree. My DH and I are like that.

I've been in love twice with the same man. We met aged 16 and it was teenage moon eyed every love song was written for us love. Isn't it always true love at 16? We split up at 21 because life. Stayed friends. Got back together at 25. Madly in love after another 8 years, my tummy flips when I catch his eye across a room and we have more fun together just by being together than I expected possible. It is now tempered with "has the bin gone out?"and various real life issues but I have no doubt I'm in love with him.

Why would you marry a man (worse, multiple men) that you didn't love? I don't get it.

I fell head over heels in love with my partner and 9 years on he is very soon to be my ex.
I thought the love was reciprocated but it wasn't, he led me to believe he loved me but didn't, it was control he needed.
I don't think it's put me off though. I hope I get that feeling again at some point in life but I won't go looking.

Interesting question. I think coming from parents who were clearly not in love and toxic in the way they behaved in front of us kids, makes it difficult to understand what being in love actually looks like.

I have had around 5 relationships in my last that lasted longer than 6 months. My first GF at 15 I would say I wasn't in love with her. Just messing around and exploring that side of things. It ended fairly quickly. My 2nd GF at 17 I did love and felt "in love" with her. We split after 18m (her decision) and I was very upset. That was being in love I suppose. My third relationship I married and was in love for the first few years. That died off and we split after 10. I then met someone whom i was totally in love with although it was a relationship based on mutual attraction and lots of sex. Perhaps it was lust? My final relationship I am married to and after 17 years together I would say any "in love feeling" has been replaced by love and respect. I miss the "in love" moments to be honest.

This is an interesting and inspiring thread.

I liked my husband and within two months of meeting we were engaged. But love is something I never believed in. I thought marriage was female slavery. I believed we were compatible, wanted the same things out of life, had relatively the same background. Both came from big OTT families, same cultural background, and didn't want children. Obviously my family were nicer , whereas he and I were both told, that I wasn't for him. But that is another story. I knew the moment I met him I wanted to know him for as long as possible. If we had children we'd call her Michaela (since it would be just one girl). So many little things that were just right, we just fit. But "in love"? I had read so many mills and boon, that crap sounded painful. We've both had wobbles over the years, where we are incompatible is money, but his solution is that I organise it all, as all he would do is spend frivolously. We both know our limitations and back eachother up. But getting back to love, I knew after 17 years that I not only loved him but was in love with him. He reached the highest heights of respect when his dad fell ill, his parents moved in with us and he did what he had to do until they moved out. It could and probably should have broken us, but what he did made me realise what I've always known since we met 10 Oct 1997, I needed to know this man for as long as possible. Two kids and two career changes later and I still think he is amazeballs. Maybe I never new what being in love was so never recognised it as such.

I suspect many people marry without being in love as such. I definitely wanted to marry my ex, I had no doubts whatsoever, but I never had the stomach flipping or besotted feelings.

To the poster who asked was I worried I would fall for someone else, no it didn't cross my mind and I didn't look at another man in all the time we were together.

It did go bad though at the end and I think it is the feelings that keep you together when things get tough.

Reading these posts has made me think how wonderful it would be to feel loved up but too cynical these days to expect it.

I was in deep smit and smitten with my soon to be DH. I fell head over heels and still feel that way now. I still get excited when he comes home from work. He's also very affectionate and makes me feel loved in return. Sure he's a dickhead at times but aren't we all! There's no one else I would have had a baby with.

Yeah that's the other problem, you both have to feel the same way about each other.