Love. Do you think it is something that you have no control over or

[claireybrations]

something that if you work at feeling then you can make yourself feel (or not)?

Just wondering

you cant make yourself feel it
just like you cant stop yourself from feeling it

Yes. I think that love is something that "just happens" and that you have absolutely no control over. And that anyone who is not in love is susceptible to falling in love with someone at any time. That is why it is very important to work hard at staying in love with the person you have committed to through having children.

No, you can't make something out of nothing.

I don't ever believe I am completely powerless over any human emotion, and if I am then I am certainly in control of how I react to them.

Maybe you can't chose whom you 'fall in love with' (although I believe most people can't but don't want to) but you can chose what you do about it.

Mariella Frostrup said something about so-called uncontrollable feelings, in her Observer column at the w/e. It was about an older friend of the family starting a relationship with his friends dd. She said that in civililzed societies we expect mature adults to control strong feelings of violence and not act on them, but we expect to be able to justify not being able to control our love for people who may be off limits for some reason.

As for finding love for someone you may not feel 'in love ' with...I think there is a kind of long term love, loyalty and respect that can grow or be maintained when there nay be nothing heart-thumping going on. There are couples in DP's wider family who had arranged marriages. They will freely say they 'learned' to love each other because of respect and taking account of each other's efforts to make a contribution to the family unit.

So Anna are you saying that you have no control over falling in love but you can work at the staying in love part?

A brilliant post as usual, Blu. Exactly!

Blu that sounds logical. I know one of my sister's friend that had an arranged marriage had only met her husband once before the wedding but when my sister went to stay with them a year later they were sickeningly coupley (her words!).

But I think that can only happen if nothing destructive is going on. I don't think you could (healthily) llove someone who was horrible to you or you actually hated and had no respect for.

I llove Mariella Frostrups column!

Yes, claireybrations.

It is a lovely post, and I think you're dead right LeQueen.

I consider myself very fortunate that I still think 'phwoar most of the time when I look at Mr Violet after 20 whatever years of marriage.

I do think relationships are very complex though, and I have no doubt that even the best partnerships need working at over the longer term. I don't think 'working at it' should seem like a negative thing. Even with your soul mate, I think you need to make an effort to keep things fresh and alive and to keep that spark there. And I think once you decide to have children with someone, you have a responsibility to view that relationship in a new light - it isn't the same as having children with a friend. You have committed to being parents together.

Falling in love is something you have no control over, and it's very hard if you fall madly in love with someone who isn't good at the every day, 'normal' stuff of life. I think that's why some people end up in the situation LeQueen describes - where you may have had madly passionate love affairs, but end up marrying someone 'beige' because they can offer the stability.

So I suppose overall it's a matter of being fortunate but also being prepared to put in the effort to keep things alive. I feel very lucky that I married a gorgeous man who I fell for madly, but I'm also aware that we've both worked to keep the spark there.

Message withdrawn

Nope, I think love is an action and that its entirely within our control to bring love back to relationships if we put in the necessary amount of work and respect.

It is perfectly possible to remove the obstacles that stand in our way and have love occur.

Falling in love/lust is a biological attraction and is not real love.

I think you can stop yourself ACTING on falling in lust. I don't think you can stop the instinct though.

Can't help feelings- at least not instantly. Can help actions though. Over the years I have heard some pretty shabby actions defended on the lines of "well, I just couldn't help my feelings". Including sex with an underage teenager, cheating on a partner, trying to seduce a child". Or even failing to provide for a child adequately because they didn't feel they loved it.

I can't help noticing that the people I know who think feelings are everything are also the people who have seriously messed up other people's lives. Most people I know tend rather to believe in some sort of balance between what you can help and what you can't help, and in the idea that it isn't always about me gratifying my feelings.

Agree with cory, expat, blu et al.

You can't help having feelings but you damn well can help what you do about them. It's called being an adult!

Thing is, you can 'fall in love' with someone who doesn't love you at all, ie doesn't want any kind of relationship with you. SO you have to control your feelings, or you will end up in jail. Just because one person feels love, doesn;t mean the object of the love necessarily owes that person anything, let alone sex or a relationship.
Of course, a lot of the time, love is reasonably mutual (though there is usually a lover and a beloved, TBH ie one person cares a bit more about the love than the other does).

Absolutely solid but wouldn't that be more accurately termed obsession/stalking ?

I agree with Anna, and what I think she's talking about is the same thing that makes a lot of arranged marriages work.

If you are 100% committed to your relationship then you work hard at loving someone, and at making yourself loveable. As time goes on, there are more reasons to love someone. Me and DH fell head over heels in love when we first met and he proposed a week later. 4.5 years later we have been married for almost 18 months and have 6 month old DS.
I still love him for all the reasons I fell in love with him, plus I love him for 'giving me' DS, and I love him for being a good father, and working hard to support us, and making me hot chocolate in the night when DS is having a feeding spurt.
There are lots of things he does that drive me up the wall, but we talk about things and never go to bed angry with each other no matter how much we might want to - so any frustrations and negative emotion are never around long enough to erode the love and respect that we have for each other.

I think people can be too quick to look for the bad in something, to say 'oh this doesn't feel quite as perfect as it did'. When you do that and choose not to work at resolving things, you are subconciously starting to look around at other options. Before you know where you are you have fallen out of love, and then it's very hard to get it back. This has happened to two of my aunts, and although they are still not divorced from their husbands, they all live very unhappy and unsatisfied lives because they feel shortchanged.

Falling back in love is possible. My Dad's parents were so so in love and have always been one of my model relationships. But they went through a very bad patch in their mid-fifities where my grandma really fell out of love with my grandpa. It took time and a lot of commitment for her to fall back in love with him, but they were of a generation that took their marriage vows very seriously.

God I've waffled on and on - sorry. It's something I feel very strongly about!