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Original poster

How do you know when you actually 'love' someone?

57 replies

overmydeadbody · 23/03/2010 19:06

Especially in a new relationship, how do you know when you truly love someone and the relationship has progressed, and how do you differenciate this love from the feeling of being 'in love' which can happen even when you don't actually know the person

I know 'being in love' is't real love, and don't believe in love at first sight or any of that bollox, but what is real love and hoe do you know when you truly love someone?

What's the defining moment? Or is it a gradual thing? Is it enogugh just to think "I love him" and therefore accept that you do? Or is it more complex? Because sometimes we think we love someone but actually we don't don't wE?

OP posts:
rey · 23/03/2010 19:16

Personally think if you have to question then you don't have that feeling. It's all consuming, hits you like nothing ever did, you can't believe that you could ever feel like it and it grows all the time. However, it's possibly so a personal thing no-one can explain me included.

Original poster
overmydeadbody · 23/03/2010 19:20

so rey are you saying love is a feeling?

OP posts:
Portofino · 23/03/2010 19:29

I think if you love someone, you know it. It's not something you have to over analyse. If YOU think you love someone, then you do.

Portofino · 23/03/2010 19:33

There are lots of different kinds of love though I guess. Love for your family, your child, someone you've been with a long time. They don't feel the same as that heart fluttering, eat each other for breakfast that you get early on.

MarshaMallow · 23/03/2010 19:33

For me I realised that I loved my DH when I just couldn't imagine my life without him in it....and this realisation didn't take very long into the relationship.

It's very hard to explain but for DH not to be in my life would be like losing my best friend, lover, confidant and my 'rock' in all in one go.

I suppose if I'm honest I can't imagine life with him.

I know the logic is different and life goes on and people do survive being separated however it happens...but the feeling of imagining him not being in my life is just so very sad.

Dunno if this helps...probably not as I think love means different things to different people.

Original poster
overmydeadbody · 23/03/2010 19:42

POrtofino I guess I was talking about the sort of love people have for a mating partner, 'conditional love' I guess.

Maybe tihnking about it is pointless, you either knoe or you don't know, but tihnking about it and over analysing it doesn't give you any answers does it?

I'm not sure the heart-fluttering, eat each other for breakfast feeling you get early on is real love though is it? That is just lust disguised as romantic love, which isn't love at all, just a clever trick to get us to mate

I know I am overthinking this. I just want to know more about love.

OP posts:
Original poster
overmydeadbody · 23/03/2010 19:45

Marsha that does help actually, although I fear I am far too much of a realist to ever not be able to imagine my life without anyone in it. But I get what you mean.

OP posts:
allegrageller · 23/03/2010 19:45

overmydeadbody I overthink everything and if you're an overthinker in love, you will overthink it too! There is no escaping.

I've been in the destructive all-encompassing sort of love, it was real at the time, I couldn't think about anything else and he devastated me. However, that wasn't true love for me because the relationship was flawed as hell and could never have worked.

Real love for me is thinking about that person all the time, what they would say in any given situation, wanting them with you, desiring them and feeling lucky to know them. It feels great....only hope it lasts this time

Portofino · 23/03/2010 19:46

I know I don't "like" my DH very much sometimes, but we are affectionate to each other still, all the time. I think about what makes him happy, and vice versa. Our eyes meet over the dinner table when we share a private joke, we snuggle up at night etc and I know that i love him.

MarshaMallow · 23/03/2010 19:51

Oh, I am a realist too OMDB.....it took me ages to adjust to this new 'dependency' thing!

Even now 20 years on I fight to be self sufficient - just in case.

I even know my legal rights regarding the house and kids...it's not a feeling I particularly like having...but it is what it is.

Realising and welcoming that overpowering feeling, are two very different things.

Original poster
overmydeadbody · 23/03/2010 19:54

That's is Portofino isn't it? You just know, even though all those things you described are what happen in new relationships before any love could possibly have developed too aren't they?

arregrageller glad others are overthinlers too . I guess what I want to know is how you distinguish between that all encompassing feeling you have in a new relationship with someone (when you can't possibly love them yet as you don't even really know thwm) and true love that has developed ovr time?

Is it just a time thing? Is it when romantic (fake) love dies down and if you still feel that feeling for them you love them but if when romantic love dies down your feelings dininish then it's not love?

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Original poster
overmydeadbody · 23/03/2010 19:57

So how long after going out with your DH's did you start to love them?

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allegrageller · 23/03/2010 20:02

I think that yes, real love persists when the hormonal chaos dies down. I am not so good at that bit. Very good at falling in lust/love.

Time has to be the test too eh? I fell out of love with ex H just shortly after we were married. I could tell because he felt like my irritating brother. I liked him but didn't miss him that much when we were apart. And no desire for him whatever.

Being an Aquarian overthinker I value companionship more than lust in the end so I have found it hard to combine the two.

allegrageller · 23/03/2010 20:03

I fell for DP on the phone and through email before I'd even met him

MrsC2010 · 23/03/2010 20:06

I knew within days that DH was someone that would be in my life for a long while and would be the one I wouldn't get over. I never had lightning rods, he was just 'right'.

Now, 2.5 yrs on (married for nearly a year) he gets better every day. I have never been a passionate, overly physical person but I genuinely couldn't imagine my life without him, and I don't know how I got so lucky. I can be a bit depressive at times and getting old and possibly losing him, or him losing me breaks my heart.

I think it probably took a month or so for me to realise that I 'loved him', but I think I had done for a while.

He is just the person I want to talk to most in the world, the opinion that matters most etc etc. Will stop the soppiness now!

allegrageller · 23/03/2010 20:10

I think what made me fall in love with DP was sending him one of those spilling-it-out teenagey emails which you immediately regret and him sending me a response which was so considered and sensitive it nearly had me in tears!!

Plus the dead sexy phone voice heheh. No lightning rods just intense soppiness.

Original poster
overmydeadbody · 23/03/2010 20:11

allegro surely the falloing for him over the phone was pure lust though? Not love?

I am pretty positive I have never felt real love for any partner yet . Yes I've been 'in love' (lust) once only, but when that died down there was no love there.

I want to know what real love feels like. Is it similar to the love you feel for your newborn baby that just grows and grows? Or is it different because love for your baby is unconditional and love for a partner is conditional?

OP posts:
allegrageller · 23/03/2010 20:13

combo omdb- it was what he was saying, plus the voice.

Don't think for me it is like baby love- that is more overwhelmingly sentimental for me and protective etc.

I have met and heard from people (on MN included) who say they love their partner so much they can forgive anything, not sure I could but to some extent would almost like to be that much in love iyswim...

Original poster
overmydeadbody · 23/03/2010 20:14

allegrageller that is interesting, thanks for sharing, I really appreciate it!!!

So, my current lovely bofriend continually surprises me with his consistnat caring kindness, sensitivity, communication and just bieng the great wonderful person he is. I think I need to take my wall down and let myself be more vulnerable and open, to myself.

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Original poster
overmydeadbody · 23/03/2010 20:17

I think I am too overcautious and over protective of myself to ever feel that feeling! For me it would deffo be conditional, couldn't possibly say I would forgive them anything!

I think for me, personally, love is something that is more of an action than a feeling. My ex was always saying how much he loved me, but his actions never ever reflected this. I do thinks for people when I like them a lot, and I imagine if I loved someone I would want to do lots of things for them.

OP posts:
Portofino · 23/03/2010 20:18

I think love for your child is different. It is all emcompassing, but yet wrapped up with lots of other feelings - fear, guilt, pride, disappointment, plain old worry!

I expected to be "in love" immediately with my dd when she was born. In reality I was more shellshocked. I knew that i loved her, and would do anything for her, but that "feeling" took a while.

allegrageller · 23/03/2010 20:23

I get the guilt thing with partners too, but not the pride so much (though I have felt that, felt it for ex H who was a very successful and charming guy).

I didn't have the immediate rush of love with my babies either Portofino, although I did feel this incredible awe with ds1- that gorgeous thing came out of me?! etc. I think with ds2 I was too knackered to really notice him much (awful!!)

Had PND with ds1 and the love although definitely there was fraught with terrible pain and guilt. With ds2 I utterly adored him, have never felt such uncomplicated love for anyone before or since. In all the photos when he is a baby I am clutching him really close or looking at him rather than the camera. It was easier love than with ds1 iyswim. Now try to make it up to my dear ds1 who is a fantastic 6 yearold but I feel guilty for our 'bad start'.

omdb, yes open up, you have nothing to lose but your sanity

seriously, what else are we here for, we may as well put what we've got into lurrrrrrve (urgh I am sickening myself but it's true I tell you)

Portofino · 23/03/2010 20:24

My dh used a phrase like "spoiled goods". It wasn't that, but was the jist, to describe life after someone breaks your heart for the first time. You can still go on and love others, but it it is NEVER quite the same again. Like lost innocence, you can never bring back that same intensity of feeling again, because there is always that little bit at the back of your mind.....

allegrageller · 23/03/2010 20:25

hmm - but Portofino do you not believe that mature love is better? Like the proverbial old cheese?

You have seen more and suffered but this person still makes it through. Etc. Perhaps more of a slowburn intensity though.

SaintGeoff · 23/03/2010 20:26

I had a psychology teacher once who argued that love was bound up with equality.

She argued that loving somebody meant promoting them, their feelings, their opportunities and their life to a status equal to your own. She thought that with other human relationships your prime motivation remains your own self-preservation, ambition, achievement, happiness etc but to love somebody means to not only cherish that which allows them all of those things but to actively promote them, even to the detriment of your own endeavours on occasion. Take it too far though and it's obsession and idolatry.

I sort of agree actually.

I feel dd and dh's pride, disappointment, joy etc as keenly as I feel my own.

I don't think you can simplify it enough to sum it up but I think that my old teacher had a valid point.