"Whatever 'in love' means".

[upinaballoon]

These words have been so derided for so many years, so come on, everyone, define what 'in love' means.
How many divorced people are there in the UK? Did they think they were in love when they became engaged? What went wrong in their marriages? You must know some. What would you all have said to the man from the local paper if he'd asked you and your intended if you were in love?

These words have been so derided for so many years, so come on, everyone, define what 'in love' means.

why are you challenging "everyone"?

The words were uttered by Prince Charles about a woman he knew he was being forced to marry for protocol reasons, rather than for love. Having to force out some untrue words to play to the media probably felt really unnatural and untrue, so he wriggled his way out.

maybe you ought to write to him and ask him what he meant.

Yes I’d have said I was in love with XH when we married. But there was no pressure on us to marry for any other reason. HRH had to marry Diana because that’s who his family wanted, but the press and public wanted a love story, a fairytale prince and princess story, and he clearly wasn’t very good at playing along with that pretence.

I was somewhat in love-ish with XH (and vice versa) - but I was not head over heels in love with him and neither was he. I did love him, though, still do, and he loves me.

There was a lot of pressure involved. Not, of course, to marry a virgin and produce an heir and a spare - we are both mere peasants, he and I. But there was the looming threat of him being made to leave the country and the prospect of him having to take over his family farm with a PhD in physics and precisely zero interest in agriculture.

We have been divorced for over a decade. Nobody feels happier and prouder that he has found the woman who wanted the same life he did and nobody could be more pleased at his three little girls than me. Nobody has supported me more in realising my professional ambitions than he has, and nobody except him refers to me as "Madam Director" because nobody except him gets how hard I have had to work for it, how much sacrifice has been involved, and nobody has been anywhere near as supportive!

"Whatever love means" you say - as though it is always somewhat 2nd rate. I think the notion of not being head over heels for someone gets a bad rep because of Charles.

I love XH, and XH loves me. We just were not meant to be as a couple. Ours was not and is not the type of love that is romantic or even just driven by lust. He suits his wife much better than me in that respect - and while I have not re-married there have been others before and after him that I suited better than him in that sense, too.

But he is and probably always will be the "platonic friendship" love of my life. Our only mistake was to assume that a heterosexual man and woman ought to have some sexual or romantic attraction. We really just do not gel in that way. But we do love one another deeply.

So, whatever love means, I suppose!

PS: not saying that Charles and Diana loved each other in that way - this is clearly different.

I think there’s a difference between the kind of nice, wise reply you got from @JustSomeoneSomewhere and others on the thread, who are looking back on a history of marriages and/or longterm relationships with the wisdom of experience, and an awkward aristocrat with a deeply atypical exposure to ‘normal’ human relationships being interviewed by the press on his future dynastic marriage to someone he’s only met a few times but has been vetted as ‘suitable’. Charles had no exposure to normal family relationships, so his ideas about love won’t have been coming from a place most people would recognise.

@JustSomeoneSomewhere

That's really rather a lovely romantic story. How fab that you can speak about your ex like this.
I'm not speaking facetiously, it's just good to read that there are some happy divorced couples.

The words were uttered by Prince Charles about a woman he knew he was being forced to marry for protocol reasons, rather than for love

That's probably true, but all the same it was a pretty unfortunate remark to make in public, and in front of his inexperienced bride

He could have just given an enigmatic smile and not replied, which the more hopeful could have interpreted as the RF "not talking about their feelings", but that would have required judgement and he doesn't appear to have any

PC was an inexperienced young man of around 35 years old. It's all very well saying he could have just put on an enigmatic smile, but that's with the benefit of hindsight. At the time he was undoubtedly caught on the hop and had a clear conflict between how he thought and felt, and how he was being expected to think, feel and act.

i doubt he would have had the confidence to move to silence, that would have needed a lot more experience which is something he clearly lacked. He didn't have the wealth of experience his mother had at handling the press.

It came at the end of an interview that had been quite stilted and the interviewer asked them how they were feeling that day. I would think that talking about feelings came even less naturally to the royals than it does today. Charles said it was hard to put into words but he was delighted and happy and the interviewer prompts 'and I suppose in love'. Diana chips in with an 'of course' in a rather jokey tone (we've now got three posh people trying to talk about feelings on camera) and then Charles I think tries to break the tension with a careless remark. It's the sort of remark you can imagine Prince Philip making if anyone had been impertinent to ask him if he was in love with the Queen when they got engaged. It was a weird question or interjection from the interviewer - I don't think many people, if asked how they were feeling on the day they announced their engagement, would say 'I feel in love'. You would say happy, excited, hopeful, blah blah blah.

PC was an inexperienced young man of around 35 years old

Eh???

I don't disagree with the "being put on the spot" thing, but this is someone who'd been meeting, gladhanding and making stilted conversation with all manner of people since his teens, so it seems a bit much to call him inexperienced - and that's without his family's endless examples of shutting down anything they'd rather not engage in

Agree with pp that it was an awkward question from the interviewer. Who asks any engaged couple if they’re in love? Sort of crap banter?

if someone asked me after I got engaged if I were “in love” I’d not be so polite. And if they weren’t, and they didn’t know each other well enough probably, it’s still weird.

I agree. Charles was known to be enjoying his Bachelor days. He appeared anything but inexperienced.

@Persimmo It was a stilted interview. The reporter I think was just trying to get a nice clip of them saying something romantic to each other. Je did not realise that Charles was not in love. Diana was probably only in love with the idea of being in love and married, and so they were not the deeply in-love couple the media had been portraying.

I think he was speaking philosophically and theoretically because who on earth knows what 'being in love' actually means, apart from know it alls who think they know

The big problem was him making the remark in front of his bride to be, on camera, in front of the world. Misjudged, mistimed, poor form.

@bellac11 He came across like a bright but immature schoolboy who thinks he is being funny.

Exactly, smart arse comments, unnecessary, wrong time and place mate!!

Charles was known to be enjoying his Bachelor days

Absolutely, yes, but in saying "experienced" I really meant in dealing with silly and awkward questions

True also that it was clearly not the fairytale the media tried to present, but I'm old enough to remember the response to that being said at the time, and can only imagine what would have happened on Mumsnet had it been around then

Charlie Boy knew exactly what it meant - it was the feeling he had for someone else entirely.

Charles had been a working Royal for years, he was far more experienced at dealing with the media than an ordinary man in his thirties.
It wasn't a silly question. The reporter was just looking for a loving clip that could be played and awkward Charles had not said anything at all loving about his fiancee or impending marriage.
It was Diana who was inexperienced with the media but knew the answer to give.

And at the time there was a flurry of articles saying that was an odd thing for Charles to say.

I feel like KC will forever forget those words. I’m a bit of an awkward fucker and would probably say similar 😂 I think it also is something that can very easily be taken out of context, especially because the annoying interviewer basically challenged why they didn’t say the words ‘in love’.

I like to think they were in love for a short while. But both had expectations beyond their control and shitty childhoods, they were fucked from the beginning

The majority of 18 year olds will not be with their boyfriend/girlfriend forever. The majority of unmarried parents split up.
Do you want to ask them why they have had a child with someone they are unlikely to spend the rest of their life with.
I have a few divorced friends. Most of them were with their ex husbands a long time. I imagine they were very happy when they got married. Life probably got in the way.

This so true. And when anyone else presents themselves as a newly engaged couple, do they get asked on national TV , 'are you in love?' It was an unfortunate answer to a dumb, clumsy question..... and the poor guy has it on film and held against him for ever more. Nobody mentioned 'Whatever love means' at the time. It was only dragged out of the cupboard when Diana died

Exactly.

Actually, it's often misquoted, although you have it correct in the title.
He said, 'whatever IN love means', which is slightly different to 'whatever love means'.
That said, it was a very silly question, and one he was obviously not prepared for.
Neither were 'IN love'; Diana admitted, they'd only met about 12 times.
There had been a lot of pressure on Charles to get married for many years. So much so, he'd stupidly said, he thought 30 years old would be a good time, which he'd said when he was about 20, thinking that was a long way off.
Alas, the media frenzy started again, when he reached the magical age.

I come from ‘unfortunately’ a very toxic background with my immediate family, and I have unknowingly brought this baggage into my husbands life.

But this man, no matter what happens, whatever we go through, he stays by my side and he will never ever leave me. He always says, I want to have a good relationship with you, and I want to work through our issues and for us to grow as a couple, To me that is unconditional love, that love doesn’t stop because you hurt someone or make them angry, or make mistakes.

And when things are good, when your husband gives you a kiss after 10 years and 3 kids later, it still makes your tummy somersault and feel like you did the first time you met!