I love you....I think...

[B_Kshelby67]

In my short 25 years on Earth, seven men have said those three wonderful words, "I love you". I have only said it back to one of those seven. I don't know if any of the others were sincere. I do not reside in their minds, so I will never know. I find that even when it is said to me, I cannot say it back unless I truly mean it.
Questions 1- Have you ever said "I love you"? Were you really in love when you said it?
For me, love is the most intense, yet comfortable feelings that can be experienced. I honestly do not think that one can fall out of love ever. I have not been in that relationship in which I was in love in years, but I don't think I can honestly say I don't love him. I don't carry a weight of a broken heart with me, nor do I brood over what went wrong, where he is etc. I know that it in no way will prevent me from falling in love again. I just feel that I had a really positive, emotional connection to him for a really long time, and it cannot be erased from my life experience.
Questions 2- What is love to you? Do you think you can love more than one person throughout your life? Can you fall out of love?

ready, set, go!

 

[jeff black]

I kinda talked about this HERE but it is always good to see some more ideas.

Question 1:

I've said it to one person and really meant it. Was I really in love? We were in a state of lusting at the time, but it is safe to say I meant it. I have felt those feelings of love, but haven't expressed myself verbally. I did it and it felt great.

Question 2:

MY personal opinion... and YES, it is mainly wishful thinking, is that LOVE is something you can achieve. IT is real. Maybe I am just an emotional person, but I can feel connections with people...given a period of time... You feel the connection that is so great, there is no other word to describe it.

 

[Lordpendragon]

"I told her I loved her,
with my tongue in her cheek"

:biggrin1:

Falling in love is confusing and chaotic, being in love is hopefully blissful.

 

[rob_just_rob]

Well, first point of order, there's a difference between loving someone and being in love. I love all my friends and family and have said as much. But I think you mean being "in love".

Questions 1- Have you ever said "I love you"? Were you really in love when you said it?

I've said it to three people. At the time I said it, I was convinced I was in love all three times. Was I really? Dunno. But I was sincere at the times I said it.

Questions 2

- What is love to you? Do you think you can love more than one person throughout your life? Can you fall out of love?

YouTube - Haddaway - What is Love?

Other than that, I don't have answers to those questions.

I think if you truly loved one person, you wouldn't be able to hurt them by loving someone else.

I'm not sure if one falls out of love or if one was instead never in love at all.

 

[B_Kshelby67]

I kinda talked about this HERE but it is always good to see some more ideas.

Question 1:

I've said it to one person and really meant it. Was I really in love? We were in a state of lusting at the time, but it is safe to say I meant it. I have felt those feelings of love, but haven't expressed myself verbally. I did it and it felt great.

Question 2:

MY personal opinion... and YES, it is mainly wishful thinking, is that LOVE is something you can achieve. IT is real. Maybe I am just an emotional person, but I can feel connections with people...given a period of time... You feel the connection that is so great, there is no other word to describe it.

ah really great answers. I also do tend to express myself in ways other than verbally when I have feelings of love, but I get so scared to jump to love when it is so easy to mix love and lust. They are both very big, strong feelings. Jumping from one top the other can be detrimental if not totally sure, and I get so scared that one of us will get hurt if I'm not over the top conservative with the phrase.
I wasn't sure about posting my thread, but new people come here all the time, so I suppose it couldn't hurt to start a new one fresh, ya know?

 

[B_Kshelby67]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIiasOUDjWE

I think if you truly loved one person, you wouldn't be able to hurt them by loving someone else.

I'm not sure if one falls out of love or if one was instead never in love at all.

I understand what you mean. In my case, I don't think either of us are hurting the other, we both have moved on. It is a very situational thing though. The years I was with him, I did love him. I sort of think of it as almost looking at my life in sections. The section of time I spent with him was real, and in that time I was in love, so in my crazy series of deductions...ugh forget it. I can't explain this properly. I fail.

 

[bluekarma]

Love is a rose but you better not pick it
Only grows when it's on the vine
Handful of thorns and you'll know you've missed it
Lose your love when you say the word mine



​

 

[B_NineInchCock_160IQ]

My definition of love has changed so much over the years it's hard to pin down. I've tried before, and I think I had a much clearer definition before, now I'm not even really sure what it means to me so I'm not sure it's possible for me to say those words with absolute sincerity. So I say it when I feel like saying it.

Jenni, Alisha, Shannon, Malgorzata, Jihee, Phuong, Sarah, Sophie... I think those are all the girls and women I've ever said this to. At least out loud. I meant it very strongly and very sincerely with four. I wasn't sure if I meant it with a fifth but often I felt like I did and I very much wanted to mean it. With a sixth I said it because it felt good and there didn't seem any harm, and maybe it was almost kind of true. With a seventh I said it almost by accident. With an eigth it was because I knew it was what she wanted to hear and I didn't think there was any reason in this instance not to say it.

 

[ManlyBanisters]

Questions 1- Have you ever said "I love you"? Yes , lots - mainly to Mr.B (I take it off-spring are in a different category :smile: ) but once to another guy - and I don't think I was really, no - I was 17. I've told a few other guys I was in love with them ("I think I'm in love with you") and once I think I was, maybe. Were you really in love when you said it? Yes, no, no, maybe, no ( in reverse order)
For me, love is the most intense, yet comfortable feelings that can be experienced. I honestly do not think that one can fall out of love ever. I have not been in that relationship in which I was in love in years, but I don't think I can honestly say I don't love him. I don't carry a weight of a broken heart with me, nor do I brood over what went wrong, where he is etc. I know that it in no way will prevent me from falling in love again. I just feel that I had a really positive, emotional connection to him for a really long time, and it cannot be erased from my life experience. I didn't know there as a difference between being in love (having strong feelings) and really loving someone til I met Mr.B - the guy I was 'in love' with was a wonderful friend I had wonderful sex with - they other guy I said 'I love you' to was an arse and I was a bit emotionally unstable at the time. But Mr.B - he is my heart, there are no words that are adequate to the task of describing how I feel - the only other beings I love as much are my children - it is the same unconditional, instinctive love - I do not even feel that way about my parents. I didn't realise I felt that way about him til we nearly split up once and the pain was physical and unbearable.
Questions 2- What is love to you? need/interdependance, desire, and something else I can't put in words - 'soul mate' is a phrase I dislike, but something exclusive - a club of only 2 members Do you think you can love more than one person throughout your life? no Can you fall out of love? no - at least that's my experience so far, I hope it stays that way

ready, set, go!

:smile:

 

[B_NineInchCock_160IQ]

I think if you truly loved one person, you wouldn't be able to hurt them by loving someone else.

I'm not sure if one falls out of love or if one was instead never in love at all.

I used to believe this.

Now it seems like remarkably naive fairytale horseshit to me.

Retroactively deciding that past loves didn't count in order to cling to your narrow definition of love and its eternal permanence or to disengenuously enhance the semantic labels you assign to the physiological connection you have presently toward someone else seems like more than a bit of reaching.

I also don't buy that "love" equates to some sort of cosmic oneness or that to truly "love" someone you must surrender completely mind, body, and soul to them and therefore also surrender your capacity to ever love another person. Though this used to fit my definition of "love," this was when I was sixteen years old.

[edit] to elaborate on my first point, I really do feel as though I was in love with this girl I knew recently. Does that invalidate the feelings I had for my first girlfriend back in high school? Those felt very very real to me then, even if I don't feel the same way about the girl now. Back then I felt like I would never love anyone again so passionately as I loved her. and yet, in certain ways, I did. Does that cancel out the first love that I felt? I don't see why it should. I'm barely even the same person anymore. How could I possibly have known at 16 who I was supposed to love the entire rest of my life? Furthermore, just because I felt similar emotions when I was 25... why should I attempt to diminish those feelings I had when I was 16? I feel like I ought to be able to own them both.

 

[amiegrrl]

I've spent many hours in contemplation over this issue, and it may sound kind of mechanical, but my view of Love is this:

It is Manufactured (produced, etc - Basically love does not happen by Accident), it is a Living Thing (thus can be starved, neglected, nourished, cared-for, flourish or die), and it is OPTIONAL.

These people who fall 'hopelessly' head-over-heels with stars in their eyes "In Love" are kidding themselves and, unless the 'receiving' party feels EXACTLY the same way - setting themselves up for a lot of pain. We've all felt those 'fireworks' with someone early on in a relationship, but if Love is not cultivated, the fireworks soon burn themselves out and there is nothing substantial to replace them.

Love is VERY easy to produce, which is the tricky part. If we decide, for any multitude of reasons, to love someone - that Love becomes a part of our Being. It reaches out to the other person for acceptance and reciprocation, which is what makes people 'in love' so vulnerable. If the Love is spurned (neglected, starved) by the receiving party, it will wither and die. This is a very painful process, and can take a very long time. People who continue to love another who does not return that Love are obsessed - chasing a ghost, not 'in love'.

I do not believe that a Magical Bird of Paradise flits down from Heaven and gifts us with Love. It is entirely optional, and there are ways to avoid it. Lust is often mistaken for Love, as are Respect and Admiration. Although all of these things are needed in large measure to sustain Love once it has been born. That's kind of a bare-bones explanation, and is purely my own view.

Cheers! ~Amie

 

[Shelby]

Only with one woman did I feel like I was literally going to die when we split.

Since then I love all the bitches. Just not quite as much.
​

 

[pavement]

The most assured thing about love is that it is a 4 letter word.

 

[B_spiker067]

I haven't lurked here in some days. It was this post that kind of compelled me to post one last time (again;-). Go figure.

It may be the intensity of first love (and its leftovers) are some evolutionary mechanism that is meant to pair many humans off for life, much like in some other wild animals (mostly birds). Intellectually its like first love leaves you unimpressed or jaded to subsequent love. Its also funny that first love is so often mated with first sex.

I've often wondered how so many of my Indian friends who have had 'arranged' marriages seem happy and actually successfull in their marriages. True love?

It makes you think that if you got left with a person of the opposite sex, and you were heterosexual, on a desert island with no hope of rescue it would probably work out both sexually and emotionally no matter how ugly or small penised the communicatively disordered bastard might be

So 'true love' like all things is merely a biochemical, gene driven, Darwinian, programmed, deterministic, biological drive with no spiritual, long lived, after life consequent endeavor as a component.

Like my previous nihilistic outbreak (which actually induced two invitations to commit suicide) this is a facetious, tongue in cheeck expose that I really believe there is more meaning to life than <place your label or lack thereof here> would care to understand.:biggrin1:

P.S. Anybody else here listening to "Science Friday" with Ira Flatow right now!?!

 

[Lordpendragon]

Is there any reason that love has to last more than a fleeting moment?

Other, of course, than you might want it too.

 

[seterwind]

Questions 1- Have you ever said "I love you"? Were you really in love when you said it?

I have, and am happily married to the women I first said it too. When I said it to her, I think then, I did love her, but compared to how I feel for her now, that love is so much smaller.

Questions 2- What is love to you? Do you think you can love more than one person throughout your life? Can you fall out of love?

Personally I think love is greater then human comprehension. It's an emotion that just grows as days go by, and seems to never reach an end. It makes you do some of the stupidest things you could never imagine your self doing. It is the one thing you can think of, when upset and suddenly feel calm. It's peaceful, it's infuriating, it's joyus, it's painful, and all n all, it incoperates every other emotion we can experience, and yet in itself is disturbingly unique. Only able to truely be felt when two people have the same emotion towards another.

Love is the ability to carefor someone more then you care for yourself, to tie all your emotions, good and bad, into the other person for love makes them a part of you. Love is unchanging in it's nature, but has many faces.

I do not think now I could ever love another as deeply as I love my wife. Though, love is different everytime for every couple, so I may be able to love again but never the same love.

As for falling out of love. I think that is possible, I think I may choose to stare at the face of love I find less pleasing, but the emotion, the thing that love is will always remain with me, in my memories, in my heart, and in my soul.

 

[biguy2738]

Yes, I constantly say "I love you", and certainly don't believe in platitudes... I say what I mean and I mean what I say. I cannot profess that the depth of my love has been the same with all people and at all times. I have definitely loved as much and as best as I possibly could at that specific time in my life. My love continues to evolve with me...for the better, I hope.

Love for me, is the burning desire for me to enable the other to be happy and fulfilled within themself. In the case of my wife, my love for her leads me to want her to find the strength and conviction within herself that she is enough. For her to be able to find and embrace her own true identity and independence. My love leads me to want to be her home, a place of refuge, comfort and strength. Love for me, is my NEED to express my love to her, by not doing so by not doing so, I feel like a part of me is missing. At the same time, to look into her eyes and see how they glaze over by her love for me, and the power of that look prevents me from being able to say a word.

I think that it is possible to fall out of love. I think that love isn't only an emotion, but a decision as well. Its the decision to let go of my ego, gripes etc and to allow myself to feel my love for her, when I'd much sooner be digging her grave. Its the decision to allow myself to look at her shortfalls and find value in them, as being part of what has made her into the woman that I so dearly love and cherish. Its the decision to make sure that she is constantly aware of how loved and appreciated she is.

 

[txquis]

I've been in love twice: the first was my ex, and the next is my current partner.

Do I still love my ex? Not in the same way. I love the memory of the good times, and I love the fact that I have moved on from the horrible pain of his walking out.

 

[Ethyl]

Questions 1- Have you ever said "I love you"? Were you really in love when you said it?
For me, love is the most intense, yet comfortable feelings that can be experienced. I honestly do not think that one can fall out of love ever. I have not been in that relationship in which I was in love in years, but I don't think I can honestly say I don't love him. I don't carry a weight of a broken heart with me, nor do I brood over what went wrong, where he is etc. I know that it in no way will prevent me from falling in love again. I just feel that I had a really positive, emotional connection to him for a really long time, and it cannot be erased from my life experience.

That's a healthy outlook and one i've adopted myself over the years.

To answer your questions: yes and yes. I don't believe in saying the "L" word unless I mean it. The word carries too much weight to throw around carelessly in conversation.

Questions 2- What is love to you? Do you think you can love more than one person throughout your life? Can you fall out of love?

I have loved several men during my lifetime. Love changes over time and I can honestly say I care about the men i've loved even though i'm no longer "in love" with them.

Sometimes love seems simple. As simple as caring more for someone than yourself. Sometimes it defies description. My first ex just told me two weeks ago he realises he still loves me after 15+ years. I still care for him but for me that ship has sailed and I wonder how much of his feelings are due to nostalgia. My love for him changed with our circumstances and maturation.

Not a great answer but the best I can summon at the moment.

 

[rob_just_rob]

I used to believe this.

Now it seems like remarkably naive fairytale horseshit to me.

Well, fuck you very much for misunderstanding my point, and blaming me for your error.