ItsMe Posted February 20, 2009 Posted February 20, 2009 Can you just fall out of love? & Do you just wake up & realise? Or did you never truly love them in the first place? =s Just wondering because he said to me "over the last few days..." & Im thinking "Few days?!? You're ending over one year because of a 'few days'" & I can't seem to stop loving this person (been 23 days...) who gave up on me after a 'few days' even though the fact that they did makes me hate them. Ugh.
Knight_Ctrl Posted February 20, 2009 Posted February 20, 2009 I'm a firm FIRM believer in that true real love lasts forever unless it is actively destroyed. I truly loved my ex but after what she did to me I could never forgive her, could never truly love her again. However when she "fell out of love" with me, I had done nothing to destroy that "love" (or so she called it). I was the same person I had always been, she just wanted a reason to go for this other guy. She never loved me, I couldn't believe that she did or she wouldn't have done to me what she had.
a_f_w Posted February 20, 2009 Posted February 20, 2009 Can you just fall out of love? & Do you just wake up & realise? Or did you never truly love them in the first place? =s Just wondering because he said to me "over the last few days..." & Im thinking "Few days?!? You're ending over one year because of a 'few days'" & I can't seem to stop loving this person (been 23 days...) who gave up on me after a 'few days' even though the fact that they did makes me hate them. Ugh. It's hard to say, because it's kind of self-defining... like, if you never fall out of love with someone then we would say it *is* real love, but if you do then we might say it *wasn't* real love. But that's kind of a post hoc explanation for it. And we can never know what emotions were actually in someone's mind to be able to compare them, anyway. I reckon that if someone can appear to switch off their "love" (or whatever it was) so quickly then it is itself a reason to not call it "love", though. It's laughable that people can pretend to be so short sighted to consider a few bad days, or weeks, to mean that a relationship is invalid. In my case my ex made similar claims, but it was entirely because she had already met a new man and was thereby 100% distracted from what little feelings she may have still had for me (almost none, for a long, long time, as it happens - and I did know that). There's really nothing you can do when someone says that.
paperchase Posted February 21, 2009 Posted February 21, 2009 Real love definitely doesn't die overnight. But what is real love? It's definitely not that high rush you have when your falling head over heels for a new fling. It happens after you realize your mate doens't walk on water, yet you still want to walk the beaches with them hand and hand. But sometimes when we see a person's faults we begin to reconsider whether we want to sign up for that walk. And we don't make that decision right away, but we make it little by little over the course of time until at some point we fully convince ourself that they are not the one for us. This decision making process can be greatly expidited if we have a new partner waiting in the wings while we are reaching our conclusions. I have dumped and been dumped. I think every relationship I've been in, including my failed marriage, began with a high rush and ended with a slow death. Many people, myself included, feel blindsided when we are dumped because we refuse to accept the warning signs that our partner is falling out of love.
EasyHeart Posted February 21, 2009 Posted February 21, 2009 I think there are phases in a relationship. The first thing you feel is infatuation or attraction. That's what many people think of as 'love'. After a few months, that feeling fades away, and at that point one of two things happen: you start building trust and openness with each other (moving on to the beginnings of real love) or you 'fall out' of love. So in the case of the OP, if her guy made his comment after a few months, then it makes sense: he decided that he couldn't or didn't want to get closer. If they'd been together for years, then I can see why think for 'a few days' would be way too brief. I think WAY too many people think that infatuation is the same as love. They've never experience closeness or personal intimacy with another person, so they have no idea of what a relationship is really about.
Island Girl Posted February 21, 2009 Posted February 21, 2009 I think there are phases in a relationship. The first thing you feel is infatuation or attraction. That's what many people think of as 'love'. After a few months, that feeling fades away, and at that point one of two things happen: you start building trust and openness with each other (moving on to the beginnings of real love) or you 'fall out' of love. True and brilliant. I think WAY too many people think that infatuation is the same as love. They've never experience closeness or personal intimacy with another person, so they have no idea of what a relationship is really about. True. I was really good at closeness and personal intimacy and soliciting the same from a partner. I said "I love you" many times and thought I meant it at the time. However I was never (NEVER) vulnerable. It took time alone for me to get to the point where I could really love in the true sense of the word. True love takes a lot of vulnerability.
smile_through_tears Posted February 21, 2009 Posted February 21, 2009 True and brilliant. True. I was really good at closeness and personal intimacy and soliciting the same from a partner. I said "I love you" many times and thought I meant it at the time. However I was never (NEVER) vulnerable. It took time alone for me to get to the point where I could really love in the true sense of the word. True love takes a lot of vulnerability. Yes it does. The thing with my ex is that I think the infatuation faded or whatever and since were young, I was the only girl he had ever been with in his whole life..Im assuming he wants to try new things...but it still hurts.
EasyHeart Posted February 21, 2009 Posted February 21, 2009 I'm going through something similar, and my exGF isn't that young. But as I process our on-again/off-again 1.5 year relationship, I think she could never get past the infatuation stage. Not that she didn't like being with me, but she's literally never experienced the second level of a relationship, and she didn't know how to do it. Once we got past infatuation, I started to grow closer, but she started to pull away. She told me that 'something just isn't right' and 'I can't love you as much as you love me', and would want to split. She's never had a LT relationship in her life (though she's 31) and I think she only thinks of 'love' being that infatuated feeling.
Author ItsMe Posted March 15, 2009 Author Posted March 15, 2009 Thanks for the replies Some nice points on here I think WAY too many people think that infatuation is the same as love. Thats very true & i've seen happen around me But I do beleive he was properly in love with me, passed infactuation & all that, we did have real intamicy & shared things with each other etc. It still confuses me, because exactly one month before he ended it he sent me my christmas card which simply read "You mean everything to me" & no one has ever said anything like that to me before & I felt so secure. Also pissed off at him because its like the hardest thing in the world for me to be vunurable to someone (I even delete my histroy after being on this incase someone I know finds out..How tragic, I know lol) & i've just been like slapped in the face. But hey, its been almost 2 months, i'm trying not too look back, i'm young & have a lifetime of love ahead of me (From what i've heard from every single person I know lol), I won't let this damage me & i'll get thorugh this stronger & perhaps a more open person (which isn't a bad thing im rather closed) Ta much guys (:
socialight Posted March 15, 2009 Posted March 15, 2009 of course people fall out of love. If people never fell out of love, of what value would be the institution of marriage? I would go so far to say that, unless two people actively work on staying in love, they are doomed to fall out of it.
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