Tenacity Posted January 2, 2013 Posted January 2, 2013 This is a thread I have been wanting to start for a long time. I have seen so many definitions of "love" on this board. So many people involved in A's make the statement (regarding their spouse): "I love him/her but I am not IN LOVE with him/her". That, to me, is complete hogwash. They are not referring to "love" but to limerence, in my opinion. I think that much of what drives us to be with people during the early stages of a relationship is actually limerence and sexual attraction. Much of what keeps people in an A (and what makes it hard to leave an A) has to do with addiction to that feeling... therefore addition to the person that results in that feeling. I think that "love" is less of an emotion than it is a commitment to someone you care about. It is a decision that is consciously made. I don't think people just "fall in love" and live happily ever after. I think people commit to being together, being partners and companions, and that is what love really is - honoring that commitment. I bring this up because I have thought a lot about it, as a single person who has decided not to ever make that commitment to a man again (for fear of getting hurt - my personal decision). Another reason I bring this up is because so many people here think that they "love" their AP's. Love is about commitment - I believe it is why most or many MM don't leave their marriages. I'm curious what others think. Is "love" some kind of magical emotion that we all should be striving for? If so, then why the disastrous divorce rate and the huge number of (equally disastrous) affairs? 6
Author Tenacity Posted January 2, 2013 Author Posted January 2, 2013 Love is a verb. And a noun. Love is a change in brain chemistry to facilitate the replication of DNA. So then what is 'lust'?
xxoo Posted January 2, 2013 Posted January 2, 2013 I'm curious what others think. Is "love" some kind of magical emotion that we all should be striving for? If so, then why the disastrous divorce rate and the huge number of (equally disastrous) affairs? IMO, people focus too much on feeling love, and too little on creating loving feelings. I feel strong love in my marriage, but it isn't something that sustains itself. A marriage is like a garden, and it will go to the weeds without care. That doesn't mean it feels like work; it can be pure joy to maintain a garden. But you do have to get out there and do it, and you have to know what you are doing. A whole lot of people want a beautiful garden at home while spending their time tending to other pleasures and responsibilities. Other people work really hard at gardening, but have crap soil, or bad seeds, or no rain, or over-tend and cut off all the buds. 12
woinlove Posted January 2, 2013 Posted January 2, 2013 I like xxoo's reply and agree with all of it. On the point of you have to know what you are doing from my own experience, at least one spouse has to know what they are doing and the other one has to be capable of learning. That was my experience, where I learned to love better and deeper from my H. He would also say he learned that from me, but I don't think it was symmetrical. I definitely had more to learn. 2
OpenBook Posted January 2, 2013 Posted January 2, 2013 I think that "love" is less of an emotion than it is a commitment to someone you care about. It is a decision that is consciously made. I don't think people just "fall in love" and live happily ever after. I think people commit to being together, being partners and companions, and that is what love really is - honoring that commitment. I disagree. One can honor/uphold a commitment even when the love is long gone. It can represent an ACT of love, sure - but it doesn't inherently include it.
OpenBook Posted January 2, 2013 Posted January 2, 2013 Is "love" some kind of magical emotion that we all should be striving for? No, not in my book. We humans love because of (or in spite of) ourselves. It's a natural thing. There's no striving to it; we just do it. What I strive for, is to love WELL. It's possible to love somebody to pieces and they'd never know it - or all they'd feel from you is grief or torture. Loving somebody WELL- now that's the challenge. My two cents.
promises Posted January 2, 2013 Posted January 2, 2013 Maybe it is not something that you get, rather something that you give. If it's not being replenished, it is time to stop giving. Why give it to a vacuum.
Author Tenacity Posted January 2, 2013 Author Posted January 2, 2013 I think love takes work. It doesn't just happen. 1
Author Tenacity Posted January 2, 2013 Author Posted January 2, 2013 No, not in my book. We humans love because of (or in spite of) ourselves. It's a natural thing. There's no striving to it; we just do it. What I strive for, is to love WELL. It's possible to love somebody to pieces and they'd never know it - or all they'd feel from you is grief or torture. Loving somebody WELL- now that's the challenge. My two cents. Maybe I am confusing love with commitment/marriage. I felt that I loved my ex-MM. I felt that ex-MM loved me, but it was never backed up in actions. It was apparently just a feeling. His action was to stay with his W which was an act of love/commitment that he never felt for me.
buckeyeblue Posted January 2, 2013 Posted January 2, 2013 Interesting topic. I agree with both Tenacity and Pierre. Love for me is more about what I bring to the relationship - what I do and how I commit to someone else. Unfortunately, for my WH, love is all about what he gets - giving never enters his mind. I think this is true for most WS. If you read the posts, they tend to define love by what is given to them, not by what they offer to give to others. Unfortunately, that is also the way a toddler views love. 1
whichwayisup Posted January 2, 2013 Posted January 2, 2013 So many people equate heart flutters and that intense feeling inside as "in love". It may be the 'falling in love' process, all based on emotions and feelings but not really "knowing" the person. Just my opinion, so in some eyes I could be very wrong - affair 'love' is selfish and based on a certain dynamic..That love doesn't grow on all levels in the sense as it would in a regular relationship..An honest foundation and truly being a full part of someone's life and really getting to know them. It's also putting the other person first more often than putting yourself first. Love is not just a feeling, it's an action and it also takes effort to keep the flame and passion alive. 4
carhill Posted January 2, 2013 Posted January 2, 2013 I remember thinking about this (what is love?) while spending a few quiet moments with my mother a couple days before she died. I reflected on how she had given of herself to me and my father and others and never considered it any extraordinary feat. I recall hoping I had honored that example in my care for her, even though I had failed that task in my marriage. Those moments, with her eyes relatively blank from the morphine and her disease, defined a pivotal moment of reflection and change. A new beginning. With endings there are beginnings. As long as there is life, there can be love. 1
MissBee Posted January 2, 2013 Posted January 2, 2013 (edited) IMO, people focus too much on feeling love, and too little on creating loving feelings. I feel strong love in my marriage, but it isn't something that sustains itself. A marriage is like a garden, and it will go to the weeds without care. That doesn't mean it feels like work; it can be pure joy to maintain a garden. But you do have to get out there and do it, and you have to know what you are doing. A whole lot of people want a beautiful garden at home while spending their time tending to other pleasures and responsibilities. Other people work really hard at gardening, but have crap soil, or bad seeds, or no rain, or over-tend and cut off all the buds. I so agree and also love Tenacity's topic! If marriage or relationships were just about a romantic feeling of love, then it would be so easy, as contrary to how some MM/MW behave, many of them were indeed inlove and giddy with their now BS too. I always warn OW to be realistic and realize that the A is new, isn't out in the open, hasn't stood the test of time as an open relationship, so you really cannot judge how much "more" inlove you will be than the current M that is suffering. You often don't know and won't until this person actually leaves to be with you and then and only then with time you'll see. Then and only then will the A and M be on some kind of even playing field as two relationships. It's nice to imagine that you'll simply be inlove and ride off and it just requires "more love" than the M and you'll be happier by default; but this is a really silly notion. No matter how inlove....love as a mere feeling steeped in romance is NOT sustainable and doesn't ensure for a good relationship. Most failed relationships started out with intense in love feelings and still end in the toilet. Like you said, marriage is indeed a garden and it takes active cultivation. Not just a wish for a nice garden. I've said it before on these boards that love isn't enough and love without the right circumstances and other qualities like: transparency, integrity, commitment, emotional maturity, honesty etc is just a feeling that people fall "in and out" out of and it's very fickle. People have gotten on here talking about altruistic love versus romantic, as though the latter is a "greater" form, when most should realize by now that romantic love is the most fickle love of all. And many MM have romantic love for the OW and most clearly don't leave to be with her, so it seems altruistic love has more power to keep them where they are. Love is as love does. It isn't a stand alone state of mind/feeling but requires LOTS of other character traits in order for it to be effective. "I love you but I'm not inlove" makes sense; however, the problem is believing that being "in love" is somehow greater than love. I want someone who loves me in that they respect me, treat me well, care about my well being and best interest etc. If we have that as a foundation, then I can deal with the inlove feelings not being full force everyday. The problem is chasing the inlove feeling above all else and thinking that those types of highs are what it's all about. Edited January 2, 2013 by MissBee 2
thefooloftheyear Posted January 2, 2013 Posted January 2, 2013 I dont know.. But I do know this much, "whatever" IT is, it hurts like hell when it leaves all of a sudden... TFOY
MissBee Posted January 2, 2013 Posted January 2, 2013 Note how folks that require massive external validation fall in love very easily with whomever is doing the validation. Ideally love is about giving and not expecting anything in return. But, that is ideal love in the metaphysical sense. I have found this to be true in friends I have observed and an ex of mine who fell in and out of love very easily. I think OW should be suspicious about a man in an unhappy M being "inlove" with her after a short time and while in a secret A. I mean the writing on the wall says that, if one is unhappy, and supposedly not being validated at home, then when one finds a new source of this and is being doted on, receiving sex, attention, a listening ear and the new feelings and emotions of a new romance, it is going to elicit very strong feelings that many may call love (or fog). But when dday rolls around, many have experienced that this "love" evaporates as quickly as it came on and the MM disappears or for the even less fortunate, the MM does leave to follow this new feeling but then returns to their M shortly after. The feelings of limerence are VERY strong. That to me is the fog. It's like anyone who feels that way. Every relationship has that phase, but it says nothing about if it is "true love" or if the relationship is healthy or sustainable. So one has to understand how this works in order to be able to assess any relationship....as many decisions made in the height of limerence don't pan out later on or you're like wtf...how could I have felt/thought that???? I have personally experienced, outside of an A, being really caught up and believing myself/him/the feeling at the time but it was all crazy. That's the fog to me. 3
secretlady76 Posted January 2, 2013 Posted January 2, 2013 Love brings out the best and worst in you. Covers every emotion. Once its gone, a part of you goes with it.....
Silly_Girl Posted January 2, 2013 Posted January 2, 2013 Maybe I am confusing love with commitment/marriage. I felt that I loved my ex-MM. I felt that ex-MM loved me, but it was never backed up in actions. It was apparently just a feeling. His action was to stay with his W which was an act of love/commitment that he never felt for me. I can identify with this. My ex did leave eventually but more than once said he would leave and did not. He had very strong loving feelings for me. He was besotted in a lovely way, not in an obsessive way. He truly thought I was awesome, admired me and was very stimulated, intellectually and emotionally, by me. Sometimes I would forget that. And yet he didn't act in accordance. That confused me many times. I had been in the opposite situation, acting in a loving way towards someone I no longer respected or loved, but I was committed to. Putting the other person first, keeping promises etc, all things I thought were a natural part of a relationship... It's so much easier being with someone whose expectations and behaviour matches my own.
seren Posted January 3, 2013 Posted January 3, 2013 Oh Tenacity, such a huge question, one people have debated for eons and I am not sure there is a definitive answer. I think love is different for each and every one of us and that there are different ways of showing love and different feelings of love depending on whom we are loving. I loved and love my parents in a just knowing that I did way, I always felt cared for, but really wanted love as I saw it, differently from their no nonsense, non showy way. My friends parents were very loving, publicly so, hand holding, hugging, casual kisses and I watched that and wanted that. I saw that as love, yet I found out when older that the mother was actually quite cold and all the public shows were her husband and children grabbing what they could get in public before going home to anger and shouting. I never heard I love you from either of my parents and saw them showing love as validation that I was in fact lovable. During teen years I had romantic ideas of what love was, much yearning, much adoring from afar and much disappointment when I found out that what I saw as love just wasn't what I got. A bt like finding out the boy I fancied was a slobbery kisser and feeling more yuck than swoon. I was married twice before my H, each time I thought I had found love only to find that while familiarity didn't necessarily mean contempt, it wasn't enough to keep me trying to make it work when it became boring and mundane - pretty shallow of me I know, but I have never settled for less than what makes me happy. When I had my son I felt an instant rush of bonding and love, more a primal feeling of hurt this person and I shall bring down the wrath of hell on your shoulders type of feeling, it hasn't changed that much either. I love my son unconditionally, whatever he does, not to excuse poor behaviour, but he has my heart, lock, stock and barrel. When I saw H for the first time I had a, ah here you are, moment. I felt like nothing I have ever experienced before and so not like cynical me at all. I recognised him, if that makes sense and knew, without a shadow of doubt that this was different and special. In the early days I was so far in lust I couldn't see straight, but underneath it all I kept back a bit of me just incase. Over the years I have always thought us so lucky to have what we have, not a sloppy showy love, more a looking at him sleeping in the chair with his greying hair and little Buddha belly and feeling myself smile, even smiling now when I think about him. Love is the glue that keeps it all together, it is the feeling of belonging, of being through the worse of times and still loving enough to forgive and to want his happiness before my own. When we had D Day I hated what he had done, but still loved him, that didn't change. I would have seen him walk away and begin a new life if it made him happier, I would have missed him with all that I had, but would have wanted to know that he had found a happier place. So after a very long winded answer, for me love is a word I used to describe the deep feelings I have for others and by my actions, I show how much those I love mean to me. Even though I love myself, I love those I love more and would walk through fire for them. Where we live is pretty remote, life can be hard slog, we have less dosh and yet I have never felt so content and whole, he does what he does and I do what I do to make the thing called us work. He is my view of choice and my best friend and I also love, the more I try to explain the more difficult it is - he is away for a few days and I feel like a bit of me is missing, so maybe that is love, finding the one who makes you feel whole, through the best and worse of times.
Author Tenacity Posted January 5, 2013 Author Posted January 5, 2013 I haven't replied to this thread in the last 2 days, I am sorry, but I have read it. Thank you! Great responses and has given me much food for thought. Seren, thank you for that last post. Honestly, you don't know how much you hit home for me with that post.
movingon45 Posted January 5, 2013 Posted January 5, 2013 Such a great thread. I'm wondering about that myself. I read from the 5 Languages of Love that you can't be "in love" forever or else you will not be able to concentrate enough to do anything. Being "in love" is what happens during the early stages of love - the rush, excitement, and all that. Love is a decision. First you fall in love, then you decide or choose to love and commit. In my case, I think that I fell in love with my ex bf 26 years ago, and after having a brief affair with him last year found myself falling in love again, but I can't commit to loving him because the time is not right. But am I fooling myself? I'm constantly thinking about him now that I broke up with him. I think that I have learned to love my husband and have decided to stay with him (going 20 years now) even if he is impotent and can't give me children, and won't do anything about it. I'm constantly thinking about this though right now after my brief affair because now I know what I am missing. I wasn't really that in love with him when we got married, but I thought it was okay because he's marriage material and that we can work it out. I made a mistake, I think. Obviously, I need a lot to think about right now (my mind is a mess!) and I am wondering what is love. Sorry for the long post. I'll get over this and would probably cover my head in shame about what I wrote here. I'm so confused and my writing reflects this.
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