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So I have casual chitchat with the guy I am seeing today
I asked him if he ever been “in love”
He said yes maybe when he was young.
He said he he has “few ladies before, but only been in love with one”.
I asked him what’s the difference between
Loving someone and being in love”
He said “being in love is when you feel you can’t live without that person and you think about all the time”.
He said he was with this person very short time and they use to argue a lot and he didn’t understand why he was in love with her.
To me it sounded like he was just maybe infatuated with her.
So it got me thinking now as I’m on my own. What is the difference, I’m actually confuse.
You can love someone and not be in love with them.
I mean, you care about them and all but there is nothing deep and meaningful.
Being in love means you are all in. 100%! You trust them, you know them and it’s a relationship that grows deeper and deeper over the years.
Being in love means you understand their flaws but love them regardless.
Like anything you own that you love. A material possession could look like a piece of junk to someone else but to you... well, it has so many memories. It’s always growing with you.
With that being said I can’t honestly say I have not been ‘in love’ so disregard my post as it may not even be accurate. Haha!
We married very young. We were in love with being in love. Seriously we had not been together long to even know each other. I remember standing at the alter looking at her and wondering "who is this girl, where did she come from"?
We grew together and became in love with each other instead of in love with being in love. Newlyweds go through a stage where the feelings for each other are on display without care and they can't keep their hands off each other. It wears off usually in the second year.
For us, it never wore off. We both wanted to wake up and fall asleep in each others arms. Some might feel smothered. It just made us stronger. There was never a thought about trust and loyalty. It was always the two of us as one, building our home, raising our children. Real unconditional love.
Being in love means your spouse is a part of your thoughts and ideas and plans. Any decisions are made together or with the other in mind. You lives become about the two of you as one. You cannot imagine being apart.
Everyone is going to have a very different idea of what these terms mean.
For me loving someone just means I care about them. I care about almost everyone to some degree, even strangers. So I guess I somewhat "love" everyone.
Being in love just means I both love who they are and feel sexually and romantically attracted to them. And that we've built a connection based on mutual respect and trust over time.
Everyone is going to have a very different idea of what these terms mean.
For me loving someone just means I care about them. I care about almost everyone to some degree, even strangers. So I guess I somewhat "love" everyone.
Being in love just means I both love who they are and feel sexually and romantically attracted to them. And that we've built a connection based on mutual respect and trust over time.
Dang! That’s what I wanted say. Of course, I could not word it as good as you did.
Location: RI, MA, VT, WI, IL, CA, IN (that one sucked), KY
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Hugely different when you feel it. If you don't know, you've not been in love. I love family members. I love friends. Being in love is vastly different.
But putting it into words? Well, poets/authors/philosophers have been trying to do that for hundreds, if not thousands, of years with varying results.
Last edited by timberline742; 01-10-2019 at 07:14 AM..
So I have casual chitchat with the guy I am seeing today
I asked him if he ever been “in love”
He said yes maybe when he was young.
He said he he has “few ladies before, but only been in love with one”.
I asked him what’s the difference between
Loving someone and being in love”
He said “being in love is when you feel you can’t live without that person and you think about all the time”.
He said he was with this person very short time and they use to argue a lot and he didn’t understand why he was in love with her.
To me it sounded like he was just maybe infatuated with her.
So it got me thinking now as I’m on my own. What is the difference, I’m actually confuse.
It may have been infatuation but infatuation+compatibility can quickly grow into love. Arguing a lot is a sign of incompatibility and the inability to resolve those arguments is even more confirmation of incompatibility. And incompatibility is going to desolve whatever infatuation you feel, sooner or later.
Please know though, that just because he only felt infatuation for one girl does not mean that he will only feel that for you. Assuming he's a normal guy, I'm sure he is capable of feeling love when it's right and when it comes along.
It may have been infatuation but infatuation+compatibility can quickly grow into love. Arguing a lot is a sign of incompatibility and the inability to resolve those arguments is even more confirmation of incompatibility. And incompatibility is going to desolve whatever infatuation you feel, sooner or later.
Please know though, that just because he only felt infatuation for one girl does not mean that he will only feel that for you. Assuming he's a normal guy, I'm sure he is capable of feeling love when it's right and when it comes along.
I would like to agree with this. On paper it sounds logical and makes sense. Maybe for normal, sane people, this is more how it works.
But I have known at least 2 men off the top of my head, who can be intensely infatuated with someone they are deeply incompatible with, and carry that infatuation along for literally as long as their partner will permit it. And I've known more situations where there was incompatibility, where the un-infatuated partner will just break the heart of the infatuated partner, and there's no time for that infatuation to run its course or fade away.
I don't devalue, minimize or dismiss infatuation. There's not much that divides "mere" infatuation from being IN LOVE. Except maybe real compatibility...perhaps as defined by two people managing to both experience the passion of infatuation simultaneously.
But is one person's emotional experience invalidated by the other's?
I would say I was infatuated with "fling guy"...I don't get to call that "love" or being "in love" because he didn't really reciprocate those passionate feelings, and so the connection fizzled out and ended after some few months. What if he'd felt equally infatuated with me, and we'd continued onward together? Decided to embark upon a relationship? Escalated it as society expects? Well THEN I could call it "love" or "in love." Because it worked out. Hmm... I don't really like the idea of defining my feelings, by someone else's nor how a connection works or doesn't in the real world. I kind of want the autonomy of just having my feelings, regardless of those things.
I think I'm more on board with this:
Quote:
Originally Posted by That_One_Girl
Everyone is going to have a very different idea of what these terms mean.
For me loving someone just means I care about them. I care about almost everyone to some degree, even strangers. So I guess I somewhat "love" everyone.
Being in love just means I both love who they are and feel sexually and romantically attracted to them. And that we've built a connection based on mutual respect and trust over time.
It is closer to what feels right in my mind.
And I definitely recognize many flavors of love, built of many factors of engagement between people (or, say, a person and an animal or a thing.) Obligation, familiarity, sunk costs, humor, intellectual interest, comfort, passion, hormones, physical sensations... So many components to love. There are familial sorts of love that can exist even for people you don't like very much, built more of obligation and familiarity than anything else. There are blazing passions that are valid (to my thinking) in their emotional intensity even if they don't lead to a life bond. There is the deep and abiding warmth and trust that one might feel for a life partner or even a deeply bonded longterm friend.
Which brings me to the other element...time. We do seem to judge the validity, or invalidity, of "love" based on time, don't we? And the success or failure of a love-match, as well. I prefer not to, but people do.
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