Sex: male Relationship status: just got dumped. Alright, my feelings on love are going to be coming from a slightly darker place, since my girlfriend dumped me about 10 days ago. I'm not sure if I believe in love anymore. Part of me stopped believing in love a while ago, before the end of this relationship, but now it seems to be taking deeper root within me. When I was growing up I believed in love in the most cliche of ways. However, disappointment after disappointment has sort of left me believing that the type of love I had idealized does not really exist. Love seems to be completely conditional on certain things, which I don't like, since this is not the type of love I have wanted to develop. Also, I feel like I've only really experienced what I would define was limerance. After a certain period of time, the girl seems to gradually lose her interest in me. So, I guess what I'm saying is, I may not believe in love because I don't believe anyone else has actually been in love with me, in the truest form of the word. And I find it hard to believe you can be love, when someone else doesn't love you. I would call that more a form of infatuation or obsession. Something else, but not love. However, if I had met someone years ago who loved me the same amount as she loved me when we were in a stage of limerance, perhaps I would be answering this post differently.
I feel like your perspective is an incredibly hard one to face, and I really want to thank you for sharing your thoughts on this right now. As mentioned above I'm in the opposite situation: within the last month I and my recent partner have found ourselves tumbling towards the first real relationship either of us have experienced. I must say, both of us are extremely cautious people, and we've discussed exactly what you mentioned: maybe what we feel will pass, maybe it will not hold up under stress, etc. Maybe our assumptions about our feelings are wrong in the first place. However, we mutually concluded we'd rather try this, live our lives, than have never tasted happiness. We'd rather try and fail than not try at all. I do believe that love exists and can exist, even if it hasn't for you. And I truly hope that you find it :)
Of course, I would never suggest otherwise for you and your partner. And I hope it all works out! I've seen successful relationships before. I'm mostly speaking from personal experience.
Love is not a life sentence; love is not successful only if somebody dies. Those are two pieces of advice that were given to me when I realized I needed to leave the relationship with my first love. I've also experienced limerence (and, curiously, I remember it MUCH more than I remember love right now) but I don't think that you necessarily experienced limerence instead of love just because you weren't the one to break things off. I think perhaps you simply experienced love with someone who could not love you indefinitely, rather than someone who didn't love you at all. This thread and an external conversation on the same topic helped me realize that the reason I have trouble either remembering ever having been in love or crossing that boundary now (but limerence is easy!) is because I'm threatened by the fact that love makes people willing to automatically sacrifice to put the other person's happiness first, and in past loving relationships I did that to my own detriment and changed things about myself that it took me a long time to recover. There's a point, I think, in a relationship where even if you love someone, you have to stop and give some thought to what continuing to love them means, and whether or not you can sustain the feeling of their happiness being more essential to your happiness than individual fulfillment is. When I left that first loving relationship, I was elated. It was hard to say the words and break up, but within days of doing so I finally felt that I could breathe again. That doesn't mean to me that I never loved him -- it means that I let love feel like a life sentence, instead of a choice. It was a lousy relationship in a lot of ways, but it was good in other ways, and I really do believe it was a love match, but it was one where I came to the point of choosing love with one of the millions of people in the world who I could love, or the ability to be a version of myself that I'm proud of. The fact that the two couldn't coexist doesn't make him wrong, bad, or any of that, it just meant it was time for an end. Maybe that's what is happening in your relationships. You just come to a point where the other person does love you, but can't both keep loving you and be the person she wants to be outside the relationship. That doesn't make you wrong or unlovable, it just means you haven't met someone yet for whom who she wants to be as a person is the same as who loving you would make her become. I think that person is out there for everyone. I think there is someone in the world who will love me to the point of modifying themselves automatically over time, without thinking, to make me happier--and who will get to that "stop, look, evaluate" point and say, "Wow, I love the things that I've added to my character in this relationship." I believe that I will get to that point with someone, too. But I think that's really hard to find, and that it's endurance and compatibility, not love, that gets a relationship past the "stop, look, evaluate." Every love seems to come to that point, and being unable to pass it doesn't make it non-love.
Thanks for that response. Very thoughtful, and you brought up some great points. For some reason, I have trouble understanding love, and the emotions associated with it. I feel like I can make sense of a lot of things, but with love I just start to get confused. Well, I am confused right now obviously. I'll keep searching, but I don't think I'll be ready to put someone else before my own interests and happiness for a while.
I totally relate. That's where I am right now, too. I know that putting someone else first right now would mean sacrifices I'm not willing to make, so I'm not sure I'm far enough in my own evolution to be in love. That doesn't mean I can't keep enjoying my relationship and considering it "loving" if not "in-love," for as long as the other person is willing to tolerate my not being in-love, but the big epiphany of all of these descriptions of love is that I don't feel them right now not because I'm incapable of any/all of them, but because some part of me recognizes that I AM capable of all of them and that I need a little more time to become a person I'm ready to offer to a love partner before I WANT to feel those things.
Hopefully the person you're with is in the same space psychologically. If he/she is then I'm sure it will mature over time. In the end, that may be a healthy approach to a long-term bond.
For a lot of reasons that are his business and not mine to share, I don't think it's exactly the same, but I've gotten comfortable with the fact that either possible outcome will end up being good for both of us. If things work out and I can be in love in a selfless way in the future, I really respect his character and trust him to be a person who will accept my love and return it. If not, I think the relationship has helped both of us learn about ourselves, and we're both people who have a history of being able to let go of resentment of past relationships and be friendly toward ex-lovers, so I think if we separate eventually we'll look at our relationship as having been a positive.
Hm. It is a weird part of my character that it is impossible for me to be friends with a girls who have broken up with me. I cut them out and never speak to them again. I don't know exactly why I do it. With girls I've dumped, I don't cut them out, but I don't feel comfortable talking to them or having any type of relationship with them. I think I feel that way because of guilt.
I can completely understand where you are coming from. How can you have ever been in love if it's so easily discarded? I'll be honest, I love my wife very much but I don't think I knew what the purest form of love was until I became a father. When I wrote about love here in this thread it was regarding my love for my daughter. You'll find someone that loves you though and it will be the kind of love where you know it's gonna last, where you know the two of you will share a life, build something together and someday be able to look back at it and go, "we did a damned good job". -You're a cool guy, it will happen. if you want it to
Ya, basically my feelings are coming from your first sentence. Both of the long-term serious relationships I've had, ended with them leaving me quite easily. I can imagine having a child is a different type of love, and I can also imagine that having a child will create a bond between you and your partner that will make you stronger and able to raise a good family. I really didn't want to be the downer on this post - but I thought I'd share my thoughts on it for a different perspective. Obviously these thoughts could be conditional on my emotional place right now.
I really didn't want to be the downer on this post - but I thought I'd share my thoughts on it for a different perspective. Obviously these thoughts could be conditional on my emotional place right now.
You're not being a downer. Most of us have been in a similar situation. It's no fun and it definitely shakes your confidence in "love". You'll jump back in to the saddle and fall in love again, we advanced apes need love. It's a biological imperative.