What is love?

bragan

So,what is love? How do you know when your in love? Has anyone out there ever gotten scared?

I have been going out with my boyfriend for about a year and a half.
From very early on, I loved him. It was like I just knew I loved him. But I guess now im getting a bit scared/freaked out. What if what I feel isn't really love. How do I know thats enough. I have talked to him about this, but he isn't scared. He "Just knows he loves me", so he doesn't really know how to help me. I guess I'm a very logical person, and I don't like that I just have a feeling. I want the logical reasons behind it.

Anyone ever felt like this? How do you get over it? Help me stop freaking out please....

milod

You can't have logical reasons for love! love isn't logical!!

ask yourself, do you want to grow old with him?, ask yourself, if he was sick, would you wish you were sick instead of him? etc, etc.

Sorry to trot out the old line, but when you're in love, you just KNOW. However, you can over-analyse it, and if you do, it doesn't stand up to scrutiny because love is illogical after all... so then doubts set in.

Stop thinking so much about it, relax, and start feeling instead - because love is more a feeling than a cerebral process. If you don't feel it, then maybe it isn't happening...

Zombrex

bragan wrote:

So,what is love? How do you know when your in love? Has anyone out there ever gotten scared?

I have been going out with my boyfriend for about a year and a half.
From very early on, I loved him. It was like I just knew I loved him. But I guess now im getting a bit scared/freaked out. What if what I feel isn't really love. How do I know thats enough. I have talked to him about this, but he isn't scared. He "Just knows he loves me", so he doesn't really know how to help me. I guess I'm a very logical person, and I don't like that I just have a feeling. I want the logical reasons behind it.

Anyone ever felt like this? How do you get over it? Help me stop freaking out please....

The only way to tell what is love is to learn what isn't love, if that makes sense.

A lot of people think they are in love with someone, especially in their teenage years or early 20s, or people without much experience in relationships. But on closer examination the emotions they feel are closer to obession, insecurity, fear of loneliness etc, and what the person they "love" is doing is providing a crutch against these negative emotions.

The best way to be able to tell if something is love or not is to get yourself to a position in your life where you are happy externally to anyone else. If you are perfectly happy without someone else making you happy you can get a clearer view if you actually love the person or if you just love the fact that they provide something to your life that makes you happy or distracts you from being unhappy.

Kell

Wicknight wrote:

If you are perfectly happy without someone else making you happy you can get a clearer view if you actually love the person or if you just love the fact that they provide something to your life that makes you happy or distracts you from being unhappy.

Could not have put it better myself.

K- (AKA Dr. Love)

Tusky

baby dont hurt me.

(sorry)

Motley Crue

bragan wrote:

So,what is love? How do you know when your in love? Has anyone out there ever gotten scared?

I have been going out with my boyfriend for about a year and a half.
From very early on, I loved him. It was like I just knew I loved him. But I guess now im getting a bit scared/freaked out. What if what I feel isn't really love. How do I know thats enough. I have talked to him about this, but he isn't scared. He "Just knows he loves me", so he doesn't really know how to help me. I guess I'm a very logical person, and I don't like that I just have a feeling. I want the logical reasons behind it.

Anyone ever felt like this? How do you get over it? Help me stop freaking out please....

If it wasnt for the fact that you were born in 1984 I genuinely believed you were my girlfriend writing about me. I genuinely believed you, because, for the last couple of days my girlfriend has been saying EXACTLY the same things and ive been saying EXACTLY the same things back to her and all I can say to you is that you have to really make your own mind up. Theres no point making a decision based on impulse, you have to make one based on what you believe in, and if you really believe you love him theres nothing frightening or scary about that. In fact, you might not even realise this, but finding someone you love can be the most rewarding experience this world can offer. The best of luck, its comforting in a strange sort of way to know theres another somebody out there whos going through what I am, it helps you realise youre not the only one and in a way thats extremely reassuring

metrovelvet

OP

You are asking a question that has been haunting humanity for centuries. No one can tell you if you love your boyfriend except for you. I get the feeling that you are looking not for logic, but for epistomelogical stabilty where you can know 100% without a shade of doubt that your feelings are real and lasting. You can't know, not in the way you know your birthday, you have to trust, and you have to decide. There is will in love, it is a choice moreso than a feeling.

"The relationship between commitment and doubt is by no means an antagonistic one. Commitment is healthiest when it's not without doubt but in spite of doubt."

-Rollo May [American existential psychologist]

monument

bragan wrote:

I guess I'm a very logical person, and I don't like that I just have a feeling. I want the logical reasons behind it.

I’m usually fairly logical too, although my self-controlled logic goes out the window where the opposite sex is concerned, but there’s always ‘the Science of Love'... it's logical, I guess...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/hottopics/love/

ClockWorkOrange

Dang! Beat me to it tusky

Talliesin

bragan wrote:

I guess I'm a very logical person, and I don't like that I just have a feeling. I want the logical reasons behind it.

The logical reason is that human beings aren't very good at dealing with things like obtaining enough food for ourselves individually. We're much better at doing it in groups.

This isn't my answer. The utter hopelessness in using the above to deal with your situation is my answer. Stop looking for logical reasons.

ClockWorkOrange

Logically, "love" is a transient electro chemical reaction in your brain combined with the rearrangement of neural circuits...i.e. parts of you brain rearrange. We have not evolved far enough to fully understand the process...Give it a few thousand years...

Marksie

Talliesin wrote:

Stop looking for logical reasons.

As was quoted in the film Kinsey:
Alfred Kinsey: When it comes to love, we are all in the dark.

Jules

A few of my opinions on love:

Real love hurts;
Real love makes you totally vulnerable and open;
Real love will take you far beyond yourself;
Therefore real love will devastate you.
If love does not shatter you,
You do not know love

Another:

Love they say is patient,
Love they say is kind,
It sees beyond other's faults,
For love they say is blind.....

Love does not diminish
Or rust and fade with years
But it will gain strength
From time, laughter, joy and tears.

Love is God's own gift to us
A present from above
He gives us peace, He gives us joy,
But first He gave us Love.

and finally:

When you love someone
you'll sacrifice
You'd give everything you've got
and you don't think twice.
You'd risk it all
no matter what may come.
When you love someone.
You'll shoot the moon
Put out the sun.
When you love someone

As it's been said love isn't logicial, it just is. Don't know when i figured out when i was in love with my partner, all i know is how happy and alive and whole feel when i see him or talk to him and on the other side how utterly lost i feel when he isn't around.

We live in different countries, not too far but ten minutes away is too far. We see each other every few weeks, but we talk every night. We have only been together a few months, but by far he is the best thing that has ever happened to me.

When your in love you will know, trust your own judgement!

Anti

Love is that warm fuzzy feeling you get when you think of a certain person.

Love is feeling ****ty when your loved one feels ****ty.

Love is wanting to spend every waking minute with that person, and feeling like something inside of you is lost when away from them.

I LOVE THE SMELL OF NAPALM IN THE MORNING !

Pigman II

Spooky. I was gonna start a thread just now with the very same title/question (even complete with gentle introduction curtosy of Tuskys main man Haddaway.)

To answer, I don't know. If it's 'wanting to spend every waking minute with that person, and feeling like something inside of you is lost when away from them.' then I'm certainly feeling right now.

I guess only one man can solve the mystery for us all http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNZJOix6XbE

Talliesin

bragan wrote:

How do I know thats enough.

Here's the thing. It isn't enough. Feeling you love someone isn't enough, loving someone isn't enough.

Love doesn't conquer all. Love doesn't conquer anything. People do. Love can inspire such people, give them something to aim for or something to fight to not lose, but its people working at accomplishing something that succeed - in a relationship, or in anything else that relates to your loved ones.

Sometimes it can seem that all love is adding to the mix is making it hurt so much more if you don't succeed.

It does make it so much better when things do work, and having someone you love to hold at the end of the day can make a lot of crap not matter half as much as it did during the day.

ClockWorkOrange

They dont make the tunes like they used to..

k974

misunderstanding between 2 fools!!!

bragan

Thanks for all the advice everyone. To be honest, I don't know exactly what I'm afraid off. I have an anxious feeling in the bottom of my stomach, and that's all i know!
I know I shouldn't, because I know he loves me. And I do love him. All the things that people said are true, and I know that we have them. I know we have a wonderful relationship. He is more than I could ever have hoped to find in a partner. He makes me laugh, he makes me happy, I can trust him 100%, I can tell him anything, He understands me completely, and loves me just the way i am.
I know all of this, so, why am i still feeling anxious/nervous?
(Sorry, I know none of you can answer this, I just needed to vent)

CathyMoran

bragan wrote:

Thanks for all the advice everyone. To be honest, I don't know exactly what I'm afraid off. I have an anxious feeling in the bottom of my stomach, and that's all i know!
I know I shouldn't, because I know he loves me. And I do love him. All the things that people said are true, and I know that we have them. I know we have a wonderful relationship. He is more than I could ever have hoped to find in a partner. He makes me laugh, he makes me happy, I can trust him 100%, I can tell him anything, He understands me completely, and loves me just the way i am.
I know all of this, so, why am i still feeling anxious/nervous?
(Sorry, I know none of you can answer this, I just needed to vent)

I think that you are nervous because you have found the one. It took me 9 years and a wake up call to realise that.

Jules

you probably feel nervous cuz your embarking on something you have never had before. Being in love is a very dangerous thing, you basically have another person who could make you feel like the most wonderful thing in the world, but on the other hand you are completely vunerable to them, they could literally distroy you with a look. of course you feel nervous!

upthere

I dont believe in love. I think its just chemicals about someone you like that creates bond that gets deeper and deeper! Love to me is how i feel for my family, I would die for them literally!
Love for girls for me only ever happened when I was 16 and ended in despair and I've never felt it since.