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Author Topic: How do you know you're in love?  (Read 14492 times)  Share 

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Joseph41

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How do you know you're in love?
« on: July 25, 2017, 10:18:44 pm »
+9
And have you ever been in love? Are you in love now?

Discuss.

(Intentionally sparse OP; my thoughts to follow.)

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Sconey

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Re: How do you know you're in love?
« Reply #1 on: July 25, 2017, 10:22:44 pm »
+6
This is the perfect video for this thread, just shows how powerful love can be.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ


brenden

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Re: How do you know you're in love?
« Reply #2 on: July 25, 2017, 10:25:37 pm »
+11
And have you ever been in love? Are you in love now?

Discuss.

(Intentionally sparse OP; my thoughts to follow.)

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HopefulLawStudent

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Re: How do you know you're in love?
« Reply #3 on: July 26, 2017, 02:13:28 pm »
+5
How do you know you're in love?

You just know.

Joseph41

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Re: How do you know you're in love?
« Reply #4 on: July 26, 2017, 02:23:50 pm »
+4

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Calebark

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Re: How do you know you're in love?
« Reply #5 on: July 26, 2017, 02:43:04 pm »
+8
Damn you, AN, and your difficult questions.

I don't think there's some magical box that gets ticked when you're in love, so I can't provide an actual answer to your question, unfortunately. I think you can definitely see some signs though:

>You're extremely comfortable with that person both with interaction but more importantly, in lack of action (i.e. can sit together in silence and not feel uncomfortable)
>You care about them for who they are not for what they can do for you
>You don't just wish to be with them when you're lonely, but when you're already happy

Things like these. I don't know, I'm not actually eloquent enough to describe it more than a feeling that just is.

To answer the second question: I'm not in love right now, but I believe I was with my girlfriend/best friend for a bit under four years (not here to go into that though haha). The thing is, however, that while I think I was in love back then, there's always that 0.1% doubt that perhaps I wasn't, and it's a different feeling altogether. Perhaps another question is whether you can ever be absolutely certain you're in love (although this is more of a 'in retrospect' thing rather than 'in the moment').

For those who aren't sure though, I think it's very important to think about the distinction between love and obsession (which aren't necessarily mutually exclusive) :)

Interested to read the other answers though -- especially ones that might answer the question more than I did :P

Edit: Try to imagine the feeling a dog gets when they're let out on a big open field
« Last Edit: July 26, 2017, 03:15:21 pm by Calebark »
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Re: How do you know you're in love?
« Reply #6 on: July 26, 2017, 03:33:58 pm »
+7
Understanding the concept of love is hard, and explaining it is even more difficult.
I was in love for a time, actually broke up with my boyfriend about a month ago. Knowing whether you're in love or not is hard. Often you think you are, but there's an element of doubt. It's also not either "I'm in love" or "I'm not in love", it's a continuous variable (#nerd). The word "love" is really just describing how much you care about a person. When you're "in love", you're comfortable around them, want to spend time with them, accept their faults, want the best for them irrespective of yourself, and you can see yourself with them in the future. As you spend more time with someone, some of these change, sometimes for better sometimes for worse.
I think love is often thought of as when you dedicate yourself to someone else, do anything and everything for them. What love should be though (in my opinion) is being willing to share your life with someone you care about, as each of you make the other's life better.
I also don't believe a "soulmate" exists, only people who do and don't suit you. I believe even if you lose the person you thought was "the one", there's always the opportunity to meet someone just as good or better in the future.

tl;dr love is complicated and means different things to different people
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K888

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Re: How do you know you're in love?
« Reply #7 on: July 26, 2017, 04:05:42 pm »
+6
>You're extremely comfortable with that person both with interaction but more importantly, in lack of action (i.e. can sit together in silence and not feel uncomfortable)
>You care about them for who they are not for what they can do for you
>You don't just wish to be with them when you're lonely, but when you're already happy
When you're "in love", you're comfortable around them, want to spend time with them, accept their faults, want the best for them irrespective of yourself, and you can see yourself with them in the future. As you spend more time with someone, some of these change, sometimes for better sometimes for worse.
I think love is often thought of as when you dedicate yourself to someone else, do anything and everything for them. What love should be though (in my opinion) is being willing to share your life with someone you care about, as each of you make the other's life better.
Really like these points :)

Plus, I think, when you're in love, your significant other is usually one of the first people you want to tell when you have a good day, or a bad day. You want to share the good times, and the bad times together (granted, I'd say this is also applicable to friendships). I'd like to think that you feel like a part of the person you're in love with. You argue and fight, and go through difficult times, but you really want to make the effort to make up, even if it's a big problem.

Definitely haven't been in love before. Have had a relationship, but I'd be kidding myself if I said I was in love. Like, in hindsight, was a pretty crap relationship, I just didn't see it at the time. But that's a story for another day haha

Soppy moment, but being in love seems nice :) Seeing genuine love is a magnificent thing.

Calebark

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Re: How do you know you're in love?
« Reply #8 on: July 26, 2017, 04:12:52 pm »
+8
[1]Plus, I think, when you're in love, your significant other is usually one of the first people you want to tell when you have a good day, or a bad day. You want to share the good times, and the bad times together [2](granted, I'd say this is also applicable to friendships). I'd like to think that you feel like a part of the person you're in love with. You argue and fight, and go through difficult times, but you really want to make the effort to make up, even if it's a big problem.

[1] I suppose a part of being in love is that the other person can almost act like a diary -- it's just cathartic to lay your thoughts out to them, whether it's small or big, good or bad.

[2] I'd like to say that successful relationships are just extended friendships anyway. To elaborate, you don't have to make everyone artifically lovey-dovey. Not saying that cliched romance is a bad thing; if that's your kind of thing, power to you. Just that a good relationship is based on comfort, where you don't have to act like some ideal version of a relationship in order to feel like you're together. I don't know if that makes sense, haha.
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elysepopplewell

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Re: How do you know you're in love?
« Reply #9 on: July 26, 2017, 04:53:12 pm »
+6
I've been thinking about this recently. I've not waited to be official with someone before telling them I love them. I don't really get deeper in love than that, sooo none of this "I finally said the L word" because there's a 11/10 chance I fucked up in the early days and said it early because it doesn't mean much to me at all. Literally it means hardly anything to me, I'm not filled with fuzzies or anything. Other things will make me fuzzy but not "I love you". Why am I like this?? Tell me you want to build a writers retreat in the South of France in a cottage made of cheese with endless avocados on tap and it'll be just us two forever and you'll buy me lilies occasionally and then I'll get fuzzy. So I think of all three times I've romantically told a man/guy I love him, and I'm not convinced any of them were all-consuming in love and wonderful. I'll tell you I was in love with my ex boyfriend but I don't talk about it with twinkly eyes, even the best bits. So it makes me wonder if I was in love at all lol, even though I definitely would have told you at the time I was. What exactly qualifies as being in love?

PS. Bought the book "Essays in love" by Alain De Botton today to hopefully sort out my issues lol. The book promises to analyse emotions "we've all felt before but perhaps never understood so well." So I might report back later and say I was in love all this time or maybe I'll come back to say I'm waiting to be in love for the first time

*I recognise I didn't at all answer the question.
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vox nihili

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Re: How do you know you're in love?
« Reply #10 on: July 26, 2017, 05:22:59 pm »
+8

I've been thinking about this recently. I've not waited to be official with someone before telling them I love them. I don't really get deeper in love than that, sooo none of this "I finally said the L word" because there's a 11/10 chance I fucked up in the early days and said it early because it doesn't mean much to me at all. Literally it means hardly anything to me, I'm not filled with fuzzies or anything. Other things will make me fuzzy but not "I love you". Why am I like this?? Tell me you want to build a writers retreat in the South of France in a cottage made of cheese with endless avocados on tap and it'll be just us two forever and you'll buy me lilies occasionally and then I'll get fuzzy. So I think of all three times I've romantically told a man/guy I love him, and I'm not convinced any of them were all-consuming in love and wonderful. I'll tell you I was in love with my ex boyfriend but I don't talk about it with twinkly eyes, even the best bits. So it makes me wonder if I was in love at all lol, even though I definitely would have told you at the time I was. What exactly qualifies as being in love?

PS. Bought the book "Essays in love" by Alain De Botton today to hopefully sort out my issues lol. The book promises to analyse emotions "we've all felt before but perhaps never understood so well." So I might report back later and say I was in love all this time or maybe I'll come back to say I'm waiting to be in love for the first time

*I recognise I didn't at all answer the question.

I really like some of the points you've made here, Elyse.

In many respects I think we're conditioned to have unrealistic expectations of what it means to be with someone. We're conditioned to look for a soulmate who will always make us happy, for whom we'll have an undying emotional and sexual attraction.

Life is just not this simple. Indeed, I think the romantic's view of love is one that steals away the complexity of human beings. Life can't be all sunshine and rainbows, and if we wait for things to be that way, then we'll never be satisfied and probably never be happy.




A lot of your responses are really cute though so sorry for putting a downer on that
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elysepopplewell

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Re: How do you know you're in love?
« Reply #11 on: July 26, 2017, 05:51:13 pm »
+9
I really like some of the points you've made here, Elyse.

In many respects I think we're conditioned to have unrealistic expectations of what it means to be with someone. We're conditioned to look for a soulmate who will always make us happy, for whom we'll have an undying emotional and sexual attraction.

Life is just not this simple. Indeed, I think the romantic's view of love is one that steals away the complexity of human beings. Life can't be all sunshine and rainbows, and if we wait for things to be that way, then we'll never be satisfied and probably never be happy.

A lot of your responses are really cute though so sorry for putting a downer on that

Surprised you even managed to find a point in my jumble! I do agree with everything you've said, it doesn't conflict at all with the way I see this whole thing.

I think that the block to my understanding of ~~luuuurve~~ at the moment is that I don't think I'm at a moment in my life where I actually have the capacity to give someone "complete love" and by this I mean, the love that's more than "I love you as a friend/for the person you are." I also think that because I'm going through some ~identity searching~ I can't possibly imagine (trust me I've tried) anyone being in love with me. I think any time someone has claimed to, or will claim to, they are actually mistaken because I don't even know myself if I'm being my authentic self, so I can't be convinced they are in love with me...if that makes sense.

This isn't a downer though (I mean I cried about it once in like March but we have recovered from that brevity of despair), because I'm actually 100% okay with it. I'm thoroughly enjoying this time for my self, and I see my friends who are in love and I think "that's so nice" but I never feel a pang of jealousy or upset, I just kind of think "that's not something I'm capable of right now even if I wanted to be."

Converse to one of the ideas raised earlier, I think it is actually "what can you do for me?" as much, maybe even more so at some stages, "what can I do for you?" Because I think I need to accept someone's love before committing to it myself (odd defence mechanism seeing as I really haven't been brutally hurt in love or anything). So I think that part of the qualities that I'd look for in someone for me to be in love with them is about their interactions with me and others, because I know I'm very committed in giving time, thoughts, love, laughter, and so on in a relationship, and I expect the same back (ok, this mechanism definitely comes from learning from past experiences).

« Last Edit: July 26, 2017, 05:54:11 pm by elysepopplewell »
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K888

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Re: How do you know you're in love?
« Reply #12 on: July 26, 2017, 05:58:03 pm »
+5
Quote from: elysepopplewell
I think that the block to my understanding of ~~luuuurve~~ at the moment is that I don't think I'm at a moment in my life where I actually have the capacity to give someone "complete love" and by this I mean, the love that's more than "I love you as a friend/for the person you are." I also think that because I'm going through some ~identity searching~ I can't possibly imagine (trust me I've tried) anyone being in love with me. I think any time someone has claimed to, or will claim to, they are actually mistaken because I don't even know myself if I'm being my authentic self, so I can't be convinced they are in love with me...if that makes sense.
Absolutely love everything you said in your post Elyse, but this particular paragraph resonates with me a lot 👌

Calebark

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Re: How do you know you're in love?
« Reply #13 on: July 26, 2017, 06:10:32 pm »
+6
^^^

I'm going to go out on a limb and say a lot of the reasons for many people's confusion about love goes towards what we've been conditioned to think about it.

It's all-consuming, it's fiery, love is permanentor it's never having to say you're sorry

I don't think love is an exception to the rule that relationships need work. Just because you're in love with someone doesn't mean the relationship is going to be perfect, and just because you're in love with someone doesn't mean you're already going to be in love with them -- this doesn't negate the past feelings in any way. I've just found that people expect love to be permanent and always passionate, when in reality, it's something that can fade and it's something that still needs input.

This isn't just romantic love too. Like hell, how many parents once loved by their children have become forgotten because the parents neglected their kids? I don't believe love locks the relationship in. It just makes it better while it exists (well, ideally).

I'm not going anywhere with this. I guess this is a topic that springs a lot of minirants, oops.

/endverymumbledrant

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Re: How do you know you're in love?
« Reply #14 on: July 26, 2017, 11:06:35 pm »
+5
Absolutely love everything you said in your post Elyse, but this particular paragraph resonates with me a lot 👌

Agreed with K888 so much. This paragraph really resonated with me and at times, like yourself, I wonder how anyone could love me if I don't first love myself...

I think that the block to my understanding of ~~luuuurve~~ at the moment is that I don't think I'm at a moment in my life where I actually have the capacity to give someone "complete love" and by this I mean, the love that's more than "I love you as a friend/for the person you are." I also think that because I'm going through some ~identity searching~ I can't possibly imagine (trust me I've tried) anyone being in love with me. I think any time someone has claimed to, or will claim to, they are actually mistaken because I don't even know myself if I'm being my authentic self, so I can't be convinced they are in love with me...if that makes sense.

/quote]