What do you feel about these love related concepts?

5 comments

1. Sounds like You’re both overthinking. You don’t need a label or to overconceptualise your feelings and say you feel A, B or C, your actions and interactions will speak for you.

   Just keep doing what you’re doing until you don’t want to do it any longer, or you want to do more.
   The only “right way” for you to be together is the one you’re both negotiating as you go.
   Whatever you end up as, friends, lovers, hookups or soulmates, if you’re both happy in the now, then it’s time valuably spent.

2. Liking someone = they catch your eye, or they are really nice to you, or you hear them talking and laughing with someone else, and wish they would talk and laugh with you that way.

   Crush = you fantasize about what it would be like to be dating that person you like, whether or not it could ever actually happen, and whether or not they (and you) are available to date atm. **Important note**: everyone with a normal-to-high libido develops crushes sometimes, and some of them are inappropriate – on someone already in a relationship, say, or a boss, or someone with an incompatible gender or sexual identitiy, or someone who is too old or too young for you. But you DON’T have to act on a crush. You can acknowledge that it exists but it’s not the right thing to do, so you do your best to move on. OTOH if the object of your crush IS appropriate and seems to like you back, then you move on to ask them to hang out – and you’re over the moon if they say YES!

   Sexual attraction = you feel horny around them, whether or not you actually like them as a person. But as you gain dating experience, you’ll discover that the combo of liking someone AND being sexually attracted to them makes you happier than either of those two things all by itself.

   Falling in love/being in love = another word for infatuation, the shiny-new-love excitement that you feel when you’ve just started dating someone you really like and/or crushed on before they agreed to date you. Your initial attraction to your partner gets magnified as intense pleasure hormones start to surge through your body, and it feels GREAT! The downside is that you may be blind (or simply choose not to see) any major flaws or incompatibilities in your new romance, because all you want to do is ride that beautiful wave all the way into the beach. And when the “honeymoon phase” aka oxytocin wears off, you may be disillusioned to discover that you don’t actually have much in common…your partner is not so perfect for you after all. And they may be feeling the same way about you. If you’ve experienced this, it’s best to just admit you made a mistake, break up, and move on. Failed relationships are not actually failures if they provide valuable insight into your personal dealmakers and dealbreakers in a relationship, and how you can be a better partner the next time around.

   Loving someone = caring about someone enough to make them the top priority in your life, with a willingness to put their happiness on a par with yours. It’s often more difficult than you might think, especially after the honeymoon phase. This does NOT mean sacrificing your own authentic life to keep them happy, but rather forming a give-and-take relationship and looking for compromises rather than digging in your heels when you disagree. One of the hallmarks of a loving relationship is gradually developing a deep intimacy – both the physical kind and the emotional kind. You don’t have true love, if it’s too difficult to talk to your partner about the things that matter to you deep in your heart, and vice versa. I’m not talking about sharing your entire life history – you are entitled to privacy about things that happened long before you met them, although you can also share those things if you want. But you owe it to them to be honest and open about what’s going on in your life NOW, even the things that make you feel embarrassed, ashamed, afraid, etc. Someone who truly loves you will accept your truths and help you work through them, and will share their truths with you.

   Sadly, loving someone is not enough to sustain a long-term relationship. You also need to have shared interests and goals, compatible lifestyles and world views, and good communications skills, including the ability to fight fairly whenever you strongly disagree. And you have to still genuinely LIKE them as individuals, not just love them romantically. These things are all part of the magic “glue” that will keep the conversations going and your sex life strong, long after your lives settle out into a familiar routine.

3. I’ll give this a try….

   liking someone, when you get to know someone and like their looks and/or personality. You find yourself thinking fondly of this person.

   having a crush, same as liking someone

   just sexual attraction, you see someone whether you know them or not and you’re like “damn, that person is sexy, I’d eff that.” People experience this differently. Some people don’t feel sexual attraction at all even if they have a crush or are in love (asexual).

   falling and being in (early) love, this is the honeymoon/obsession phase. You can’t get enough of the person. You think of them all the time and want to be with them all the time. I specified “early” love because it’s different IMO from true, deep love in a healthy relationship. This early love is intoxicating but you should be aware that it’s not the same as long-term relationship love.

   and love someone. I’m talking the love that persists after the honeymoon phase. There are specific things you love about them, for example, shared interests or experiences, you make each other laugh, whatever. You also accept and love them for their faults, for example they’re not good at giving compliments or they can be a little childish. What’s different about this stage of love is that it’s a *choice*. You choose to put effort into your relationship every single day because you love the person and you want them to be happy (and hopefully they are doing the same thing).

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   I hope this helps?

4. Quick question, how do you know your feelings? What intrinsic property of one feeling makes it different from another? Can you explain what the color Green looks like, except from saying “It’s the color of grass”? Can you explain what caring for someone or having a crush feels like? All this stuff is so incredibly subjective that the labels we put on them we usually take from other people. Like, in highschool, you get this weird feeling of attraction to someone, and you talk about that with your friends or family, and they say “You got a crush on them!”, and you’re like “Oh, so that’s what I’m feeling.” When you might as well be feeling something else entirely. Or not. Who knows? Who can tell?

   Some believe being in love means being anxious all the time, others think it’s being calm and emotionally steady all the time. There’s no 1 answer. People usually say “I love you” when they think “I experience these familiar feelings towards this person that I have compartmentalized and labeled as love, or whatever I understand and expect love to be like”.

   But also sometimes when people say they are confused means they don’t feel anything at all and just play by ear and follow the impulse. I’ve done this so many times and due to inexperience been in relationships when I didn’t feel much of anything towards the person, except that I liked them and we were dating, so that’s why all this ‘couply’ things should be happening.

   I’d say, just don’t bother thinking about it, let the primal glands take over. If you like someone, you like someone. If you keep hanging out and attraction grows, it’ll grow into something more. Let the nature do it’s thing.

5. Have you tried being in a relationship with someone who doesn’t make you work this hard to be in a relationship? This is a lot of effort for a Situationship. Of course he likes the girlfriend experience. Most people would. You simply deserve the boyfriend experience in return.