Agreed with Mopiece and agas, with no love at first sight. You might find it attractive and become attached/curious about the person, but I'd say it isn't love.

And I ever crossed something says that it'd called love if it lasted at least to 6 months[or was it 3?] since you found it, otherwise it'd be crush or akin to that. Dunno if it's true or not.

I don't know if there is a set minimum amount of time that needs to pass before it can be love, but I do agree that it is not instant nor immediate.

Don't think there's a time limit, but certainly not on first date.

Well. I don't even believe I could fall in love with anything else than a friend anyways.

What's the point in dates?

If my understanding of them is correct, dates are suppose to be "get to know the other person" things so you know whether you like them more than physically or is it just a lust.

Hmm. Still sounds pretty fake, tbh.

@aveyond06: in a sense, they are.

On dates, generally both parties are on their best/not real behaviors so you're not getting a sense of how the person really is. You are seeing their 'best behavior' facade, not their true personalities.

It's probably why many relationships crumble after a short period of time because it's only a matter of time before people resorting to baseline personality which might not be compatible with the other person.

@KTC: Quote:

Eh, assuming you were talking about my post.... I think you're going off on an entirely different subject there.

I didn't say "the mothers abort babies because they don't feel for it". I said "mothers who don't love the babies want them aborted".

Of course being related flesh and blood does not immediately equal to loving relationship, but I was replying to the "mothers instantly loving their babies" thing mariedan said. Unloving birth parents and loving adoptive parents are entirely different subjects.
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Long-winded reply aside, I do want to know how to recognize love myself. Lust and infatuation come and go, and I do want to know what "real love" is like, since it sounds... well, super-awesome and all that.

Quote:

This, I suppose, is one of the main reason why marriage fall apart after a while. Both parties are no longer able to hide their 'true colors'. Their respective partners, who doesn't know about this, is not pleased.

@d_a: I think love is overrated. Period.

@agas: i wasn't pointing at your post specifically but there was a general sense among the posts before mine that biological mother = loving parent generally.

Which obviously isn't true and I felt that adoptive parents were getting the short end of the stick in this regard.

As for females who abort: alright, i misinterpreted your post.

as for romantic love: I too would be interested to see what the whole hubbub about it is since my idea of love is very abstract. I don't understand it and don't know how it feels. I feel appreciation to friends, a forced....servitude? feelings to the parents [meaning they only support me if I follow their decisions. As soon as I step a toe out of line, they'll disown me.], and strong sisterly affection to my sister. Does any of that count as love?

But I wouldn't search for love. I'm content with my current set of feelings so I see no reason to tip the status quo for now.

@D_A: I, personally, think it's pretty hard to describe what 'love' 'feels' like. You could be in love with two different people, but get a very different feeling from/with both of them. Also, the feelings you have for someone now could change over time, but it could still be love.

My parents are very much in love, after 30 plus years of marriage and being together, but they definitely don't feel the same feelings they did when they were first going out- they almost can't, because so many things have changed them and their relationship since then. They're still the same basic person at their core, but their circumstances have changed, thus changing their relationship. Dating, marriage/comittment, kids, illness and death of a mother/father (not to mention other stuff like finances and the like)- these things changed my parents and helped their love evolve. Everything that happens to you changes how you view things or how you feel things, including love.

So I think, in the end, no one person can tell you what love feels like, or how you 'know' you're in love, you'll just have to figure it out for yourself.

Also, and this might get me vilified, and I'd like to state first that I get it, everyone needs to have a contingency plan in case things fall apart, but... I hate pre-nups. It just seems like saying 'well, I want to marry you, and I hope we'll stay together forever, but....'

...adding again, boy this is getting insanely long:
I was watching tv the other day, and this woman mentioned that she hates weddings, and won't get married (apparently her friend is getting married) because and I quote "50% of marriages are doomed to fail anyway." If you go into a marriage or any kind of committed relationship with the attitude that you're 50% likely to fail in said relationship, then, in my not-so-humble opinion, you're going to do exactly that: fail. Whether you break up, or you stay, but are miserable, you (again, in my opinion,) failed. Not just the relationship, but you failed your partner, and, ultimately, you failed yourself.
I'm sorry if I offended anyone, AND that this post is so very long, but I guess I'm just very protective of love, since it is, in my opinion, something that is so very precious, powerful and awe-inspiring.

@copper_blue: so are you saying you should be blindly optimistic about relationships and particularly your own?

cuz that seems incredibly difficult and a bit naive given the statistics about divorce rates and fickle nature of humans.

Quote:
This I'd tone it down a little and say ROMANTIC love is overrated, though, not love in general. Familial love CAN be very strong.
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I reiterate my previous question: I want to know if there's a way to differentiate infatuation, crush, lust, and love. They ARE similar feelings, and many media confuse them.

@KTC: Optimistic, yes. Blind, NO. I would never enter into any relationship without first figuring out how it will affect me and my life, both positively and negatively. But a lot of people seem to forget to do that before they enter into a relationship, and by the time they figure out that their partner isn't the person they thought they were, everyone's miserable.

Every successful relationship that I've ever encountered has been the result of hard work and dedication, and it seems like most of the relationships that didn't work didn't because at least one of those involved just gave up.

If someone wants to put stock in the 50% divorce rate, they should put stock in the 50% success rate instead of the failure rate. It doesn't help to focus on negativity.

In the end, I think it comes down to how marriage is thought of by people: If you have it in your head that marriage/committment isn't something worth fighting for, then it won't be.

Hopefully that makes sense!

ah makes more sense.

I disagree since I don't see any reason for getting your hopes up in a relationship when there's such a high failure rate. If it goes somewhere, it goes somewhere. If it failed, it failed and the cycle continues.

Of course, I speak as someone who's never actually been in a romantic relationship but whose been a shoulder to cry on strangely enough (why? I have no idea. I'm somehow the person people spill their woes to). And the broken pieces after relationship failures is not a pretty sight *shrugs*

@KTC: Ah, yeah, constantly being the proverbial shoulder to cry on would definitely paint a pretty grim picture of relationships, I imagine. I've had to listen to some of my friends cry over break-ups too, and yeah, it sucks a lot. Especially if something really bad happened, like abuse and/or cheating.
Sidenote: oddly enough, I've also never been in an actual romantic relationship.

@d_a: Huh. Doesn't it depends on the situation. Relating to the previous posts about parents who aborts their children and, in several other cases, abandonds them shows that filial love might not be so strong either. I think I read somewhere that the love what defines 'true love' is actually Agape/Agapic love. But then again, the definition of love differs for everyone.

Regarding your question, I think it would summarize like this:

Infatuation- A strong feeling of affection to someone, usually from admiration
Crush- A temporary romantic interest
Lust- A strong sexual desire for someone
Love- Depends on what type of love, but overall is a permanent feeling of affection for someone

But as I said earlier, the description of feelings and emotions may be quite vague, so others might have different opinions. I'm not a love expert anyway (knowing that I have practically 0 experience in that field, and is not interested to have any).

@adept rogue: I think familial love can be strong under the right circumstances.

Under abuse/abandoned conditions, love generally will not thrive. However in a loving and well provided environment, strong familial love + loyalty can occur.

I always thought infatuation = crush, and lust is a requirement to crush.

D_A wrote:
I said "mothers who don't love the babies want them aborted".

I'm sorry, what? Let me tell you a story of my acquaintance.


So I knew this woman

She 's a Muslim middle class housewife with four young daughters, all of whom were under the age of 11, and a husband who worked hard to provide for his family. She found out she was pregnant and was absolutely ecstatic about it, especially when she found out she was having twin boys (she loved her daughters, but she really wanted a boy after having so many girls). She bought the twins new identical crib sets, remodeled the guest room for the incoming infants, and even named them--Abd Elrahman and Abd Elraheem, much to the horror of her daughters, who thought the names were lame.

Then she gets a call from her doctor.

Who tells her--after analyzing her ultrasound results--that her precious twin boys were conjoined at the heart. Because they shared one heart, if she were going to go through with the birth, she would have to immediately choose which one would live and which one would die after they were born, because the heart wasn't strong enough to support two living people.

In addition, the child who lived would have to spend much of his life in the hospital until he can get a heart transplant, because the heart was too large to support one person indefinitely. Further, they would have to find a heart before the kid turned 3, because he won't last longer than that with his original heart.

Now, if they decided to go through with that plan, there arises a host of problems. One, the family was solidly middle-class, but they'd have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on constant health care for this child, which would bankrupt them. Further this child--in all likelihood--would die anyway because the chances for a child to get a heart that matches his blood type is miniscule.

Secondly, the mother herself had suffered from some recent health problems, and if this had been a normal birth, she'd have absolutely no problem whatsoever. But due to the nature of her pregnancy, and the difficulty of going through labor and needing a caesection, there was a probability she may die in the delivery room, leaving behind a husband and five children.

Her doctor recommends an abortion.

So she and her husband get 2nd and 3rd opinions from other doctors, who confirmed the prognosis of her original doctor.

She calls her local Imam for advice, asking what to do. She tells him the entire story, and asked him if getting the abortion would be a mortal sin. The Imam tells her that modern Islamic scholars have recently ruled that abortions were ok, ONLY IF the mother's life was endangered and/or there was no hope for the child to survive due to a fatal medical condition.

So she cries, devastated at the horrific decision before her and after much hand-wrangling she goes through with the abortion.

She has two mini-coffins made for her children and has them buried in a Muslim graveyard. And every year for the past 15 years, she goes to visit her sons on the anniversary of their potential birthdates (because when a woman gets pregnant, a doctor estimates which day he/she will most likely be born), and she leaves flowers for them and offers a prayer to God to care for her babies in heaven.


I'm sorry, this is a close acquaintance. Do you think that she didn't love her kids, that is why she aborted them?

@theone

d_a wasn't saying all mothers who abort their babies hated their kids. However, there are mothers who abort babies because they don't love their babies.

@theone: You, my friend, are misunderstanding my words. I said mothers who DO NOT love the babies would definitely want the babies to be aborted. Original poster brought up mothers instantly loving their unborn babies, so I replied that mother-child love is different than romantic love. I made an aside about how some mothers do not want the unborn baby and decides to go abort it because it's a fact that not all mothers instantly love their unborn baby, but that's just an aside. Nothing at all to do with anything.

Do you think I'm THAT dense to not know that unavoidable abortions happen? That story is sad alright, and I'm aware that many a time that kind of things happen. I'm sorry about your friend, but it has nothing to do with what I said.