How do you know if you love a person, or if you are IN love with that person?

IMO, a successful/happy/fullfilling relationship between intimate partners requires three key ingredients. You must like your partner; you must love your partner; and you must be "in love" with your partner.

It's very difficult to maintain a long-term relationship with someone you don't like. People enjoy spending time with people they like and tend to distance themselves from people they don't like. If your boyfriend morphs into a person you don't like (e.g., calls you bad names, disrespects you, etc.), that's a sign for you to move on. You definitely do not want to marry and spend your life with someone whom you honestly dislike and causes you pain.

Love means that you care deeply for a person whether he/she is likeable or not. Love is very much an "unconditional" emotion. I love my family members and my good friends. I will hug the people I love, comfort them, and support them to the best of my ability. Just because you love someone, however, that doesn't necessarily mean that you want to spend a lot of time with him/her--but YOU STILL LOVE that person.

Being "in love" with a person is an intimate romantic feeling for another that will either grow or wane with time. It's what you feel when you hold your partner's hand, caress his face, kiss on the lips, etc. When you're "in love" with another person, it's the kind of love that makes your heart ache when you're apart and makes your heart fill with joy when you're together. It's the kind of love that must be nurtured by both partners or it will slip away.

I hope you figure this out before your June wedding.

Good luck to you.

i see that you like to respond to all my postings. question though did i actually say June wedding or are you inferring because i said in a few months.

k haha i got it , it was before i realized you saw my other postings. i only discovered this site yesterday , and i had forgotten i wrote that. Just got a little spooked.

s'ok

you were just unlucky (?) that the way I sorted my view of the site brought several of your topics up together - so I thought I'd start at your first post and read along

didn't mean to spook you

just reading too much here - and can't get out to walk the dogs as it's bucketing rain

haha yea i see now you can see all of someones topics, a pretty cool site indeed.

and OH MAN it is pouring, i have a 25 minute drive home after work and i left my glasses at home, AND my wipers are less than adequate:(

Eek, be careful, and, in the meantime, welcome to a2k.

thank you! minus the fact that my first post was done so during a particularly bad day and now i feel like ill never be able to post about my relationship because i have tainted my name and everyone will refer back to that one...its a very cool site! i discovered it yesterday iv been on it, on and off, all day @ work.

It can be addictive here.

Not everyone will take/have the time/interest to go back to your older posts.

Sometimes you'll find everyone having all kinds of serious input to offer, other days everyone is goofy, some days you can't tell if they're being serious or goofy.

It's an interesting community, and you can often get good feedback. You've already discovered that sometimes it can be a bit TOO thought-provoking.

Have fun, and keep on dropping by. It'll be a good wedding planning diversion - and we love to offer our opinions

I'll add another comment re love and in love. I'm quite the older poster and I still don't know. I pretty much disagree with Debra Law and her source about the necessity for being in love, which I think of as the beginning infatuation stage, that it by nature doesn't last, unless puffed up by what I think of as the impossibility scenario, which is when people have affairs, with the excitement of the clandestineness of that.

But long term love is - to me - likely, but not always, started like that, but grows from behavior, going through things together and growing closer, at the same time growing individually.. and all that can have big trying periods, when infatuation is the last thing on your minds while you keep trying to communicate. And caring needs response, a two way street, or it fizzles out, or should fizzle out. When love does last through the years, there still can be a sense of 'in love', er, on the good days, but not that euphoric beginning flume, more of a deeper connection.

Still, I'd look at boring and annoying and not just toss it off. Life is long, marriage can be longer.

Wonderful post, Osso! I agree with you 100%.
(Especially the last sentence.)

An older couple I always admired had this to say on their 65th wedding anniversary: "Love is what you've been through with someone."

Yes, I agree with that couple.

I think love is a conscious choice or decision, you certainly know it, you choose to love someone. Although you often choose to love the person you are infatuated with or obsessed with, love is different from infatuation or obsession.

How ?

It is a function of the conscious mind.
U shoud recognize it the same as being hungry u recognize.

If u do not recognize that, then u r not in that condition.





David

One of the problems with English is those who fail in the standardization of names.
Love is all the things two people do together that maintains and promotes their life.
Desire, is something that comes and goes with need. Desire often destroyes love because man is not yet rational. .

Loving a sport is one thing, loving your Brother is another. Being in love with someone usually involves strong feelings of compassion, respect, praise, sexual attraction and life long commitment with the one you love.