What separates it from being friendship + sexual attraction? I have friends who I'll fool around with but wouldn't say I'm romantically involved with, but recently I realized I don't even know what that is beyond those two things lmao
Asking here instead of Reddit because I don't want R*dditors to respond
I'm poly and I've been in love since my husband. There's definitely not a The One. There are many Ones.
I legit cannot imagine myself being open and honest with another person
I'm trying to give an answer but damn what a question.
Romantic love comes with a deep sense of longing in my experience - like so strong it manifests physically. If the person you L-word tells you they want to hang out you might physically feel a rush of pleasure - or if they say they don't you may feel sick to your stomach. If you smell something that reminds you of the person and your brain launches off on a vivid 20 minute long fantasy session - you might be in L-word. These feelings are different than sexual attraction, but often occur at the same time.
I dunno if that's what you were looking for or not but yeah.
I've felt like that about people I distinctly don't want a romantic relationship with though
To me that sounds like young love or lust. I consider it more as trust and dependability. Someone i know I can count on and has very similar beliefs that I can count on to make decisions that I would agree with, and would back me up at all times.
Love is where you literally can't stop thinking about the other person. You feel this intense sense of loyalty to them and you'd do whatever you can for them. I'm not a possessive person, never have been, so I didn't feel like I wanted to own my husband or whatever at any point. But I did feel like I wanted to impress him and keep him with me as much as possible. I lavished him with gifts and just tried to learn everything I could about him and worshipped every little thing he did.
I'm out of that phase now, and we live together and we're happy. But holy shit it's NOTHING like friendship at all. Not even this post puppy love phase either.
The Ancient Greeks didn't even know to wash their own dicks but the fact that they had like 8 words for love means they at least knew SOME shit. I think it's worth noting that you may feel a way about someone, but you'll definitely know when you're IN LOVE.
I think "friendship + sexual attraction" is correct. I don't think "sexual attraction" is very complex it's pretty much binary: you're attracted to someone physically or you're not.
It's the friendship part that is going to change for you I think. At least that's been my experience. I've had very close friends but no one on the level of my wife. We've been married about 6 years and the trust and comfort that we've built is immeasurable. By growing together with someone you don't lose your independence but something certainly grows within you. That's what I know to be romantic love.
Love is a poorly defined concept which can mean a million different things depending on who you ask, and therefore can't be said to have any real coherent meaning.
I'm great fun at parties.
A condition of friendship is the abdication of power over another, indeed the abdication even of the wish for power over one another. And one is drawn to it not by need but by choice. If love is about the bliss of primal unfreedom, friendship is about the complicated enjoyment of human autonomy. As soon as a friend attempts to control a friend, the friendship ceases to exist. But until a lover seeks to possess his beloved, the love has hardly begun. Where love is all about the juggling of the power to hurt, friendship is about creating a space where power ceases to exist. There is a cost to this, of course. Friends will never provide what lovers provide: the ultimate resort, that safe space of repose, that relaxation of the bedsheets. But they provide something more reliable, and certainly less painful. They provide an acknowledgement not of the child within but of the adult without; they allow for an honesty which doesn’t threaten pain and criticism which doesn’t imply rejection. They promise not the bliss of the womb but the bracing adventure of the world. They do not solve loneliness, yet they mitigate it.
https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/04/23/love-undetectable-andrew-sullivan-friendship/
until a lover seeks to possess his beloved, the love has hardly begun
idk about this one chief
It makes better sense in context – but for much of love, there is a sense of possession. It turns ugly sometimes, obviously. Intimacy is yours, their weakest moments are meant to be yours, much of their time is yours. Crushes on people are the desire to have this.
I mean I understand that you can have a bit of posessiveness without it being overbearing or problematic but that feels like a really weird thing to center on as the essence of love
You've probably felt love before, otherwise you wouldn't be here. Ask yourself what makes you a leftist.
I think the most committed and righteous of us feel an anger or rage when they see injustice or suffering directed at others. This is but a secondary emotion. It's an articulation of a love they have for others just because they are people like them in circumstances outside of their control. For me romantic love is an individualised highly focused form of that emotion that then triggers an urge to unite with the targets of that focus, be it in time, place, life trajectory and other things. Sexual attraction is then an additive component to that. Sometimes it's there first and love develops after, sometimes it develops over times. Sometimes it fades after, sometimes it doesn't. I think the first sign that someone is in romantic love with someone else, is when they spent most of their waking hours with them, physically or just thinking about them. This is just the infatuation phase and generally fades and develops into something else.
These are just my understandings and not drawn from personal experience so keep in mind it's more probable than not that I'm just talking out of my ass. I hope my worthless musings can inspire you to find a thread you can pick up and come to your own conclusions though.
What separates it from being friendship + sexual attraction?
Literally nothing. The modern day notion of "LOVE", which seems to hold its own category of human behavior, interaction, and relationship, is purely liberal idealism. It exists only in our heads, and once we realize that, we can move beyond it.
Having said that, I feel like it's important to iterate during the same sentence, that this does not remove responsibility from the equation, though. If we have sexual relations with someone, we cannot be callous and uncaring about consent, which is a broad subject unto itself.
Ok I think "love is a liberal conspiracy" might be a little far lmao