I am not understanding what people are saying about love.

[Surprised]

I am new to this forum but I find it very surprising and almost sad to hear that people say they were not "in love" when they married.

Can it truly be that even today people are still marrying others and hope and expect to fall in love over time?

I just do not understand this mode of thought. Sure, I believe it is entirely possible to experience love this way but why would it be so common?

So I guess my real question is why? Why would people agree to marry someone they are not "in love" with? Why not find that relationship where love truly exists prior to marriage?

I have also read some posts where people commented they had to choose for years even, to continue to love their spouse during the marriage. What does that mean? If you are unhappy that does not make you fall out of love?

Are we as a people just deciding to marry out of the convenience of finding a worthy person that is acceptable? If that is the case then I hope it is the extreme exception and not the norm.

I have been married for over 13 years and while I cannot say our marriage has ever been perfect I have never lost that sweet pure love for my wife and have only seen it grow over time. I just cannot imagine if something ever happened to my wife or myself that either of us would marry someone we did not fall in love with prior to marriage.

To me it sounds as if people are settling and that makes me very sad. Can we not find that someone that stops the world for us? The person that makes your heart race when you are with them.

Maybe I am wrong and it is not as common as I thought. I really hope I am wrong here and I in no way wish to offend others. This is just my filtered view of life and in reality I am a true hopeless romantic.

[Guest]

Hah... Define Love. That's the trick.

Fall in love... that's a very commercial concept that has sold CDs, books, and movies. What is it really?

Because, you say, I love my wife in that sweet pure way. Sure. But, if you're honest with yourself, you will realize that you CHOSE to love your wife in that sweet pure way. It didn't "just happen". The thing that just happens is a chemical reaction called lust. Love goes way beyond that... and it starts with a CHOICE.

[Surprised]

Very good point.

"Love" is truly hard to define. I would have to say, without going on forever, here is a brief crack at.

It is wanting nothing more than to do right by the other person. To put their feeling before your own. To see them as part everything you do and plan on doing in life. For them to be your true best friend above all others in your life. When they feel sad, you feel sad. When they are happy you feel happy. You find them the most beautiful person in the world, which comes from much more than just looks. For you to imagine a life without them and it makes you choke.

That is a starting point. You say we "chose" to love each other. I do not remember making that choice. I remember many choices in life but that is not one I remember making. I did chose to date her and get to know here better. To listen to her story and find out all about here life and what she loved and hated. I did chose to let my guard come down and trust her. To let her become part of my life and future plans. I did not choose for her to become my best friend, it happened as a result of our time together. And this is what I feel about falling in love. You do not choose it but it happens as a result of experiences and time together.

But, what I am saying is why marry before that happens and hope for it then? Why not find that first then let it continue to grow?

[Gwen]

I am new to this forum but I find it very surprising and almost sad to hear that people say they were not "in love" when they married.

Can it truly be that even today people are still marrying others and hope and expect to fall in love over time?

I just do not understand this mode of thought. Sure, I believe it is entirely possible to experience love this way but why would it be so common?

So I guess my real question is why? Why would people agree to marry someone they are not "in love" with? Why not find that relationship where love truly exists prior to marriage?

i read somewhere (no i don't have a quote, if i recall correctly it was in a book about the effects of divorce on children) that when someone becomes jaded enough they start to rewrite history. that's when a marriage is truly over and those ppl are most likely to cause a living hell for the kids after a divorce. they did love the spouse and there were good times but they literally forget and rewrite everything that happened in the current negative light they are living in. i know ppl that have done this. i wonder if many of the ppl making such comments are starting down such a road. it's not that they never loved them, it's that they have rewritten everything and can't remember having loved them.

I have also read some posts where people commented they had to choose for years even, to continue to love their spouse during the marriage. What does that mean? If you are unhappy that does not make you fall out of love?

Are we as a people just deciding to marry out of the convenience of finding a worthy person that is acceptable? If that is the case then I hope it is the extreme exception and not the norm.

I have been married for over 13 years and while I cannot say our marriage has ever been perfect I have never lost that sweet pure love for my wife and have only seen it grow over time. I just cannot imagine if something ever happened to my wife or myself that either of us would marry someone we did not fall in love with prior to marriage.

To me it sounds as if people are settling and that makes me very sad. Can we not find that someone that stops the world for us? The person that makes your heart race when you are with them.

Maybe I am wrong and it is not as common as I thought. I really hope I am wrong here and I in no way wish to offend others. This is just my filtered view of life and in reality I am a true hopeless romantic.

love is a choice. sometimes life hands you situations that don't foster love. if handled poorly the love will even start to die. it's pretty common. sometimes you have to make the choice to love. i think that was a common way of thinking generations ago. you work it out and make it happen. it's not something we think about now. ppl have romanticized the reality out of love. so the first time things get hard they walk. they don't choose to love anymore "it should come easy or it's not worth doing". very interesting lie society has going.

it's wonderful if you've not hit any such bumps in your marriage. but really i think it's unwise to pity those that have gone through times when they had to choose love until it was restored. such an accomplishment should be acknowledged, there may come a time when you need the wisdom they gained in the experience. it's better than the alternative, right?

[Surprised]

they don't choose to love anymore "it should come easy or it's not worth doing". very interesting lie society has going.

Very good point. I find that love only grows from getting through those hard times that looked impossible while you were in the middle of them.

it's wonderful if you've not hit any such bumps in your marriage. but really i think it's unwise to pity those that have gone through times when they had to choose love until it was restored. such an accomplishment should be acknowledged, there may come a time when you need the wisdom they gained in the experience. it's better than the alternative, right?

Another excellent point. I did not mean to come across pitying them. My wife and I have had hard times but love did not cease to exist. Even if the worst case ever happened between my wife and I where heaven forbid we could not reconcile no matter what we tried, I do not see how love would cease in that case either.

Betrayal may change your feelings for them but I do not think it is possible to stop loving them.

I do not see how love can die, to me it is an eternal concept. You may be heartbroken and never able to trust them again but can you honestly say that love can die once it has begun?

People that I love that have hurt me in my life, I have never stopped loving.

[Wingnut]

Can we not find that someone that stops the world for us?

If the earth stopped, we'd all fall off of it.

The person that makes your heart race when you are with them.

High blood pressure is usually considered a bad thing.

Marriage is just as much a practical arrangement as a romantic one. Perhaps more so when you think of it in terms of marriage and not in terms of wedding.

[ZionsRodeVos]

From my experience here is what I learned and understand.

It seems to me there are differing degrees of love. I believe the love found between a couple in a marriage is mostly, if not entirely, gone by the time the marriage ends in divorce. This does not always mean that the love for them as a person is gone too, but the love for them as a partner is gone or mostly gone.

I can see how people can question after the marriage is over if they were ever in love with their partner or not because I have wondered this as well. From where I am now I have no love for my children's mom as a partner.

I do know of a couple that were married where one person said they never loved the other. I have trouble completely understanding how this could be. Just as I have trouble thinking I was never in love with my children's mom. After a certain amount of time of living together I would think there would be some love.

As a bit of background I was married for about 9 or 10 years before I separated from my children's mother and later divorced her. I know I loved her when I married her. From my perspective now it seems to me that over time we allowed that love to dwindle and fade away due to doing less and less together and talking less and less and so that love that made me want to marry her faded. A few weeks prior to me separating from her I thought the love I had for her as a partner was completely gone. I was wrong. It took another year or so before the last of my feelings for her as a partner were finally gone.

I doubt I experienced the love that is possible between a couple when they are trying to make that love grow. For me it seems it was a slow deterioration that began near the beginning of my marriage.

When I married her I felt I knew her very well and I considered her my best friend. Of course looking at things now I wonder how much I really knew her and it seems I didn't know her enough.

[Guest]

Very good point.

"Love" is truly hard to define. I would have to say, without going on forever, here is a brief crack at.

It is wanting nothing more than to do right by the other person. To put their feeling before your own. To see them as part everything you do and plan on doing in life. For them to be your true best friend above all others in your life. When they feel sad, you feel sad. When they are happy you feel happy. You find them the most beautiful person in the world, which comes from much more than just looks. For you to imagine a life without them and it makes you choke.

That is a starting point. You say we "chose" to love each other. I do not remember making that choice. I remember many choices in life but that is not one I remember making. I did chose to date her and get to know here better. To listen to her story and find out all about here life and what she loved and hated. I did chose to let my guard come down and trust her. To let her become part of my life and future plans. I did not choose for her to become my best friend, it happened as a result of our time together. And this is what I feel about falling in love. You do not choose it but it happens as a result of experiences and time together.

But, what I am saying is why marry before that happens and hope for it then? Why not find that first then let it continue to grow?

Surprised... you talk about it like it was not a conscious choice but just something that happened. This is really not a good description. It's a dangerous description even.

Because, from every point of your journey with your wife - you always had that choice - To Accept or To Reject. For example... when you found out she can be a mean person when crossed you had the choice - To Accept or To Reject. In your case, you chose to accept - so you move forward. When you found out her breath stunk in the morning, you had a choice - To Accept or To Reject - you chose to accept, so you move forward...

Every single moment of your dating/marriage is one choice after another. If you weren't conscious of that choice, then that is very dangerous. Because there may come a time when the choice to Accept or Reject becomes very difficult. You can't just cop out and say, I will have to accept because I love her. That is not love - that is bondage. What love is - is that when that very difficult moment happens - you will choose to love her even with that imperfection. Do you see the difference? For example - something happens to her testimony, she leaves the church, and puts assunder your temple marriage. You don't just accept it because you love her. That makes you helpless and in servitude to love. You CHOOSE to love her even when your temple sealing is about to fall apart. That is more as Christ would have it.

It's like your Testimony of the restored gospel. Even those who were born in the church would still have to make that conscious choice - To Accept or To Reject - they can't just say, I don't remember making that choice because "it just happened". This is what we call a testimony. A conscious choice to Love our Savior and follow Him. If the choice was not consciously made, then when something big rocks that Testimony, then it is easier to wonder if you truly believed in the restored gospel and even believed in the Atonement...

But, I don't believe that you didn't make that conscious choice to love your wife. I believe, from how you described your love for your wife, that you DID make that choice - every step of the way. You just decided to mask it with romanticism.

Some marriages that fall off the wayside haven't really made that conscious choice to Love. They go by how they "felt". You know, like you said, that powerful feeling that binds them to their spouse. But that feeling is fickle. Because people grow and people change. And not everybody is so lucky that their spouse changes within their bounds of what is "acceptable". For example, I love my husband. There is no doubt. And he loves me. That's why we got married. But, before I married my husband, I made that very conscious choice to Love him for all eternity. And he did the same. I will tell you right now, that there were times when I could strangle my husband and there were times when he could strangle me too. For example - within the first year, we found out that I have sexual issues. My husband had to put up with a "frigid" wife for YEARS. There were times in both our frustration that the loving "feeling" was completely gone. Therefore, if we just relied on that "feeling" we would have been divorced long ago. But, we're not, because we CHOSE to LOVE each other for richer or poorer, in sickness in health and everything in between. So that, my husband was more than willing to sacrifice his needs and work through the problems even through the times when we don't feel very loving towards each other. So that, even through my husband's sexual frustrations, he never saw another woman, 10 times better than me that he can easily love, as an option.

Love is not there just because "it happened". It is there because you CHOSE her. Your love for your wife is amazing. It is truly commendable. But, there will come a time when you will meet another girl that can become your best friend - someone really amazing - as amazing if not more so than your wife. A very lovable person. When that time comes, hopefully you won't just "avoid her" because you are afraid that it will "ruin" your marriage. Hopefully you can be great friends with this girl and look her in the eye and tell her, "Wow, you are one amazing woman, I love you, and I'm glad to be your friend. But, I love my wife - she's the one for me - because I chose her to be my wife. Therefore, I can only love you as a friend." ... Now, THAT's more amazing.

I've said this plenty of times in this forum:

What is LOVE?

Giddy, giggly, knees turn to jelly - is this love?

Enjoying the same movies, enjoying the same activities - is this love?

Romantic moments, talking for hours on end - is this love?

Thinking about him/her all the time, can't live without him/her - is this love?

Having great sex - is this love?

Dying on the cross for the man who buried his spear into His side. That is Love.

And this Love is not just for your wife. This is for everybody you meet with Charity in your heart. You CHOOSE to be married to your wife - not everybody else.

[adeline]

What is LOVE?

Giddy, giggly, knees turn to jelly - is this love?

Enjoying the same movies, enjoying the same activities - is this love?

Romantic moments, talking for hours on end - is this love?

Thinking about him/her all the time, can't live without him/her - is this love?

Having great sex - is this love?

so is the above description of LOVE?

[slamjet]

What is LOVE?

Giddy, giggly, knees turn to jelly - is this love?

Enjoying the same movies, enjoying the same activities - is this love?

Romantic moments, talking for hours on end - is this love?

Thinking about him/her all the time, can't live without him/her - is this love?

Having great sex - is this love?

so is the above description of LOVE?

Wrapped up in a shell of practicality and pragmatism.

[Guest]

What is LOVE?

Giddy, giggly, knees turn to jelly - is this love?

Enjoying the same movies, enjoying the same activities - is this love?

Romantic moments, talking for hours on end - is this love?

Thinking about him/her all the time, can't live without him/her - is this love?

Having great sex - is this love?

so is the above description of LOVE?

By themselves, it is too shallow to be worthy of such a big word...

Dying on the cross for the man who buried his spear into His side. That is Love.

Now THAT is Love.