Is love controllable?

SarahSassy

I have been reading a lot of posts over the years here in PI and other forums and I often wonder, when the advice is thrown out to just break up with someone and/ or if someone has a broken heart to just move onwards and upwards, if people believe love is controllable.

Do we have control over whether or not we love someone or it is something more than will power and control? Can we decide to break up with someone who lets us down and forget about them or if you truly loved them in the first place is it harder than that? My view is that if you truly loved them then its hard to delete those feelings and move on...

Trashed

I still hold a small flame for those people I have fallen in love with. i think its nice.

I think if there is enough hurt you fall out of love with them, but you always have some feelings towards them.

love is the glue that keeps 2 people together when the whole world is against them

Nervous Wreck

I don't think we (or at least, I) can control our emotions. But we have complete control over how we deal with them. Dealing with them correctly can change their impact upon your life and so, in a situation of breaking up with and getting over someone, yes, you can control that love and give your other emotions etc priority. But you can't make yourself stop loving someone. It happens or it comes with time. But dealing with your emotions correctly can speed up those kinds of reactions.

SarahSassy

SarahSassy wrote: »

I have been reading a lot of posts over the years here in PI and other forums and I often wonder, when the advice is thrown out to just break up with someone and/ or if someone has a broken heart to just move onwards and upwards, if people believe love is controllable.

Like nervous wreck said. You might not be able to control your heart, but you can control your actions.
Sometimes you just have to stand back, and realise that love isn't enough in of itself.
Sometimes situations, people. They just aren't workable or healthy.
It might be easier to say than do. But that doesn't mean that it isnt the best course of action.
Love smothers if you don't feed it. You will move on, Eventually.

Mr. Incognito

Not in my experience.

People that follow their heart end up happy because they make all the wrong choices that are right for them.

Love is not something we can control and if you can control it you've never been in love.

BumbleB

I know a girl (she's in a really good job in medicine) she used to go out with another really well paid guy.Well he cheated on her is an alcoholic and treated her v bad .She knows she can never have a relationship withj him yet she just keeps hanging on .plenty of guys are into her but she just wont let go. She purposefully sabotages any kind of relationship she gets into.

Smallbit

If it's controllable it's not love...

metrovelvet

There are delusions of mastery on pi.

However, given that love is impossible to define, its hard to say whether or not you can control something you can't identify.

Acceptance is one of loves harder lessons, even if that means letting go.

I agree with Nervous in that you ultimately control your own actions. I do think though that love is so powerful that it takes huge willpower to follow your head and not your heart. A broken heart hurts more that anything in the world. It causes physical pain and emotional suffering.

But no, I don't think you can control love.

ash23

I don't think you can control whether or not you love someone. But you can take control over whether or not you allow yourself to be mistreated.

You might not want to break up with someone when they do something that really hurts you or disrespects you, but you should have enough self confidence and belief in yourself to know that you deserve better than that.

So although you might have to walk away while still being in love with the person, you should always love yourself enough to be able to take control and walk when it's necessary.

jellie

As others have said, you cant control how you feel but you can control your actions.

Just because you breakup with someone doesnt stop you loving them. but you CAN control if you send them 50million texts proclaiming your love and how much you miss them.

you can learn to live with feelings, you can bury them inside you to forget, distract yourself with other things - but you cannot MAKE yourself stop feeling something, just either acknowledge the feeling or refuse to and continue as best you can & hope that in time they fade.

Looking at it from the opposite angle - when you have loved someone, are in a relationship, and love them but are not IN love with them, would love to love them that way again but something has changed - you cant force yourself to love someone anymore than you can force yourself not to.

Wibbs

I dunno. Personally I can control whether I fall in love or not at the start. If I feel it starting and my logic is still in control and tells me it s a bad plan, then yes I can defo stop it in it's tracks. Full blown love? No. I can control my actions but cant switch it off at all.

G86

Wibbs wrote: »

I dunno. Personally I can control whether I fall in love or not at the start. If I feel it starting and my logic is still in control and tells me it s a bad plan, then yes I can defo stop it in it's tracks.

Yeah, I think it's that 'get out of jail free' card. You know that you could potentially fall in love with the person, but that in turn makes you more wary, and once they do one wee thing that makes you think they could possibly break your heart then you make damn sure you don't give them the chance. Some people say that's too cynical, and other people think it's wise - I haven't quite made my mind up yet but I do think it's usually the safest option.

Ickle Magoo

I can stop myself pursuing someone I fancy if I don't think it would ultimately end happily. I'm not sure if love is controllable once you are actually "in love" but it's certainly possible to understand a relationship is unhealthy or impossible to sustain despite being in love.

I was madly in love with someone, lived with them for a couple of years but ultimately knew the relationship could bumble along as was and leave me partially unhappy but in love or I could break it off and hope I fall in love with someone else who could also provide a better and healthier relationship - which I did.

Novella

"Love is not an equation, it is not a contract, and it is not a happy ending. Love is the slate under the chalk, the ground that buildings rise, and the oxygen in the air.It is the place you come back to, no matter where your headed" - Jodi Picoult.

I can't speak from experience here, so I can only portray what I've read and what I think, the conclusions I've come to.

Love is a little word, with a huge meaning. I think that maybe when people say that love isn't controllable, it's just because that it is easier than facing up to the realisation that what in fact is not controllable is themselves.

When we date a person, marry them, love them, give ourselves up to them, we become dependant on them in a sort of way. We get used to them always being there and having them in our life is a comfort because it is routine.

Humans are creatures of habit and routine, no matter how much people say they hate it, is something that we thrive upon. Change causes upset, especially in relationships.

I don't know if falling in love with someone is controllable, but I imagine it probably is. I think though that when we are betrayed by a person who means a lot to us, using the excuse, "Oh, but I love him/her", is just easier than admitting that we're too weak to move on.

Always going back to a person who lets you down and/or treats you badly is not because you're in 'uncontrollably' in love, it's because you can't control yourself enough to just not go back. I think!

elleburp

SarahSassy wrote: »

I have been reading a lot of posts over the years here in PI and other forums and I often wonder, when the advice is thrown out to just break up with someone and/ or if someone has a broken heart to just move onwards and upwards, if people believe love is controllable.

Do we have control over whether or not we love someone or it is something more than will power and control? Can we decide to break up with someone who lets us down and forget about them or if you truly loved them in the first place is it harder than that? My view is that if you truly loved them then its hard to delete those feelings and move on...

Feelings like love/hate/anger don't get deleted. I think time just squashes them.

minidazzler

I usually able to keep the effects of my emotions in check. Rarely do I fall to them(Though I have a couple of times).

So While how you feel about people isn't controlable, it is possible to manage the effects of how you feel about them and fake your way through it.

SarahSassy

But then how do you get over people that you loved but had to finish with?

minidazzler

SarahSassy wrote: »

But then how do you get over people that you loved but had to finish with?

Grin and bear and it disappears I guess. Never really been in love (well, except that one I never told, but that doesn't count.)

When a girl doesn't like me I get over it surprizingly quick, I just need to know where I stand with people!

Hollyg'lightly

love is a battlefield, ha ha ha
Ah no, it actually is.

Ickle Magoo

SarahSassy wrote: »

But then how do you get over people that you loved but had to finish with?

I think I just rationalise. No amount of loving a man is going to make the relationship work or make me happy, I'm entitled to be happy and have a successful and mutually satisfying relationship. I rationalise that it's as pointless being in love with someone in a relationship which isn't making me happy as it is to be in love with Brad Pitt or even having an unrequited love, in some respects I view it as a form of unrequited love and I get over it by getting on with my life and carrying on the search for a better relationship with someone who loves me the way I want to be loved.