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Have you ever been in love in the romantic sense?

24

Comments

  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,899 ✭✭✭Castlekeeper


    The Tide wrote: »
    No, never experienced love. I have experienced unrequited love a number of times.

    When I was around 21 I met the perfect girl. She was beautiful and we really connected. We could talk for hours and I could make her laugh all night. One night we hooked up. The next day, her friend told me that she regretted it and didn't want it to happen again...to say that hurt... well it's been over 10 years and I'm still not over her. I often think how different my life could have been.

    Now I'm in my 30s and cynical about life and love. Met a couple of women over the years that I had strong feelings for but no luck.

    That sucks, but it usually wears off after about 10 years, you just get sick of it, and usually if you see them again it's a case of "What was I thinking!" (in my experience anyway).
    Your 30's is a good time to meetime someone , the money: looks balance is in a good place.
    Or maybe she'll have watched "Normal People" and learnt from it???
    Maybe try her again sure?


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,170 Mod ✭✭✭✭Wibbs


    The Tide wrote: »
    When I was around 21 I met the perfect girl. She was beautiful and we really connected. We could talk for hours and I could make her laugh all night. One night we hooked up. The next day, her friend told me that she regretted it and didn't want it to happen again...to say that hurt... well it's been over 10 years and I'm still not over her. I often think how different my life could have been.
    You have to consider the "what then?" part too. Imagine she hadn't regretted it(which is the point I'd have pulled the Eject!! lever painful though it might have been) and you went out together, what then? Live happily ever after? Unlikely as many if not the majority of relationships at 21 go south.

    The hardest "love" to get over is the what if imaginary kind. The mind gets locked into a fantasy of the other person, one that reality could never match and no flesh and blood woman either. And it's not love imho. It's one sided and quite self involved. Love needs to go both ways for it to be any way real.

    Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,145 ✭✭✭Mister Vain


    No, not in the way that people here have described anyway. I've had strong feelings for 2 women in my life but I don't think I could call it love as I wasn't exactly devastated when the relationships ended.


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,170 Mod ✭✭✭✭Wibbs


    The Tide wrote: »
    I honestly think missing out on young love screws you up.
    I would agree for the most part actually. It sets a template of sorts for future relationships. If it's a healthy template as most people's experience is, then fine, if unhealthy...
    The Tide wrote: »
    You could be right, but this is a girl who would spend hours talking to me, who would be bent over laughing at my jokes, who found me attractive to spend half a night kissing me. Surely she felt something too?
    Oh I'm sure she felt something. Just a different something to you and yours went from 0-60 faster than a Bugatti. Plus at 21 the something can be more prone to changing with the wind of emotion or the contents of pants, or drink. Sobriety is a great game changer. You got locked into a mindset, she didn't. It happens all the time.
    I mean if she wasn't the one for me then I really don't know.
    For a start there isn't The One™©. There's no fate, no perfect person just for you. That's an appealing thought(though I personally find it terrifying) but a fantasy of Mills and Boon and the oft lazy writing of Hollywood hacks. It doesn't exist unless you believe it to and ended up with one person. There are billions of people on this planet and someone somehow finds The One™© in a sticky floored nightclub, or the 48b bus at the exact time and age for it to happen? Nope. Total delusion, which as I said the love brain chemicals foster and all the helpful and unhelpful delusions the human mind is err to.

    Take your The One™©. Maybe she's with some bloke now who she thinks is The One™© and he thinks the same as her, until they're not. Or maybe they go on to a semi dee and a brood of kids. Who knows, but it does seem that there are an awful number of The One™© around.

    Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.



  • Posts: 0 [Deleted User]


    Deja Boo wrote: »
    Tis a wise thought, and I understand what you mean, completely.

    But for me, he always was and always will be the only one, regardless. You can say what you will about "move on" and "next time" - my love seems to run much deeper than that - which isn't ideal, but it is what it is.

    Ditto.
    For me I don't think the love part (and it is fantastic) can outweigh the lost part if it involves a heartbreak . I'd never fall completely in love again, couldn't risk the possibility of another heartbreak that genuinely nearly broke me. I might go 90% but never 100% again, I'm a complete cynic now, I dont even trust my friends OHs ,I'm convinced they're all cheating lol.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 13,911 ✭✭✭✭Dial Hard


    Man this thread is depressing.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,114 ✭✭✭PhilOssophy


    Absolutely. Sure Kate Winslet had only met Jack a few hours earlier. It was hardly love in that length was it?

    Just like me and that wan behind the local soccer dressing rooms after cans with the lads. Had only met her a few hours earlier. It was love, of course, without Celine Dion playing in the background.........


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,687 ✭✭✭Signore Fancy Pants


    Dial Hard wrote: »
    Man this thread is depressing.

    I love you Dial Hard.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 13,911 ✭✭✭✭Dial Hard


    I love you Dial Hard.

    Why thanks SFP. I think there's others here more in need of it than me, though...


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 3,023 ✭✭✭Gruffalux


    The Tide wrote: »

    I honestly think missing out on young love screws you up.

    I think for sure that it must get harder as one grows older and becomes somewhat tarnished by life. Youth is so insanely idealistic. But it has to be. Youth is setting off on an impossible journey.
    If I was giving anyone young advice I would say do not imagine you are in a relationship supermarket with infinite goodies.
    I also think that what one sees as a child forms patterns. Both sides of our families were stable marriages made young, plus aunties and uncles the same, and as a child you watch people grow old together unto death and hardship and it is formative. All siblings in our large families on both sides married young and are stable. A working class thing too where there was less money or energy for bohemianism. Kids are doing same, long relationships formed young.
    I remember a brother in law saying many years ago that the rave scene and E really screwed up love for a lot of people. The overwhelming group love scenarios with grandiose declarations, that met cold dawns where the same people could hardly speak to each other.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,034 ✭✭✭Ficheall


    It's a relief to hear about all these instances of people falling hopelessly in love at first sight with unattractive people.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 363 ✭✭Tig98


    Yeah, I've been in love and it was very much the cinematic, whirlwind sense.

    From a one night stand to travelling the world together, driving up and down, squashing our lives together as much as we could and getting max enjoyment out of even the little things like doing a weekly shop.

    And then it wasn't so good anymore, and we broke up, and that's okay. I'm glad for all the time we had together and I can acknowledge how much enjoyment I had out of it without pining over it or longing for it back. I think that's the key draw from love - you were fine before them and you'll be fine after them. There are many people out there who you can find happiness with, it's a question of effort.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,723 ✭✭✭seenitall


    Wibbs wrote: »
    Just a different something to you and yours went from 0-60 faster than a Bugatti.

    God this is so me! Made me laugh. I'm very quick out of the gate with my enthusiasm about someone, and then I'm quick enough to let go as well, when needed (and it is always, eventually and unfortunately, needed). Other than the above Bugatti simile, another way I've read it described, which I love for some reason, is "falling in and out of love faster than a $10 hooker" :D I think I like it so much because it evokes resilience in the face of heartbreak to me, and I do have that resilience, and it's been hard won over the years. As klaz said, experience is everything. When you know you'll be ok whatever happens, it's like a super-power or something, you tend to relax about this stuff and take it all in stride. Nothing can ever hurt with quite the same devastating force again. So different from being 18 or 20-something and so, so wound up over some fella, heartbroken and at a loss about how even to begin to let go. So much more able to enjoy myself now.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,687 ✭✭✭Signore Fancy Pants


    Dial Hard wrote: »
    Why thanks SFP. I think there's others here more in need of it than me, though...

    #rejected :(


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 12,408 ✭✭✭✭Sardonicat


    #rejected :(

    It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

    One day you'll understand that. But the next 20 years are gonna sting, my friend. Once you're over that hurdle all your capacity for deep, human connection will have withered and died and then you can quote the above and pretend it's true.


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  • Posts: 0 [Deleted User]


    seenitall wrote: »
    God this is so me! Made me laugh. I'm very quick out of the gate with my enthusiasm about someone, and then I'm quick enough to let go as well, when needed (and it is always, eventually and unfortunately, needed). Other than the above Bugatti simile, another way I've read it described, which I love for some reason, is "falling in and out of love faster than a $10 hooker" :D I think I like it so much because it evokes resilience in the face of heartbreak to me, and I do have that resilience, and it's been hard won over the years. As klaz said, experience is everything. When you know you'll be ok whatever happens, it's like a super-power or something, you tend to relax about this stuff and take it all in stride. Nothing can ever hurt with quite the same devastating force again. So different from being 18 or 20-something and so, so wound up over some fella, heartbroken and at a loss about how even to begin to let go. So much more able to enjoy myself now.

    Similar for me. When I was younger, my emotions swung so easily. I'd fall in love incredibly fast, and then... something would happen, and I'd be free of it. The attraction would remain but the passion would be gone. It wasn't purely a physical thing, although being male, it would be a large part. Possessing the other persons attentions would have been a greater aspect.

    It's different now though. With experience came the ability to 'moderate' my enthusiasm and now my interest tends to last much longer. The disadvantage is that it's much rarer for me to find someone who really fascinates me. The physical alone isn't enough anymore.


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,653 ✭✭✭KiKi III


    I thought I was in love in college, but it was puppy love really.

    Nothing major since.

    For those who feel it will never happen, there are so many stories of people finding true love later in life. My aunt met the man of her dreams in her mid-40s when she had been a single mother for 20 years and he was a widow. I have a friend who felt totally left behind in her early 30s as all her friends were marrying, she met her fella at 35, married him at 37 and had three kids by 40.

    There’s a million stories like that. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking it has to happen on a prescribed timeline. I do it myself sometimes as at 32 it seems like everyone around my is getting married and having babies but I try hard not to be cynical and to just keep working on myself so when the right fella comes along I don’t fück it up.

    Some of the stories on this thread are so heartwarming, but there are also an awful lot of people out there trapped in unhappy relationships.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,034 ✭✭✭Ficheall


    Gruffalox wrote: »
    The love at first sight as pure projection is a tad cynical. I remember clearly what I felt the first time I saw my husband.

    [...]

    I got off the bus and presumed I would never see him again and that did not matter. I did not even think anymore about it
    [...]
    So your example of love at first sight is one where you saw a guy on bus, did nothing about it, decided it didn't matter, and didn't think any more about it? Had you not seen him again, would you have said you loved that random guy on the bus?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,723 ✭✭✭seenitall


    Similar for me. When I was younger, my emotions swung so easily. I'd fall in love incredibly fast, and then... something would happen, and I'd be free of it. The attraction would remain but the passion would be gone. It wasn't purely a physical thing, although being male, it would be a large part. Possessing the other persons attentions would have been a greater aspect.

    It's different now though. With experience came the ability to 'moderate' my enthusiasm and now my interest tends to last much longer. The disadvantage is that it's much rarer for me to find someone who really fascinates me. The physical alone isn't enough anymore.

    That sounds good. Like you've matured emotionally; so that should bring its own rewards in romantic situations. I don't think I'm in the same headspace as that, but I don't mind much as long as I'm being active and enjoying it.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 3,023 ✭✭✭Gruffalux


    Ficheall wrote: »
    So your example of love at first sight is one where you saw a guy on bus, did nothing about it, decided it didn't matter, and didn't think any more about it? Had you not seen him again, would you have said you loved that random guy on the bus?

    Yeah. Probably. I never felt that before or since with anyone else. In the sense that love could mean complete enchantment, recognising the luminous in another, a profound unselfish admiration and affection.
    Of course it also means hard work and sacrifice which comes after the bus!
    But love is not time dependant . A father holding a newborn who dies shortly afterwards will know love for that infant forever. I have had some rare chance encounters with wise strangers where for a few minutes we shared words and space and they have changed me profoundly by their whole being, and I feel love for them even thought time and often the breadth of continents mean we will never cross paths again.


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 548 ✭✭✭JasonStatham


    Yes but she was just far too religious, so it didn't work out unfortunately.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 11,016 ✭✭✭✭EmmetSpiceland


    Of course. I’ve been “in love” with every, serious, partner I’ve been in a relationship with.

    While I, certainly, lusted after my, many, “conquests” outside of these relationships, I couldn’t say there was any “real love” there.

    That’s not to say there wasn’t a lot of “feeling”, or fun, involved but most of the time you’re fairly drunk so it can be all a bit of a “blur”.

    “It is not blood that makes you Irish but a willingness to be part of the Irish nation” - Thomas Davis



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 12,408 ✭✭✭✭Sardonicat


    Gruffalox wrote: »
    Yeah. Probably. I never felt that before or since with anyone else. In the sense that love could mean complete enchantment, recognising the luminous in another, a profound unselfish admiration and affection.
    Of course it also means hard work and sacrifice which comes after the bus!
    But love is not time dependant . A father holding a newborn who dies shortly afterwards will know love for that infant forever. I have had some rare chance encounters with wise strangers where for a few minutes we shared words and space and they have changed me profoundly by their whole being, and I feel love for them even thought time and often the breadth of continents mean we will never cross paths again.
    Why thank you, Gruf! You put that in a way I could be struggling to til the end of my days.
    'Recignising the luminous' - I love that.


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,170 Mod ✭✭✭✭Wibbs


    Gruffalox wrote: »
    Yeah. Probably. I never felt that before or since with anyone else. In the sense that love could mean complete enchantment, recognising the luminous in another, a profound unselfish admiration and affection.
    of what was a complete and utter stranger. So unless you believe in the world of the psychic and the like, and fair enough if you do, it was a lovely fantasy and projection. I mean a monstrous psychopath like Ted Bundy and a load of women fall "in love" wth him, some from a distance, a few up close and personal and no doubt at least one felt a similar luminosity for a complete nutcase. One even got up the duff with him when he was in prison. No doubt he was The One™© for her.

    Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.



  • Closed Accounts Posts: 3,023 ✭✭✭Gruffalux


    Wibbs wrote: »
    of what was a complete and utter stranger. So unless you believe in the world of the psychic and the like, and fair enough if you do, it was a lovely fantasy and projection. I mean a monstrous psychopath like Ted Bundy and a load of women fall "in love" wth him, some from a distance, a few up close and personal and no doubt at least one felt a similar luminosity for a complete nutcase. One even got up the duff with him when he was in prison. No doubt he was The One™© for her.

    Uh thanks Wibbser. Ted Bundy conflated with my luminous love. Yikes.
    Yeah. I do believe in an unknowable part of existence beyond the measureable material part. Shoot me :D
    In any case most of our communication and perception with and of the people in the world that we happen to meet is non verbal. Be radiant my friend.


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,170 Mod ✭✭✭✭Wibbs


    Gruffalox wrote: »
    I think for sure that it must get harder as one grows older and becomes somewhat tarnished by life. Youth is so insanely idealistic. But it has to be. Youth is setting off on an impossible journey.
    If I was giving anyone young advice I would say do not imagine you are in a relationship supermarket with infinite goodies.
    I also think that what one sees as a child forms patterns. Both sides of our families were stable marriages made young, plus aunties and uncles the same, and as a child you watch people grow old together unto death and hardship and it is formative. All siblings in our large families on both sides married young and are stable. A working class thing too where there was less money or energy for bohemianism. Kids are doing same, long relationships formed young.
    I remember a brother in law saying many years ago that the rave scene and E really screwed up love for a lot of people. The overwhelming group love scenarios with grandiose declarations, that met cold dawns where the same people could hardly speak to each other.
    Now here I would agree with you 100% on pretty much all points here G. Certainly family examples one grows up with make a huge impression. Like in my family the men overwhelmingly seem to marry later in life and with younger women, like it's a pattern and clearly a learned one.
    seenitall wrote: »
    God this is so me! Made me laugh. I'm very quick out of the gate with my enthusiasm about someone, and then I'm quick enough to let go as well, when needed (and it is always, eventually and unfortunately, needed). Other than the above Bugatti simile, another way I've read it described, which I love for some reason, is "falling in and out of love faster than a $10 hooker" :D I think I like it so much because it evokes resilience in the face of heartbreak to me, and I do have that resilience, and it's been hard won over the years. As klaz said, experience is everything.
    :D I have generally found women are much better at bouncing back from a failed relationship where love was involved. They seem to have more reserves of "innocence" for the real want of a better word. I have found men tend to have much less, or better memories. :D

    I have also found those who fall in love with rapidity tend to fall out of it just as quickly and not always for good reasons. That and previous relationship behaviour informs future behaviour. So say if you're with someone who started with you while they were with someone else that will be you down the line, unless they'd hit a point where they want to "settle down" and the background that that behaviour will tend to come out in other ways.

    Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.



  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,170 Mod ✭✭✭✭Wibbs


    Gruffalox wrote: »
    Uh thanks Wibbser. Ted Bundy conflated with my luminous love. Yikes.
    Yikes indeed, but you see my point? He was their luminous love too. One even held a candle for him after he admitted his murderous life. And note how these things tend to strongly follow our personal, sexual and cultural expectations. You don't hear too often of say Gay men suddenly finding luminous romantic and sexual love with Straight women, or 19 year olds finding same with 80 year olds.
    Yeah. I do believe in an unknowable part of existence beyond the measureable material part. Shoot me :D
    And fair enough. :D
    In any case most of our communication and perception with and of the people in the world that we happen to meet is non verbal.
    Sure, body language, micro gestures, cultural and familial influences, even pheromones can play a role.
    Be radiant my friend.

    Me. Earlier. After I had me brekkie.

    1675f51afd9242cd44f83957a66e9f3f.jpg

    :D

    Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,723 ✭✭✭seenitall


    Wibbs wrote: »

    :D I have generally found women are much better at bouncing back from a failed relationship where love was involved. They seem to have more reserves of "innocence" for the real want of a better word. I have found men tend to have much less, or better memories. :D

    I have also found those who fall in love with rapidity tend to fall out of it just as quickly and not always for good reasons. That and previous relationship behaviour informs future behaviour. So say if you're with someone who started with you while they were with someone else that will be you down the line, unless they'd hit a point where they want to "settle down" and the background that that behaviour will tend to come out in other ways.

    Ha, with all my experience etc. that is funnily enough the one thing that never happened to me, the famous OVERLAP. In any direction. And thankfully so, because I suspect you make a good point about it.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,429 ✭✭✭Sheridan81


    Of course. I’ve been “in love” with every, serious, partner I’ve been in a relationship with.

    What tends to end your relationships? Because this is how I imagine it to be.

    Emmet, it's the quotation marks. I can't take it anymore.

    "What" do you "mean"?

    I mean that! You did it again just now!

    "I" have no "idea" what you're "talking" about.

    Who the hell puts "I" and "talking" in quotation marks!?

    "You" did it "just" now.

    Yes... but that wasn't the same! Look Emmet, it's over. I don't love you anymore!

    But I "love" you.

    You do?

    "Yes"

    Well now I can't tell if you're being serious..y'know, because of the quotations...ah **** it.

    "Ha" ha "ha".


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 3,023 ✭✭✭Gruffalux


    Wibbs wrote: »
    In my family the men overwhelmingly seem to marry later in life and with younger women, like it's a pattern and clearly a learned one.


    They seem to have more reserves of "innocence" for the real want of a better word. .

    I hope you find your younger woman.
    Look at Scott Adams! Wow. :)

    The reserves of innocence is a good observation. I never noticed it being a particularly female trait but maybe. One of my brothers has it though. Certainly it is a boon for which I am thankful. I have called it my irrepressible puppy syndrome. No matter how crap things are, and boy there are certainly some majorly crap times, there always - so far! - comes a bounce back of enthusiasm when I see the whole endeavour, the planet the people the journey, as redeemably good again. It can take years though to regain that innocence after some things.

    PS you look better as cosmic Buddha than as Fr. Jack :)


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  • Registered Users Posts: 1,943 ✭✭✭indioblack


    Wibbs wrote: »
    You have to consider the "what then?" part too. Imagine she hadn't regretted it(which is the point I'd have pulled the Eject!! lever painful though it might have been) and you went out together, what then? Live happily ever after? Unlikely as many if not the majority of relationships at 21 go south.

    The hardest "love" to get over is the what if imaginary kind. The mind gets locked into a fantasy of the other person, one that reality could never match and no flesh and blood woman either. And it's not love imho. It's one sided and quite self involved. Love needs to go both ways for it to be any way real.
    Good post. The last paragraph in particular as I went down that road myself. Had to keep reminding myself that it was one sided, my need only. Astonishing how powerful this reawakening of feelings for the other person was.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 13,507 ✭✭✭✭kowloon


    Or maybe she'll have watched "Normal People" and learnt from it???

    Oh **** that series! I was content on my own for so long and that flicked a switch in me that I'd quite like switched off again.

    Been in love once when I was very young, took years to get over. There isn't a deadline for finding it again for most people. Women who want children have a time limit, some of the rest of us aren't going to live a long life and know it, that puts pressure on while simultaneously putting potential partners off.


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,653 ✭✭✭KiKi III


    In a sea of negatives about Tinder etc one note of hope/ optimism a friend pointed out to me is this: It’s solid evidence that there are hundreds, maybe thousands of people in your vicinity who are looking for love too (or sex, but a lot of them are looking for love).

    You only need to hit it off with one of them, and then BOOM you’re on Boards telling your love story.


  • Registered Users Posts: 3 cailte


    I thought Id been in love until I saw my husband.And just like that,I felt I had been hit with a thunderbolt.I also had the strongest feeling that I was going to marry him(I still had yet to even speak to him).It was such a strange and exhilarating mix of emotions and our first year together was like nothing Ive ever experienced since.He was like a drug to me. Those champagne feelings finally settled down and I found myself blessed to be with a good,kind,decent man with the softest heart and a very sensitive and wise soul. He is that gorgeous combination of being a big bear of a man but very tender with it.

    Im with him 18 years now and I feel blessed for every day with him.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 14,279 ✭✭✭✭Potential-Monke


    Hard to know. I feel like i have, but when I step back and look at those relationships now, I'm not sure. I've definitely been very, very content, and I believe I was in love at the time, but I'm not so sure. This love I believe I felt (twice) both happened during very different times of my life.

    First love: School girlfriend. Knew her from when I was 11 visiting a neighbour to play their NES. Good family friends but the only daughter was 4 years older than me, but she used to bring me to her neighbours kids who ranged in age from a few years younger to the same as me. One of them was about 2 years younger than me, she was nice I thought. Roll on 4 years later and I finally got the balls to ask her out and she said yes. First time "proper" relationship and we ended up together for 7 years with a 1 year break after the 6th (life changing for both of us). I believe I was in love, only thought about her, loved spending time with her, got most my first sexual experiences with her (and she me). But when we were hitting our 20's it changed, her friend circle became a lot bigger and she obviously found something in them that I didn't have. She kissed another lad one night, only a kiss, while we were living together. I tried to dismiss it as an accident, but I had lost all trust on that night (looking back now). That hurt, and we parted soon after.

    I went from that straight into another 7 year relationship. This one was better, and again I believe I was in love, and she was in love with me. We had great times, had a few holidays, etc. We were both early 20's and she was still in college and I became a Garda. I had to move, she wasn't too impressed but place to visit for a few days where we could act like rabbits. I got a mortgage and she moved down, but within a year or so I felt I no longer loved her. Now, that could be down to having a friend zoned hottie who I still to this day think it could happen (even though we haven't spoken in about 4 years since I quit being a Garda), or it could have been that I knew she wanted kids and I didn't, so I knew she could never be truly happy with me, or a combination of those and possibly other things. I ended it (oh, what, 6 or so years ago now) and aside from 2 kisses and 1 ride, I've been single since.

    Like some, the heartbreak is hard, and it's not something I want to willingly put myself through again. I'm not successful with women romantically. I can befriend most women, but none of them ever have a romantic or sexual desire for me. Get put down enough times, or take a chance which doesn't work out enough times, and it puts one off trying, which is where I am. I'm happy enough now, but took a while to get here. And my standards are now too high to even try anymore. But back to the point, I can't say for certain if it was love or comfort. I'd like to think love, and I will continue to believe it was unless I have one of those mentioned experiences in the posts above where "I just knew". I got the thinking about others constantly thing, the feeling of being safe, secure, all that. Maybe it's because it has been so long since I felt that way that I can't say for certain if it was love. I dunno. Very subjective.

    My problem nowadays is that the concept of love, and what it should entail and what relationships should be, and how you should feel, is all BS. It's all manufactured to a Hollywood ideal of what love is. Films, tv shows, even music about love paint it in an unrealistic light, but young people can and are fooled by this and expect the same in real life, and it's just not possible.

    TL;DR: I can't recall if I have been, but I think I have. However, being single is vastly easier.


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,786 ✭✭✭KathleenGrant


    Twice. They both broke my heart.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 838 ✭✭✭The_Brood


    Most people seem to be voting based on "have you ever remotely been interested in someone" rather than anything approaching actual love, but ok.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,145 ✭✭✭Mister Vain


    I thought love was just a fabrication.
    A train that wouldn't stop at my station.


  • Posts: 26,052 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    I've been in love a few times to different degrees, been broken hearted, been happily single, and have been happier than I thought possible since I met my now husband.

    Good relationships make everything better, bad relationships make being single better. Everyone is different and so is every relationship.


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,429 ✭✭✭Sheridan81


    Ficheall wrote: »
    It's a relief to hear about all these instances of people falling hopelessly in love at first sight with unattractive people.

    It seems to me if love was really as magical as generally considered, there would be a lot less single people,women in particular, who look like the back side of a bus. Men's love only seems to arise for those of the female species with particular physical characteristics.

    From the outside, it's seems shallow and sexualized; self-deluded infatuation, selfishness and/or materialistic; based on the need to believe in a perfect ideal individual almost intangible, who is imaginary once the core is touched; in the inherent, natural, primitive need for one's own genetic material to improve, one's own nature to survive through blending with the most desirable characteristics; working up the rungs of social hierarchy through time, or the tempting allure for a comfortable, affluent existence in the present.

    As Lord Byron said:

    "Thy love is lust, thy friendship all a cheat
    thy smiles hypocrisy, thy words deceit".


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 12,408 ✭✭✭✭Sardonicat


    ^^^^^
    I think I know why you've never fallen in love.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,429 ✭✭✭Sheridan81


    Sardonicat wrote: »
    ^^^^^
    I think I know why you've never fallen in love.

    I don't think you do really.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 14,714 ✭✭✭✭Earthhorse


    Gruffalox wrote: »
    The love at first sight as pure projection is a tad cynical. I remember clearly what I felt the first time I saw my husband. He was on a bus. At a distance from me. He had a lopsided smile, he did not see me. He had golden hair on his arms and legs. He was so relaxed in his body, like a free animal. Just totally at peace and content He was wearing cut up denim shorts, sandals, a short sleeved shirt open down the front- it was a warm place abroad. He worn a red bandana knotted around his neck and his hair was curly and shoulder length. I felt a completely overwhelming almost psychedelic sensation, it was not sexual, it was an innocent sense of being mesmerised, like a psychic recognition or deja vu, or some kind of compression of time where the whole of past and future contracted. It was literally as though he was illuminated by one of those angelic shafts of light in esoteric paintings. :D
    I got off the bus and presumed I would never see him again and that did not matter. I did not even think anymore about it, just flowed on with what I was doing in my life at that time. It was a whole experience worthy of being beginning middle and end and I just felt a sort of happiness and confidence that all was well with the world.

    I did see him again, as it happened.

    Was he the driver?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 14,714 ✭✭✭✭Earthhorse


    Wibbs wrote: »
    of what was a complete and utter stranger. So unless you believe in the world of the psychic and the like, and fair enough if you do, it was a lovely fantasy and projection. I mean a monstrous psychopath like Ted Bundy and a load of women fall "in love" wth him, some from a distance, a few up close and personal and no doubt at least one felt a similar luminosity for a complete nutcase. One even got up the duff with him when he was in prison. No doubt he was The One™© for her.

    But you'll also see the same thing happen in long term relationships. People will find out, after ten years with someone, that they are having an affair, or are gay, or some other, less dramatic, thing, and they will suddenly find themselves waking up next to a stranger. And it may have been months before they said they loved them or felt in love with them. Is three months, or whatever, enough to say you know someone? Love is a feeling, it always exists inside us exclusively at first and only in the happiest of circumstances will it grow beyond that, but there's no time limit as to when it can be felt.


  • Registered Users Posts: 939 ✭✭✭bitofabind


    I think we've been sold a pup when it comes to love tbh. The Dirty Dancing, fireworks, writing poetry after a single glance, standing on the bow of the Titanic after a few hours of meeting type of love...isn't love. In the real world that's what I call a red flag. Yer real-life Leo is going to ghost you in the middle of next week.
    gogo wrote: »
    There was no big explosion, no grand gestures, it just is. It just happened.

    I've been in love once, and this was what I experienced. No fireworks or "we locked eyes and I just knew." We worked together, and were friends of sorts first. I smiled when I thought of him and seeing him made my day. He looked at me so tenderly, so wonderfully.

    We started dating, things progressed and he just felt safe. He felt like home. There were no dramatics, no 'is he isn't he' dances, we just immediately were a team, and I felt complete and absolute acceptance from him in a way I'd never experienced from a man before. Whether it was my lateness or my moods, his impatience or his messiness. We laughed and joked and found ways around those smaller things because there was this immediate acceptance that we were our own little team.

    Retrospectively, all of those healthy things were there - respect for each other, affection, great chemistry, similar family values, generosity and emotional availability with each other. Things that grew as the relationship did, until life got in the way.

    If you're waiting for fireworks, you're waiting for the wrong thing IME. Attraction is of course key, it's how things move forward. But love is so much deeper than that. IME it's stabilising, life-affirming, a sort of deep familiarity of feeling like you've always known this person more than anything else.


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  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,170 Mod ✭✭✭✭Wibbs


    Sardonicat wrote: »
    ^^^^^
    I think I know why you've never fallen in love.
    Possibly, though if so more because they can't suspend disbelief enough to fall into it so don't. Those who can, which would be most people, certainly when young, do. Some folks are just wired differently, or experience has rewired them.

    And S makes some valid points which are more objectively true than they're not, though because most of us suspend our disbelief for good mental, emotional and even evolutionary reasons we choose to ignore them.

    Better looking people do have it easier. A good looking man or woman will simply have more choices unless they're curtailed by say social anxiety. Study after study has shown people overwhelmingly tend to end up with partners of the same attractiveness* and social and educational and intelligence levels. While there are exceptions they prove the rule. And yet you often hear and I found more from men that their partner is "out of their league". If generally speaking you want to know how attractive you are look to your previous relationships and how attractive they would be to others. That's your "level" pretty much.

    Its even been found that we find those with different immune systems to our own to be more attractive. The mechanism for this is not understood, but scent seems to be a big part of it. Years ago I met this woman who was a "perfect fit" for me in pretty much every way and she expressed similar in my direction and yet when we kissed something was most certainly "off" and we both felt it. Very weird. Maybe our reptile brains went "sorry, nope". Hell it's even been found that women at different times in their menstrual cycle are attracted to different male faces. Around ovulation they click faces that are more masculine, when not or when pregnant they prefer less masculine faces. The pill can skew this and there has been some research that showed breakups were more likely to happen after a woman gave up taking hormonal contraception(or started it). Another study into strippers of all people found that the women on the pill got fewer tips from the men. Indeed among some of the women they had already noticed this. Somehow the men were picking up "not fertile". It's complex and subtle this stuff and covered with a thick layer of cultural and psychological stuff too.



    *This can be skewed by richer men who tend to partner "up", but again it's part of the attractiveness quotient.

    Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 12,408 ✭✭✭✭Sardonicat


    Wibbs wrote: »
    Possibly, though if so more because they can't suspend disbelief enough to fall into it so don't. Those who can, which would be most people, certainly when young, do. Some folks are just wired differently, or experience has rewired them.

    And S makes some valid points which are more objectively true than they're not, though because most of us suspend our disbelief for good mental, emotional and even evolutionary reasons we choose to ignore them.

    Better looking people do have it easier. A good looking man or woman will simply have more choices unless they're curtailed by say social anxiety. Study after study has shown people overwhelmingly tend to end up with partners of the same attractiveness* and social and educational and intelligence levels. While there are exceptions they prove the rule. And yet you often hear and I found more from men that their partner is "out of their league". If generally speaking you want to know how attractive you are look to your previous relationships and how attractive they would be to others. That's your "level" pretty much.

    Its even been found that we find those with different immune systems to our own to be more attractive. The mechanism for this is not understood, but scent seems to be a big part of it. Years ago I met this woman who was a "perfect fit" for me in pretty much every way and she expressed similar in my direction and yet when we kissed something was most certainly "off" and we both felt it. Very weird. Maybe our reptile brains went "sorry, nope". Hell it's even been found that women at different times in their menstrual cycle are attracted to different male faces. Around ovulation they click faces that are more masculine, when not or when pregnant they prefer less masculine faces. The pill can skew this and there has been some research that showed breakups were more likely to happen after a woman gave up taking hormonal contraception(or started it). Another study into strippers of all people found that the women on the pill got fewer tips from the men. Indeed among some of the women they had already noticed this. Somehow the men were picking up "not fertile". It's complex and subtle this stuff and covered with a thick layer of cultural and psychological stuff too.



    *This can be skewed by richer men who tend to partner "up", but again it's part of the attractiveness quotient.

    How about we all just speak for ourselves, from our own experience?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,429 ✭✭✭Sheridan81


    Sardonicat wrote: »
    How about we all just speak for ourselves, from our own experience?

    Yes, that too. But that was my own experience of observing life and living life, and you made an unfair comment.

    Be sensitive to those of us who have never experienced anything and are trying to make sense of it all.:P;)


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,170 Mod ✭✭✭✭Wibbs


    Sardonicat wrote: »
    How about we all just speak for ourselves, from our own experience?
    I didn't know there were rules to this, or just one side of things.

    Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.



  • Posts: 11,614 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    There's a saying: Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

    Utter Bollocks. I envy the OP.


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