I am naive and inexperienced in the ways of love, but it seems implausible that romantic love is often (usually?) bidirectional. Of all the people of the right sex that one is close too, why do people usually fall in love with someone who is likewise in love with them?
When it comes to dumb animals it’s because falling in love requires a courtship ritual with multiple steps. If any of the partners doesn’t follow the steps of the ritual then the other animal doesn’t feel the emotions to go to the next step of the ritual.
If a male pig emits enough androsterone, a female pig goes directly into mating position.
When it comes to humans on the other hand it’s possible to do fall in love quite randomly without it being bidirectional. Humans also don’t have an a mating season and do mating quite randomly.
At the same time it’s not so random that old impulses that make it more likely that love is bidirectional don’t exist.
Rapport between humans get’s facilitated through mimikry where people who like each other copy movement of the other person. Breath syncs.
There are also things that happen on a deeper level and that are more difficult to explain. Sunday at the end of the Leipzig Solstice I had a conversation that was on a very deep emotional level. It wasn’t love but still deep emotions.
The woman I was talked to left the room because by empathizing with me about an issue that’s for me painful, because she felt very strong pain in her heart.
Given my current understanding of emotional mimikry and emotions I consider bidirectional love at first sight to be quite plausible even if it doesn’t happen to most people.
It also happens that people have sex before they are fully in love. Feeling pleasure during sex then get’s associated with the sex partner and increases the feelings towards that partner.
The female menstrual cycle is unique to primates. I’m not sure how far this goes back and opened a question over at biology stackexchange.
But that’s not everything. A human can get horny without feeling love. A human can feel love after chatting on a dating website and telling himself in his mind stories about how awesome it will be, to be with the other person.
While Bonobo’s like having sex I doubt that they would be capable to fall in love like that. They ability to tell yourself that kind of story seems to be something very human and evolutionary recent.
Nature doesn’t protect us from unilateraly falling in love through fantasizing about a person that isn’t present.
If you read that article on “Estrous cycle” you linked, it says “Humans have menstrual cycles instead of estrous cycles. [...] Unlike animals with estrous cycles, human females are sexually receptive throughout their cycles.”
Humans along with some other primates are unique in that they have menstrual cycles.
it seems implausible that romantic love is often (usually?) bidirectional
I think you are correct on this one.
why do people usually fall in love with someone who is likewise in love with them?
I have a two-way answer. First: they don’t. Unreciprocated love is quite a theme in Western culture, and I suspect in other cultures too, because as a situation is both extremely common and much dramatic. Second: there’s also an active selection effect, where we tend to like people that like us and that we are more familiar with. Regarding social circles and romantic interests, it’s an exploration / exploitation tradeoff, but the important thing is that there’s an exploitation choice in the first place.
“Falling in love” isn’t this sudden thing that just happens, it’s a process and it’s a process that is assisted if the other person is encouraging and feels likewise. Put another way, when the object of your affection is uninterested, that’s often a turnoff, and so one then looks elsewhere.
when the object of your affection is uninterested, that’s often a turnoff, and so one then looks elsewhere.
I’m probably not a typical case (which is probably why I am confused), but this has not been my experience.
I don’t know if I’ve ever been “in love”, given that “in love” is so sloppily and subjectively defined. I’m not clear on what’s a crush and what’s “in love.” But suffice it to say that I have felt feelings for someone that someone who is less introspective (or philosophically careful) would likely label as being in love.
When I am in such a state, the feelings of the other towards me are fairly irrelevant to my feelings towards her. I want the best for the object of my love and I sort of “melt” inside when I see her smile, but I don’t want her to love me back, necessarily. I want her to be happy. It’s not as if I’m not fishing for a relationship, and if that one isn’t biting, I’ll go find someone else to fall in love with.
However, I have worked hard to develop myself emotionally, to forgive always, and to love unconditionally.
I don’t know if I’ve ever been “in love”, given that “in love” is so sloppily and subjectively defined. I’m not clear on what’s a crush and what’s “in love.”
I guess there are multiple components of “love”, and different people may use different subsets. For example:
obsessively thinking about someone
wanting to cuddle with someone
wanting to have sex with someone
admiring someone
caring about someone’s utility
trusting that someone cares about your utility
precommiting to cooperate in Prisoners’ Dilemma with someone
To avoid possible misunderstanding: the ordering here is random, it is not supposed to suggest some “lower/higher” or “less intense / more intense” classification, and I guess most of these items are independent on each other, although there can be correlations.
I know that one, I think, depending on what obsessive means. I’ve never been impaired by it. In fact I’ve often used thoughts of people who are better than me (or my perfect illusion of people who are in fact not so great) to motivate myself (e.g. “Y wouldn’t give up now”, “If she could do it, I can do it.”) Note that I use comparisons to fictional role models in much the same way...which is fascinating. Maybe I’m only motivated by fictional models of humans.
wanting to cuddle with someone
I don’t think so? I like to cuddle with my dog (who, now that I think about it, fits more of these [1, 2, 5, 6 to the limited extent that he can understand] than almost any humans I’ve met. I think it’s fair to say that I’m in love with my dog, or I was once in love with my dog, but have fallen out of love).
wanting to have sex with someone
My desire to fuck someone has so far been entirely unrelated to my romantic love/admiration for the person. Sometimes I’ve felt that the person is so beautiful that sex would be a debasement, but maybe I have (like most of us?) screwed-up [heh] associations with sex?
admiring someone
See above. Of course, I admire people I’m not in love with, but my admiration for those people goes way overboard.
caring about someone’s utility
I care for all people and all creatures. I don’t think I even prioritize the people I know.
trusting that someone cares about your utility
Nope. I don’t think so. I may love a person, but that doesn’t mean I trust him/her.
precommiting to cooperate in Prisoners’ Dilemma with someone
Explicitly? I don’t think I’ve ever done that, or that I know anyone who has. Isn’t this just number 6, again?
My take away from these is the experience of being in love (at least for me) seems to consist primarily of having an exaggerated view of the other person. I asked elsewhere if romantic love might just be a special case of the halo effect. I wonder if perfect rationalists are immune to love.
Uhm, this probably wouldn’t match my definition of “love”. On the other hand, I know other people who define “love” exactly like this, although they would probably object against an explicit description. Let’s move from definitions to anticipated experiences.
If the emotion you described “seems to consist primarily of having an exaggerated view of the other person”, then it seems unsustainable in long term. If you spend a lot of time with someone, you will get more data about them, and the exaggerated view will be fixed. Also, this “special case of the halo effect” may be powered by dopamine, which (according to other people; I am not a biochemist) usually expires after 3-6 months. Unless during that time you also develop other feelings for the person, the foundation for the relationship will be gone. Then the same feeling may develop towards another person. From the inside this feels like “realizing that X wasn’t your true love, because you have met Y, and now you understand that Y is your true love”. Of course, in the next cycle it leads to “realization” that Y also wasn’t the “true love”. (It is possible that this effect is responsible for many divorces, so I would strongly advise against getting married in this situation.)
Shortly, what you described seems to me sufficient for “hooking up”, and insufficient for a long-term relationship. There are many people in the same situation. It is possible to develop also stronger feelings.
First I want to comment that I am making a firm distinction between love (which I have for many people, including those not of my preferred sex, and sometimes non-humans or even plants, and is a sort of sympathy with and recognition of the beauty of the other) and being “in love” (which is seems to be a far more intense, and consuming feeling towards one specific person at a time, I think). I love my friends. Being “in love” is something else. I think it is the case that one must love the person with which he/she is in love (one is necessary but not sufficient for the other), but perhaps not.
Furthermore, being in love (if I can call my experience that) doesn’t have anything much to do with being in a romantic relationship with a person.
If you spend a lot of time with someone, you will get more data about them, and the exaggerated view will be fixed
Not necessarily, or we couldn’t fall into affective death spirals. There’s confirmation bias to contend with.
then it seems unsustainable in long term.
Yes. That is probably the the case in most situations.
From the inside this feels like “realizing that X wasn’t your true love, because you have met Y, and now you understand that Y is your true love”. Of course, in the next cycle it leads to “realization” that Y also wasn’t the “true love”. (It is possible that this effect is responsible for many divorces, so I would strongly advise against getting married in this situation.)
I have distinct meta-cognitive thoughts. For instance, I feel like I will love this person forever, because that is entailed in the feeling, but I am also aware that I have no real way of predicting my future mental states and that people who are in love frequently and wrongly predict the immortality of the feeling.
also..
None of this has any extremely obvious effects on my decision making: I wouldn’t run off and get married for instance, because of that voice of rational meta-cognition, for example. However, It probably biases me in all sorts of ways that I can’t track as readily.
Okay then. If you distinguish between “love”, “being in love” and “being in a romantic relationship”, I’d say you already have better understanding than most people who put all of this into one big blob labeled “love”.
When I am in such a state, the feelings of the other towards me are fairly irrelevant to my feelings towards her.
I think people learn to regulate themselves when they realize how self-defeating this is. I know I did. The key to self-regulation is stopping the process in it’s infancy. This applies to other feelings too.
I was thinking about removing the comment because it wasn’t clear to me what you were referring to. I think having strong feelings for other people while ignoring how they feel about you is generally a waste of resources.
Ok. Reading the replies to this, I feel like my model of how dating works is fairly divergent from the norm.
Do people date (some people: I know that people date for all sorts of reasons) in the hopes of falling in love with each other?
You pick someone who is reasonably attractive to you, then go through the motions of having a relationship (which may include eating together or having sex together, among other things) until you fall in love?
It’s probably useful to think of relationships as feedback loops. From that point of view it’s not particularly important whether you started with behaviours or feelings—what’s important is whether that feedback loop got going.
How is it exactly that the behaviors produce the feelings? Is it “just” that flattery and attention make people feel good, which leads to “in love” feelings? What is it about dating that engenders romance? This is what seems foreign to me, but then again,
Keep in mind that the notion of romantic love is fairly recent (goes back to Middle Age troubadours, I think) and the idea that romantic love is the proper basis for marriage in common people is very recent (XIX century would be my off-the-top-of-my-head guess). People married without “feelings” for many centuries and guess what, it mostly worked.
Is that really accurate? A number of the stories in Ovid’s Amores and Metamorphoses which sound pretty close to what we’d call “romantic love” and that’s from around 20 BCE and there’s no indication that anything there is shocking or surprising to roman notions of love.
I would guess that in the past “romantic love” was a luxury that only wealthy people could afford (e.g. citizens of the Ancient Rome) and often happened outside of marriage; most people married for economical reasons.
In other words “you can love someone” is old, but “you should marry the person you love” is new.
Spending more time together means you (a) can notice more interesting things about the other person, and (b) have more common experience. Both of those can contribute to love.
There are things that you only notice after long interaction, for example how reliable the other person is, or how they behave in exceptional situations. (On the other hand, there is also a chance you will notice negative traits.) Having things in common increases the feeling of closeness.
Yes. I understand that. But it is just as true for my friends, of whom I am very selective, and with whom I grow very close. I have only occasionally developed quasi-romantic feelings for (feelings that, given what I’m reading here, seem close enough to qualify as “in love with”) a friend. Why is that?
(Admittedly, both the people I’ve “fallen for” have been 1) of my preferred sex and 2) particularly awesome.)
People keep reminding me that it’s not a dice role, it’s a process, yet from my perspective it seem pretty random. I’ve never tried to “fall in love” and it’s a trope [fictionalized?] that you can’t control it. That’s why it’s described by FALLING. It seems a lot like a dice role!
But, maybe I’m not giving enough credence to individuals’ responsiveness to stimuli. Reviewing what I know about dating, it seem well designed for building a Pavlovian association between feelings of intimacy, attraction and pressure and the other person (for instance, candle light is romantic because low light conditions make the pupils dilate, just as they do when one is aroused. I wonder if seeing a movie is a popular date because it simulates highly emotional experience, that both people can undergo together, without the difficulties that accompany them such high emotions in life).
This is funny to me, because I have thought that dating, as it is usually practiced, is not a particularity good way to get to know someone well, but as is often the case, it’s not that it doesn’t work, it’s that it does something different than is advertized.
It’s not going through the motions, you’re just placing too much of an emphasis on love, and probably love at first sight. When people meet someone who is attractive, they have certain emotions toward them. When they start to interact, they get more and more information about well they get along, the kind of things the other person enjoys etc. This is a fun process if you’re attracted to someone, and you can get more and more interested in them. This isn’t “Going through the motions” but neither is it love at first sight. It’s development of relatively minor feelings into a long-term, very emotional commitment, which we generally refer to as love. The reason romantic love is often bidirectional is because it’s not random: Its the outcome of a process of mutual attraction and interaction.
TLDR: Love is not assigned by cosmic die roll, but an emotional outcome of human behaviors towards those around them.
When they start to interact, they get more and more information about well they get along, the kind of things the other person enjoys etc. This is a fun process if you’re attracted to someone, and you can get more and more interested in them.
This applies equally to getting to know someone in a non-romantic context, and in fact fairly well describes my excitement at meeting someone who I think might be a potential friend. Why is it sometimes feelings of love instead of friendship?
(Note that this is in the context of not really understanding the difference between a friend-relationship and a romantic-relationship.)
Please either clearly define “love” or taboo the word and ask the question again. It’s a vague term and I think your meaning of it differs somewhat from the rest of us. For one thing, I would not say it’s a binary state of “in love with” or “not (yet) in love with” a person.
Many people date with the hopes of developing a strong, long-lasting romantic connection, but that doesn’t mean that if such a connection fails to form then the entire effort was wasted. Being in a romantic relationship is (supposed to be) a pleasant experience, regardless of how far into it you are. People who are explicitly looking for a life partner would do well to only seek out potential dates/partners with the same goal in mind, but even then you can have a fun time for a few dates and then decide that it’s just not going to work out, or spend a happy year together and discover that you never really stop looking for somebody else nonetheless.
As for “the behaviors precede the feelings?”, I’m not sure how to answer that except that about “love” specifically, but in general the answer is “no”. You engage in behaviors commensurate with your current feelings. People on a first date frequently have nothing between themselves but a shallow attraction (online dating changes this a bit, but that’s another topic); they get dinner together / take a walk together / have a drink together because they are experiencing a mutual feeling of “I want to start getting to know that person, probably with an eye to developing a romantic relationship”. If they have sex on the first date, it’s because after some time together each one is attracted to and aroused by the other person, not (generally) because they are “in love”. If they sincerely ask to set up another date, that’s probably because they felt the first date was pleasant (however “far” it went) and would like to spend more time together in a potentially-romantic context. None of these behaviors—asking somebody out, going on a first date, going on successive dates, kissing, having sex, etc. - require being “in love” with the other person; merely they require that both people want to.
Of course, the forming of a romantic attachment is a different matter. Anything I say on that subject should be taken with approximately a tablespoon of salt; I am no expert in this area and I know any explanation I try and give on the subject will be inadequate. With that said, I’ll take a shot at it: forming such attachments (one possible value of “falling in love”) takes time and will often (but not always) grow out of spending a lot of time together romantically and deeply enjoying the experiences. You can have lots of fun together, over months or even years, without forming much of a connection; I am told that it’s possible for people to spend one evening together and feel like they can’t live without the other person. Neither scenario is either a prerequisite for nor precludes “the motions of having a relationship”.
Please either clearly define “love” or taboo the word and ask the question again. It’s a vague term and I think your meaning of it differs somewhat from the rest of us.
I don’t know if being “in love” is a thing that actually exists, and if it does, what exactly it is, but in general, people seem to regard whatever the term refers to as somthign great and profound, so I am interested in it. I’m trying to figure out what’s behind the word. So maybe you can tell me?
Anyone here who has been “in love”, can you tell us what the characteristics were? I’d like to know if it corresponds to an internal state that I have experienced. In particular, how does romantic love differ from friendship?
I don’t know if being “in love” is a thing that actually exists
What do you mean? There’s a word called love and there’s a reality that people refer to with the word. Words are replaceable.
I’d like to know if it corresponds to an internal state that I have experienced.
The problem is the same hormonal process doesn’t necessarily feel exactly the same in everyone’s body. I think it would be more reliable to inspect your thoughts and your behavior towards the person and compare them to other people in love.
In particular, how does romantic love differ from friendship?
That’s like asking how hot differs from cold, perhaps equally inexplicable, if you’re asking about being in love. If you would’ve experienced it, you’d know. More reasonable people look mainly for friendship in their life partners and therefore might use the words love and friendship interchangeably. They probably wouldn’t talk about being in love however.
As a data point I’ve been in love several times, also reciprocically. It hasn’t made me happier on the whole, since the state makes me short sighted and neglect more lasting sources of happiness, and therefore I’m not seeking it anymore.
I think it would be more reliable to inspect your thoughts and your behavior towards the person and compare them to other people in love.
Exactly. But I don’t know what the thoughts of other people are and I have reason to think that my external behaviors will differ from others, even if we are both motivated by the same feelings.
When I’m in love, my thoughts are obsessed with the person and other thoughts are put aside. My thinking is distorted by baseless optimism. I fail to notice flaws in them I would notice with a sober mind, and when I do notice flaws I accept flaws I wouldn’t normally accept. Since being in love feels so good, much of my thinking is dedicated to reinforcing my feelings through imagining situations with the person when they’re not around and of course nothing in those situations ever goes wrong. This creates unrealistic expectations. I plan my life with them optimistically way further than I would plan my life in any other regard. I can’t properly analyze my mental state while being in love, since analytical thinking would likely end it and that’s the last thing I want.
When I’m in love, my thoughts are obsessed with the person and other thoughts are put aside.
I’m not sure about obsessed but when I’m [state possibly reference by the phrase “in love”, and which I will represent by “X”] I do think about the person a lot, significantly more than anyone else in my life, despite not seeing this person with high frequency.
My thinking is distorted by baseless optimism. I fail to notice flaws in them I would notice with a sober mind, and when I do notice flaws I accept flaws I wouldn’t normally accept.
I quibble with “baseless.” When I’m X I certainly express great admiration for the person, bordering on a perception of perfection, but the individual in question has always been someone who is legitimately exceptional by objective measures. However, it does seem to a very strong halo effect.
Since being in love feels so good
Check.
imagining situations with the person when they’re not around and of course nothing in those situations ever goes wrong
I’m not sure what sort of imagining you’re doing, but I can relate to imagined conversations during which the person in question is impressed to the point of astonishment of some virtue of mine (my restraint, or my altruism, or something).
This creates unrealistic expectations.
I don’t think so, but then, I’ve never desired to have a romantic relationship with either of my objects of affection. I have desired to be close to them and spend time with them. I’m not really sure what “romantic” is.
I plan my life with them optimistically way further than I would plan my life in any other regard.
Nope. When I’m X, I’m not doing an planning.
I can’t properly analyze my mental state while being in love, since analytical thinking would likely end it and that’s the last thing I want.
No again. I have distinct meta-cognitive thoughts. For instance, I feel like I will love this person forever, because that is entailed in the feeling, but I am also aware that I have no real way of predicting my future mental states and that people who are in love frequently wrongly predict the immortality of the feeling. I laugh at myself and at how ridiculous I am. My ability to maintain a clear outside-view does nothing to squash the subjective feelings.
None of this has any extremely obvious effects on my decision making: I wouldn’t run off and get married for instance, because of that voice of rational meta-cognition, for example. However, It probably biases me in all sorts of ways that I can’t track as readily.
I should also note that I might sometimes feel a twinge of jealousy, but release it almost immediately.
So...Have I been “in love”? It sounds like I’ve had most (?) of the symptoms? How is this any differnat form just having “crush” on someone?
Congratulations, if you can’t easily discern the difference between romantic and platonic love then you may be aromantic or demiromantic!
Unfortunately, as one of those myself, I can’t shed much light on the difference despite currently being in a romantic relationship. But you might start off looking at those terms and various forums for asexual/aromantic types to get a better handle of where the applicable lines are
Unrequited love is a thing that exists, and breakups where only one side feels the relationship should end are common. In fact, one reason that people decide to stop dating is because the other person is falling / has fallen in love with them, and they don’t feel that strongly towards that person (or see themselves likely to do so soon) and therefore call it off to let both people go on to find other partners (EDIT: polyamory mitigates this problem to a degree but you will still have a problem if there is severely unequal attachment between partners). I have no statistics for the number of people who end up with staying with the first person they said “I love you” too, or with the first person who said “I love you” to them, but I expect it (90%) to be under 50%, and wouldn’t be surprised (50%) if it’s 25% or lower, for either direction. People do not “usually fall in love with someone who is likewise in love with them”.
You can quibble over definitions of what constitutes “love”; people, including those in relationships, do it constantly. If you simply take it as “capacity to be in a strong romantic relationship with a person for a period of years” then for most people there are a huge number of people they could fall in love with, and if they spend a lot of time with one of those people and mutually engage in displays of closeness, affection, desire, and pleasure in spending time together, many of those people will mutually fall in love.
Don’t believe in the myth of “the one for me”; high standards are good, but if you spend a lot of time with somebody who you really like and who really likes you, you will probably find that the characteristics you’re looking for in a love and the way you view the other person will become more aligned. That applies to both (or potentially “all”, for cases of more than two people) parties. Definitely don’t believe in “love at first sight”; you may well fall in love with somebody who you felt you loved from the moment you met them, but you’re far more likely to fall in love with somebody who you got to know and discovered a mutual attraction and desire for each other’s affection and presence in your/their life.
I am naive and inexperienced in the ways of love, but it seems implausible that romantic love is often (usually?) bidirectional. Of all the people of the right sex that one is close too, why do people usually fall in love with someone who is likewise in love with them?
When it comes to dumb animals it’s because falling in love requires a courtship ritual with multiple steps. If any of the partners doesn’t follow the steps of the ritual then the other animal doesn’t feel the emotions to go to the next step of the ritual.
If a male pig emits enough androsterone, a female pig goes directly into mating position.
When it comes to humans on the other hand it’s possible to do fall in love quite randomly without it being bidirectional. Humans also don’t have an a mating season and do mating quite randomly.
At the same time it’s not so random that old impulses that make it more likely that love is bidirectional don’t exist. Rapport between humans get’s facilitated through mimikry where people who like each other copy movement of the other person. Breath syncs.
There are also things that happen on a deeper level and that are more difficult to explain. Sunday at the end of the Leipzig Solstice I had a conversation that was on a very deep emotional level. It wasn’t love but still deep emotions. The woman I was talked to left the room because by empathizing with me about an issue that’s for me painful, because she felt very strong pain in her heart.
Given my current understanding of emotional mimikry and emotions I consider bidirectional love at first sight to be quite plausible even if it doesn’t happen to most people.
It also happens that people have sex before they are fully in love. Feeling pleasure during sex then get’s associated with the sex partner and increases the feelings towards that partner.
Why not? When did we diverge form other mammals in this regard?
The female menstrual cycle is unique to primates. I’m not sure how far this goes back and opened a question over at biology stackexchange.
But that’s not everything. A human can get horny without feeling love. A human can feel love after chatting on a dating website and telling himself in his mind stories about how awesome it will be, to be with the other person.
While Bonobo’s like having sex I doubt that they would be capable to fall in love like that. They ability to tell yourself that kind of story seems to be something very human and evolutionary recent.
Nature doesn’t protect us from unilateraly falling in love through fantasizing about a person that isn’t present.
Humans are not unique in that respect.
If you read that article on “Estrous cycle” you linked, it says “Humans have menstrual cycles instead of estrous cycles. [...] Unlike animals with estrous cycles, human females are sexually receptive throughout their cycles.” Humans along with some other primates are unique in that they have menstrual cycles.
I think you are correct on this one.
I have a two-way answer. First: they don’t. Unreciprocated love is quite a theme in Western culture, and I suspect in other cultures too, because as a situation is both extremely common and much dramatic. Second: there’s also an active selection effect, where we tend to like people that like us and that we are more familiar with. Regarding social circles and romantic interests, it’s an exploration / exploitation tradeoff, but the important thing is that there’s an exploitation choice in the first place.
“Falling in love” isn’t this sudden thing that just happens, it’s a process and it’s a process that is assisted if the other person is encouraging and feels likewise. Put another way, when the object of your affection is uninterested, that’s often a turnoff, and so one then looks elsewhere.
I’m probably not a typical case (which is probably why I am confused), but this has not been my experience.
I don’t know if I’ve ever been “in love”, given that “in love” is so sloppily and subjectively defined. I’m not clear on what’s a crush and what’s “in love.” But suffice it to say that I have felt feelings for someone that someone who is less introspective (or philosophically careful) would likely label as being in love.
When I am in such a state, the feelings of the other towards me are fairly irrelevant to my feelings towards her. I want the best for the object of my love and I sort of “melt” inside when I see her smile, but I don’t want her to love me back, necessarily. I want her to be happy. It’s not as if I’m not fishing for a relationship, and if that one isn’t biting, I’ll go find someone else to fall in love with.
However, I have worked hard to develop myself emotionally, to forgive always, and to love unconditionally.
I guess there are multiple components of “love”, and different people may use different subsets. For example:
obsessively thinking about someone
wanting to cuddle with someone
wanting to have sex with someone
admiring someone
caring about someone’s utility
trusting that someone cares about your utility
precommiting to cooperate in Prisoners’ Dilemma with someone
To avoid possible misunderstanding: the ordering here is random, it is not supposed to suggest some “lower/higher” or “less intense / more intense” classification, and I guess most of these items are independent on each other, although there can be correlations.
Personally,
I know that one, I think, depending on what obsessive means. I’ve never been impaired by it. In fact I’ve often used thoughts of people who are better than me (or my perfect illusion of people who are in fact not so great) to motivate myself (e.g. “Y wouldn’t give up now”, “If she could do it, I can do it.”) Note that I use comparisons to fictional role models in much the same way...which is fascinating. Maybe I’m only motivated by fictional models of humans.
I don’t think so? I like to cuddle with my dog (who, now that I think about it, fits more of these [1, 2, 5, 6 to the limited extent that he can understand] than almost any humans I’ve met. I think it’s fair to say that I’m in love with my dog, or I was once in love with my dog, but have fallen out of love).
My desire to fuck someone has so far been entirely unrelated to my romantic love/admiration for the person. Sometimes I’ve felt that the person is so beautiful that sex would be a debasement, but maybe I have (like most of us?) screwed-up [heh] associations with sex?
See above. Of course, I admire people I’m not in love with, but my admiration for those people goes way overboard.
I care for all people and all creatures. I don’t think I even prioritize the people I know.
Nope. I don’t think so. I may love a person, but that doesn’t mean I trust him/her.
Explicitly? I don’t think I’ve ever done that, or that I know anyone who has. Isn’t this just number 6, again?
My take away from these is the experience of being in love (at least for me) seems to consist primarily of having an exaggerated view of the other person. I asked elsewhere if romantic love might just be a special case of the halo effect. I wonder if perfect rationalists are immune to love.
Uhm, this probably wouldn’t match my definition of “love”. On the other hand, I know other people who define “love” exactly like this, although they would probably object against an explicit description. Let’s move from definitions to anticipated experiences.
If the emotion you described “seems to consist primarily of having an exaggerated view of the other person”, then it seems unsustainable in long term. If you spend a lot of time with someone, you will get more data about them, and the exaggerated view will be fixed. Also, this “special case of the halo effect” may be powered by dopamine, which (according to other people; I am not a biochemist) usually expires after 3-6 months. Unless during that time you also develop other feelings for the person, the foundation for the relationship will be gone. Then the same feeling may develop towards another person. From the inside this feels like “realizing that X wasn’t your true love, because you have met Y, and now you understand that Y is your true love”. Of course, in the next cycle it leads to “realization” that Y also wasn’t the “true love”. (It is possible that this effect is responsible for many divorces, so I would strongly advise against getting married in this situation.)
Shortly, what you described seems to me sufficient for “hooking up”, and insufficient for a long-term relationship. There are many people in the same situation. It is possible to develop also stronger feelings.
First I want to comment that I am making a firm distinction between love (which I have for many people, including those not of my preferred sex, and sometimes non-humans or even plants, and is a sort of sympathy with and recognition of the beauty of the other) and being “in love” (which is seems to be a far more intense, and consuming feeling towards one specific person at a time, I think). I love my friends. Being “in love” is something else. I think it is the case that one must love the person with which he/she is in love (one is necessary but not sufficient for the other), but perhaps not.
Furthermore, being in love (if I can call my experience that) doesn’t have anything much to do with being in a romantic relationship with a person.
Not necessarily, or we couldn’t fall into affective death spirals. There’s confirmation bias to contend with.
Yes. That is probably the the case in most situations.
Did you see what I wrote here?
also..
Okay then. If you distinguish between “love”, “being in love” and “being in a romantic relationship”, I’d say you already have better understanding than most people who put all of this into one big blob labeled “love”.
Which is not to say I have much understanding at all, judging from the perennial mistakes people make with regard to love.
I think people learn to regulate themselves when they realize how self-defeating this is. I know I did. The key to self-regulation is stopping the process in it’s infancy. This applies to other feelings too.
What is “this”?
I was thinking about removing the comment because it wasn’t clear to me what you were referring to. I think having strong feelings for other people while ignoring how they feel about you is generally a waste of resources.
In what sense is it a waste of resources? What value are you optimizing for, that you are being wasteful?
I value the love (romantic or otherwise) of another for its own sake.
Ok. Reading the replies to this, I feel like my model of how dating works is fairly divergent from the norm.
Do people date (some people: I know that people date for all sorts of reasons) in the hopes of falling in love with each other? You pick someone who is reasonably attractive to you, then go through the motions of having a relationship (which may include eating together or having sex together, among other things) until you fall in love?
The behaviors precede the feelings?
That is not at all the model I am working from.
It’s probably useful to think of relationships as feedback loops. From that point of view it’s not particularly important whether you started with behaviours or feelings—what’s important is whether that feedback loop got going.
How is it exactly that the behaviors produce the feelings? Is it “just” that flattery and attention make people feel good, which leads to “in love” feelings? What is it about dating that engenders romance? This is what seems foreign to me, but then again,
Keep in mind that the notion of romantic love is fairly recent (goes back to Middle Age troubadours, I think) and the idea that romantic love is the proper basis for marriage in common people is very recent (XIX century would be my off-the-top-of-my-head guess). People married without “feelings” for many centuries and guess what, it mostly worked.
Humans are adaptable.
I though people had noticed romantic love well before the troubadours, it’s just that people used to think romantic love was madness.
Is that really accurate? A number of the stories in Ovid’s Amores and Metamorphoses which sound pretty close to what we’d call “romantic love” and that’s from around 20 BCE and there’s no indication that anything there is shocking or surprising to roman notions of love.
I would guess that in the past “romantic love” was a luxury that only wealthy people could afford (e.g. citizens of the Ancient Rome) and often happened outside of marriage; most people married for economical reasons.
In other words “you can love someone” is old, but “you should marry the person you love” is new.
Spending more time together means you (a) can notice more interesting things about the other person, and (b) have more common experience. Both of those can contribute to love.
There are things that you only notice after long interaction, for example how reliable the other person is, or how they behave in exceptional situations. (On the other hand, there is also a chance you will notice negative traits.) Having things in common increases the feeling of closeness.
Yes. I understand that. But it is just as true for my friends, of whom I am very selective, and with whom I grow very close. I have only occasionally developed quasi-romantic feelings for (feelings that, given what I’m reading here, seem close enough to qualify as “in love with”) a friend. Why is that?
(Admittedly, both the people I’ve “fallen for” have been 1) of my preferred sex and 2) particularly awesome.)
People keep reminding me that it’s not a dice role, it’s a process, yet from my perspective it seem pretty random. I’ve never tried to “fall in love” and it’s a trope [fictionalized?] that you can’t control it. That’s why it’s described by FALLING. It seems a lot like a dice role!
But, maybe I’m not giving enough credence to individuals’ responsiveness to stimuli. Reviewing what I know about dating, it seem well designed for building a Pavlovian association between feelings of intimacy, attraction and pressure and the other person (for instance, candle light is romantic because low light conditions make the pupils dilate, just as they do when one is aroused. I wonder if seeing a movie is a popular date because it simulates highly emotional experience, that both people can undergo together, without the difficulties that accompany them such high emotions in life).
This is funny to me, because I have thought that dating, as it is usually practiced, is not a particularity good way to get to know someone well, but as is often the case, it’s not that it doesn’t work, it’s that it does something different than is advertized.
I would guess that low light also creates a small level of instinctive fear, which creates a desire to be together with someone (for protection).
Human brains appear to be wired that way.
Yes, that’s the model I work from.
It’s not going through the motions, you’re just placing too much of an emphasis on love, and probably love at first sight. When people meet someone who is attractive, they have certain emotions toward them. When they start to interact, they get more and more information about well they get along, the kind of things the other person enjoys etc. This is a fun process if you’re attracted to someone, and you can get more and more interested in them. This isn’t “Going through the motions” but neither is it love at first sight. It’s development of relatively minor feelings into a long-term, very emotional commitment, which we generally refer to as love. The reason romantic love is often bidirectional is because it’s not random: Its the outcome of a process of mutual attraction and interaction.
TLDR: Love is not assigned by cosmic die roll, but an emotional outcome of human behaviors towards those around them.
This applies equally to getting to know someone in a non-romantic context, and in fact fairly well describes my excitement at meeting someone who I think might be a potential friend. Why is it sometimes feelings of love instead of friendship?
(Note that this is in the context of not really understanding the difference between a friend-relationship and a romantic-relationship.)
Could be just context and interpretation, which do make the psychological reality of the situation different.
I don’t think there’s a good answer to that apart from some mishmash of happenstance, pheromones, social context, and neurological variation.
Please either clearly define “love” or taboo the word and ask the question again. It’s a vague term and I think your meaning of it differs somewhat from the rest of us. For one thing, I would not say it’s a binary state of “in love with” or “not (yet) in love with” a person.
Many people date with the hopes of developing a strong, long-lasting romantic connection, but that doesn’t mean that if such a connection fails to form then the entire effort was wasted. Being in a romantic relationship is (supposed to be) a pleasant experience, regardless of how far into it you are. People who are explicitly looking for a life partner would do well to only seek out potential dates/partners with the same goal in mind, but even then you can have a fun time for a few dates and then decide that it’s just not going to work out, or spend a happy year together and discover that you never really stop looking for somebody else nonetheless.
As for “the behaviors precede the feelings?”, I’m not sure how to answer that except that about “love” specifically, but in general the answer is “no”. You engage in behaviors commensurate with your current feelings. People on a first date frequently have nothing between themselves but a shallow attraction (online dating changes this a bit, but that’s another topic); they get dinner together / take a walk together / have a drink together because they are experiencing a mutual feeling of “I want to start getting to know that person, probably with an eye to developing a romantic relationship”. If they have sex on the first date, it’s because after some time together each one is attracted to and aroused by the other person, not (generally) because they are “in love”. If they sincerely ask to set up another date, that’s probably because they felt the first date was pleasant (however “far” it went) and would like to spend more time together in a potentially-romantic context. None of these behaviors—asking somebody out, going on a first date, going on successive dates, kissing, having sex, etc. - require being “in love” with the other person; merely they require that both people want to.
Of course, the forming of a romantic attachment is a different matter. Anything I say on that subject should be taken with approximately a tablespoon of salt; I am no expert in this area and I know any explanation I try and give on the subject will be inadequate. With that said, I’ll take a shot at it: forming such attachments (one possible value of “falling in love”) takes time and will often (but not always) grow out of spending a lot of time together romantically and deeply enjoying the experiences. You can have lots of fun together, over months or even years, without forming much of a connection; I am told that it’s possible for people to spend one evening together and feel like they can’t live without the other person. Neither scenario is either a prerequisite for nor precludes “the motions of having a relationship”.
I don’t know if being “in love” is a thing that actually exists, and if it does, what exactly it is, but in general, people seem to regard whatever the term refers to as somthign great and profound, so I am interested in it. I’m trying to figure out what’s behind the word. So maybe you can tell me?
Anyone here who has been “in love”, can you tell us what the characteristics were? I’d like to know if it corresponds to an internal state that I have experienced. In particular, how does romantic love differ from friendship?
What do you mean? There’s a word called love and there’s a reality that people refer to with the word. Words are replaceable.
The problem is the same hormonal process doesn’t necessarily feel exactly the same in everyone’s body. I think it would be more reliable to inspect your thoughts and your behavior towards the person and compare them to other people in love.
That’s like asking how hot differs from cold, perhaps equally inexplicable, if you’re asking about being in love. If you would’ve experienced it, you’d know. More reasonable people look mainly for friendship in their life partners and therefore might use the words love and friendship interchangeably. They probably wouldn’t talk about being in love however.
As a data point I’ve been in love several times, also reciprocically. It hasn’t made me happier on the whole, since the state makes me short sighted and neglect more lasting sources of happiness, and therefore I’m not seeking it anymore.
Exactly. But I don’t know what the thoughts of other people are and I have reason to think that my external behaviors will differ from others, even if we are both motivated by the same feelings.
When I’m in love, my thoughts are obsessed with the person and other thoughts are put aside. My thinking is distorted by baseless optimism. I fail to notice flaws in them I would notice with a sober mind, and when I do notice flaws I accept flaws I wouldn’t normally accept. Since being in love feels so good, much of my thinking is dedicated to reinforcing my feelings through imagining situations with the person when they’re not around and of course nothing in those situations ever goes wrong. This creates unrealistic expectations. I plan my life with them optimistically way further than I would plan my life in any other regard. I can’t properly analyze my mental state while being in love, since analytical thinking would likely end it and that’s the last thing I want.
Comparing...
I’m not sure about obsessed but when I’m [state possibly reference by the phrase “in love”, and which I will represent by “X”] I do think about the person a lot, significantly more than anyone else in my life, despite not seeing this person with high frequency.
I quibble with “baseless.” When I’m X I certainly express great admiration for the person, bordering on a perception of perfection, but the individual in question has always been someone who is legitimately exceptional by objective measures. However, it does seem to a very strong halo effect.
Check.
I’m not sure what sort of imagining you’re doing, but I can relate to imagined conversations during which the person in question is impressed to the point of astonishment of some virtue of mine (my restraint, or my altruism, or something).
I don’t think so, but then, I’ve never desired to have a romantic relationship with either of my objects of affection. I have desired to be close to them and spend time with them. I’m not really sure what “romantic” is.
Nope. When I’m X, I’m not doing an planning.
No again. I have distinct meta-cognitive thoughts. For instance, I feel like I will love this person forever, because that is entailed in the feeling, but I am also aware that I have no real way of predicting my future mental states and that people who are in love frequently wrongly predict the immortality of the feeling. I laugh at myself and at how ridiculous I am. My ability to maintain a clear outside-view does nothing to squash the subjective feelings.
None of this has any extremely obvious effects on my decision making: I wouldn’t run off and get married for instance, because of that voice of rational meta-cognition, for example. However, It probably biases me in all sorts of ways that I can’t track as readily.
I should also note that I might sometimes feel a twinge of jealousy, but release it almost immediately.
So...Have I been “in love”? It sounds like I’ve had most (?) of the symptoms? How is this any differnat form just having “crush” on someone?
I was just rereading the sequences, and I wonder, is being “in love” just an application of the halo effect?
Congratulations, if you can’t easily discern the difference between romantic and platonic love then you may be aromantic or demiromantic!
Unfortunately, as one of those myself, I can’t shed much light on the difference despite currently being in a romantic relationship. But you might start off looking at those terms and various forums for asexual/aromantic types to get a better handle of where the applicable lines are
Unrequited love is a thing that exists, and breakups where only one side feels the relationship should end are common. In fact, one reason that people decide to stop dating is because the other person is falling / has fallen in love with them, and they don’t feel that strongly towards that person (or see themselves likely to do so soon) and therefore call it off to let both people go on to find other partners (EDIT: polyamory mitigates this problem to a degree but you will still have a problem if there is severely unequal attachment between partners). I have no statistics for the number of people who end up with staying with the first person they said “I love you” too, or with the first person who said “I love you” to them, but I expect it (90%) to be under 50%, and wouldn’t be surprised (50%) if it’s 25% or lower, for either direction. People do not “usually fall in love with someone who is likewise in love with them”.
You can quibble over definitions of what constitutes “love”; people, including those in relationships, do it constantly. If you simply take it as “capacity to be in a strong romantic relationship with a person for a period of years” then for most people there are a huge number of people they could fall in love with, and if they spend a lot of time with one of those people and mutually engage in displays of closeness, affection, desire, and pleasure in spending time together, many of those people will mutually fall in love.
Don’t believe in the myth of “the one for me”; high standards are good, but if you spend a lot of time with somebody who you really like and who really likes you, you will probably find that the characteristics you’re looking for in a love and the way you view the other person will become more aligned. That applies to both (or potentially “all”, for cases of more than two people) parties. Definitely don’t believe in “love at first sight”; you may well fall in love with somebody who you felt you loved from the moment you met them, but you’re far more likely to fall in love with somebody who you got to know and discovered a mutual attraction and desire for each other’s affection and presence in your/their life.