A while back my husband and I debated whether love is something that never dies or something you can fall in and out of. There are people who I have loved but no longer love. It’s my husband’s contention that I was never in love with them in the first place.
I have a less ethereal view of love. I believe love takes time and attention. If love is not nurtured over a long period of time it will wane or change. I also believe love can die or be cut out of you with painful, hurtful, or neglectful behaviors.
My husband asked me how I can be committed to anyone if I believe love can die. One, I don’t see love and commitment as the same thing and two, love that is nurtured stays alive and strong. My relationship with my husband is living proof of that.
I have heard it said, over and over, “I still love her…I’m just not ‘in love’ with her anymore.” I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean. You still care about them but you have no desire to be intimate emotionally or physically?
I think many people confuse love with New Relationship Energy (NRE), lust, and/or limerence. They each inspire all those wonderful biochemicals we get to experience in the beginning of a relationship or romance.
I don’t believe in love at first sight. To me love grows over time. However, I do believe strongly in lust at first sight. Although both Jane and Luke in My Body-His would say that they fell in love at first sight, I would have to argue that chemistry and lust consumed them both to such an extent that it felt like love to them.
I have not loved any other man in the way I love my husband. I have grown and changed over our years together as has my capacity to love. I do believe that if we stopped nurturing our connection that our love would eventually fade away or transform into a different kind of love. In the same way I believe love evolves over time, I believe love devolves without the necessary attention.
Where do you fall in this debate? Do you believe that love is everlasting? Or do you believe love has the capacity to last a lifetime but can also die out?
Please share your comments.
Warm hugs,
Blakely Bennett
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What a wonderful Question.
I agree in the distinction you’ve made between love and lust and would
like to add that there are so many types of love. Our english language really fails us sometimes. I heard that eskimos have like lots of words for snow each one referring to a very specific kind of snow. When I think of true love I think of a state of being my (our) natural state of being. We are LOVE. and that LOVE is Unconditional. When I make a connection to another at that very deep level where we are each identified with being LOVE itself there is a natural extension of loving each other. How that is expressed is up to the two experiencing the connection. It may never become sexual or it may be exclusively sexual. My LOVE for another when it is at this deep level and I remember who I am (LOVE) it is eternal and unending. This level of loving though I think transcends the one you are discussing here. Romantic love in my experience is something that requires nurturing and lots of communication and does change over time. It is especially difficult to keep romance alive when the couple isn ‘t growing in the same direction. Romantic love is very much a dance and that dance requires music and presence to continue.
The Unconditional LOVE that is the nature of our Being exists whether we nurture it or not. If it appears to be gone it is us who have strayed from being conscious of who we are.