I think it's both. You can def. choose to love someone but it also has many feelings that go along with it.

I think love is a feeling. I can't help but love my h. Even though he hurt me in one of the worst possible ways, I still loved him. I had to pull back from those feelings a lot when it came out, but deep down, I couldn't help but have those feelings of love.

I think it's both. I would also say that love is responsibility when you choose to love someone.

Good question! I think love is a feeling and you can choose to have that feeling or not.

It most definitely starts as a feeling, but I think it is a choice in that once you have committed to someone, you CHOOSE to remain faithful even when things get tough and there are other temptations. It's a question of priorities I guess. Just sad to realise I wasn't my H's priority for a while - he CHOSE to be unfaithful!!!! Make sense?

Love is a feeling, but it is a feeling that fades if you don't choose to work at keeping it alive. Good luck with The Love Dare. It's a lot of hard work but it does work wonders.

Thanks to all!!!

UntilNow, it does make a lot of sense. That is how I have felt all along.

I think he was trying to tell me that I need to CHOOSE to love him now. If it is only just a choice, that would be easy I think for me to love him. However, if it is a feeling, I am having a hard time grasping that one.

He told me the other night that I hurt his feelings when he reads my posts and journals that state I don't love him the way I should anymore. What he is not thinking about, though, is how he hurt me with his affair. When he says things like that to me, I feel like it is all about him again and not me. That my pain from his affair is to be swept under the rug. He also said that he is thinking the counselor was right to not discuss the affair until we go back for our session. WTH - how do I not? I think 3 weeks is way too long to go without discussing it since it has only been 5 months that I found out he had a 2 year affair with my best friend.

I can understand not discussing it daily and to give it a break but now I think he is seeing it as harping on it and not moving forward. I asked him "Am I to just shove it under the rug, not express how I feel and just act like everything is ok?" He said no but he did feel he was distancing himself from me because of his "hurt feelings". What about mine? Then he brings up this quote from the Love Dare. Geez, I don't know if I am coming or going...I feel like I am getting whiplash this week from his attitude changes.

I want to try to save our marriage but if he will distance himself over this what will he do later? Freaks me out!

Any suggestions?

Slwaite,
Thanks for posting this one! A very good one, and long overdue.

At the beginning, when 2 people meet, I think it is a natural feeling, that takes over. At times, I have to agree with folks who say, I can't help it, I fell in love with him. But when folks say that, regarding a married person, I don't buy it cuz that married person made that choice, and enticed the other person. Here's where choice comes in:

If you are married, and hopefully supposedly commited, you should not even place yourself in the situation, to get involved with another person. Hopefully you would uphold your commitment, and maintain a sense of integrity. So when married folks engage in another relationship, outside of their marriage, it now becomes their choice. Their choice to be there, their choice to engage, their choice to betray their spouse, and their choice to be vulnerable to fall in love, vulnerable to get emotionally involved.

It's quite simple, really. If you are married, and fell out of love, be a big girl or boy, admit it, and either: work on it together cuz you are being honest, whether it be thru counseling, and/or working with your spouse. If it is a "dead deal", and you cannot ressurect the love, rekindle it, whatever, be a human beig with integrity, and tell your spouse! Cut it clean, be fair, and bow out gracefully! Do not involve a 3rd party. Do not complicate the hurt and betrayal and devastation of the spouse.

This is where we get in huge trouble, with huge problems, and huge pain! We all want to think our marriage is "forever". But if for some reason, one person falls out of love. decide: can I work on this and rebuild, or is it a done deal. But at least have the integrity to open up to your spouse, and see whether you can, as a team, make that choice to salvage it. If after effort, time, honesty, and therapy you are not successful, so be it. for sure the rejected party feels like crap, and devastateed. But at tleast his way, integrity was involved, honesty, and you can only, in hindsight respect that.

Now when ya cheat, on spouse, secretly, ya lose all integrity, honesty, and are deceitful.......now ya got tons more issues to overcome....if there is reconciliation, and most of the crap and pain sits with the betrayed.

So sometimes we fall in love, and is not always a choice. But to stay in love is definitely a choice based on that individual, their values, their perceptions, and their integrity. New found love doesn't necessitate love forever. It takes two, and one may be carrying the load. It just boils down to the individuals.

and my little dingie I have posted on my kitchen cabinet, so aptly states:

No one fall in love by choice
it is by CHANCE.
No one stays in love by
chance,
it is by WORK.
And no one falls out of love by chance,
it is by CHOICE.

Cuz it takes 2 to tango, and if one has left the dancefloor, hard to dance by yourself. But if they have also engaged in a 3rd party realtionship??? Good luck overocming that! Can be done, but trust is so dang destroyed, not very likely, unless the betrayed can forgive, chooses to forgive, and the betrayer wakes up, and realizes they had a dang good partner. So many dang "IF'S" in the mix. sAd but true, very very difficult.

I think I'd have to tell him "I get the same amount of time to heal as the A lasted.... At that point, you can tell me to let it go and not discuss it anymore...."

I think it's a choice if the one you love is married to someone else already.

I agree with it. I think the feelings of 'love' are what attract us to a person initially. I think that after the 'in love' feelings are gone, we are left with a choice to love -- or rather, to show love through actions.

I also think that love has MANY different facets, and presents itself differently according to different relationships.

I love my mom a certain way, I love my kids another way.

In the english language, there is only one word for love. In Greek, there are many words for love, depending on the context. For example, 'agape' love is very different from the love we feel for our spouses.

When I choose to show my love for someone in a way that I normally would not express, but that someone relates to and will understand/receive it, I am choosing to love them so that it has an investment in the relationship and the person. This is the kind of love I hope to give and receive someday.

Blondegal and Michele - you two said it all.

Thanks Fuzzbunny,
Do ya think, I've given this a lot of thought??? lol

Absolutely not. Couldn't disagree more.

"Love" , as in the "romantic love" sense, is the label we place on a very specific and immensely powerful biological mechanism that pushes human beings to seek each other out and mate. We do not choose to experience this phenomenon. At best, we "choose" from a pool of prospective mates, but it is a rare individual who can "choose" to ignore the basic instinct to seek out a mate. If we fight against our programming to "fall in love" and find a mate, there are plenty of neural mechanisms ready to fire to make us feel lonely and miserable without it. Our brains are finely tuned to punish us relentlessly unless we are seeking or with at least one other romantic partner. Our evolutionary programming is not defeated casually.

This is no more a choice than "choosing" to breath, eat, or sleep. With very few exceptions (and I concede there are some), all of us live more or less to love. We were born to reproduce and "love" is the drug that ensures we do just that.

Moonbeamz,

Good to see you out of hibernation! lol

If love is a powerful biological mechanism, why is it that some people do not have a spouse, never had a spouse, and don't care to?

And I know, you're going to say, cultural, moreys, norms, and values each individual holds toward that "unnatural institution", or something of the sort.

But back to those folks......who don't engage in relationships either, don't have a girlfriend, boyfriend, gayfriend, other than a dog??? How do we explain those that tend to be more by themselves? What, do you propose, has happened to their "biological mcechanism"??? Did it get damaged some how from too much pain as a child? Damaged from hurt as an adolescent or adult, as they attempted to have relationships???

Just wondering???

@ Slwaite, sorry for sidestepping on your thread