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How do you know love?

boyscoutgirl

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I guess my question is ... How do you know when what you feel for someone is "love" and not lust, infatuation? I guess I'm a little confused. I've had several people I've been with before that I have told "i love you" but now we are broken up. My aunt was married to a guy she was sure was the one and everyone else thought as well, but in less than a year they were looking at a divorce. My grandma is in her fourth marriage, and the only one that didn't end up in divorce and was actually one of her better ones (before her current) was her first, and it only ended because he was killed during a war.

With all the divorce and everything going on, how do you know that what you actually feel is love and not something else? Is there any real way to know? Is it the same for both males and females? This is something my boyfriend and I have been discussing and I would like some input. (sorry if anyone's confused)
 

Ceili

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I have never thought love is like automatic. It's the development of a beautiful relationship,not over -the-counter expectations and hopes. You just know when you're connecting and you won't grow "out of eachother" or reestablish a relationship with anyone prior in your life or even look anymore. You resolve to live more to make them happy than yourself. IMO
 
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somethingBEAUTIFUL

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I have never thought love is like automatic. It's the development of a beautiful relationship,not over -the-counter expectations and hopes. You just know when you're connecting and you won't grow "out of eachother" or reestablish a relationship with anyone prior in your life or even look anymore. You resolve to live more to make them happy than yourself. IMO
I could not have said it better myself. Good job, Ceili! :)

Love is also, I believe, a choice. It's a choice coupled with a desire to put the other before you, to want the absolute best for them. Be willing to sacrifice for them.
 
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SnarphBlat

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Laying down your life and your desires for someone else.
Making up after a fight, and pushing through disagreements.
Over time it is shown, keeping your heart for that one person. Being with them through everything.

Love is not about yourself, but about the person you are loving.
 
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peanutbutter12

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Love isn't about fluttery butterflies in the pit of your stomach. Love takes work and effort because eventually, those feelings, the newness, the fire, will fade. You'll get into arguments and if you don't understand what love truly is, you will end up single because you had depended upon those feelings as your definition of love.
[SIZE=-1]
Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained. - [/SIZE][SIZE=-1]C.S. Lewis [/SIZE]
 
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Blank123

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as above. Its common nowadays to just think of love as a feeling and something that should come naturally without any work, but thats basically just infatuation, a superficial attraction (for lack of a better term) that will fade when push comes to shove.

feelings are involved, don't get me wrong, but hard work is too. There are going to be times you'll feel like you want to get out because you've had a bad fight or you're going through a tough time but its your love for that person that keeps you committed despite what you may be feeling at that time.
 
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Gardener101

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I guess my question is ... How do you know when what you feel for someone is "love" and not lust, infatuation? I guess I'm a little confused. I've had several people I've been with before that I have told "i love you" but now we are broken up. My aunt was married to a guy she was sure was the one and everyone else thought as well, but in less than a year they were looking at a divorce. My grandma is in her fourth marriage, and the only one that didn't end up in divorce and was actually one of her better ones (before her current) was her first, and it only ended because he was killed during a war.

With all the divorce and everything going on, how do you know that what you actually feel is love and not something else? Is there any real way to know? Is it the same for both males and females? This is something my boyfriend and I have been discussing and I would like some input. (sorry if anyone's confused)
It's not the feeling of love that keeps a relationship together. Other things keep it together, e.g. commitment, communication and most certainly COMPROMISE.

People are too selfish nowadays and want everything their way...or they cry for divorce.
 
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Weasel7711

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I guess my question is ... How do you know when what you feel for someone is "love" and not lust, infatuation? I guess I'm a little confused. I've had several people I've been with before that I have told "i love you" but now we are broken up. My aunt was married to a guy she was sure was the one and everyone else thought as well, but in less than a year they were looking at a divorce. My grandma is in her fourth marriage, and the only one that didn't end up in divorce and was actually one of her better ones (before her current) was her first, and it only ended because he was killed during a war.

With all the divorce and everything going on, how do you know that what you actually feel is love and not something else? Is there any real way to know? Is it the same for both males and females? This is something my boyfriend and I have been discussing and I would like some input. (sorry if anyone's confused)
1 Corinthians 13

Love in its true form is an action that requires work and commitment. To quote CS Lewis:
Charity means 'Love, in the Christian sense'. But Love, in the Christian sense, does not mean an emotion. It is a state not of the feelings but of the will; that state of the will which we have naturally about ourselves, and must learn to have about other people.
Mere Christianity, Charity - C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis said:
Those who are in love have a natural inclination to bind themselves by promises. Love songs all over the world are full of vows of eternal constancy. The Christian law is not forcing upon the passion of love something which is foreign to that passion’s own nature: it is demanding that lovers should take seriously something which their passion of itself impels them to do.
And, of course, the promise, made when I am in love and because I am in love, to be true to the beloved as long as I live, commits me to being true even if I cease to be in love. A promise must be about things that I can do, about actions: no one can promise to go on feeling in a certain way. He might as well promise never to have a headache or always to feel hungry. But what, it may be asked, is the use of keeping two people together if they are no longer in love? There are several sound, social reasons; to provide a home for their children, to protect the woman (who has probably sacrificed or damaged her own career by getting married) from being dropped whenever the man is tired of her. But there is also another reason of which I am very sure…
No one in his senses would deny that being in love is far better than either common sensuality or cold self-centredness. But, as I said before, “the most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of our own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs.” Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there are also things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling. Now no feeling can be relied on to last in its full intensity, or even to last at all. Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last, but feelings come and go. And in fact, whatever people say, the state called “being in love” usually does not last… But, of course, ceasing to be “in love” need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense — love as distinct from “being in love” — is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other; as you love yourself when you do not like yourself. They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be “in love” with someone else. “Being in love” first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it.
People get from books and plays and the cinema that if you have married the right person you may expect to go on “being in love” for ever. As a result, when they find they are not, they think this proves they have made a mistake and are entitled to a change — not realising that, when they have changed, the glamour will presently go out of the new love just as it went out of the old one. In this department of life, as in every other, thrills come at the beginning and do not last… The thrill you feel on first seeing some delightful place dies away when you really go to live there. Does this mean it would be better not to live in the beautiful place? By no means. If you go through with it, the dying away of the first thrill will be compensated for by a quieter and more lasting kind of interest. What is more, it is just the people who are ready to submit to the loss of the thrill and settle down to the sober interest, who are then most likely to meet new thrills in some quite different direction…
This is, I think, one little part of what Christ meant by saying that a thing will not really live unless it first dies. It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill: that is the very worst thing you can do. Let the thrill go — let it die away — go on through that period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow — and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time. But if you decide to make thrills your regular diet and try to prolong them artificially, they will all get weaker and weaker, and fewer and fewer, and you will be a bored, disillusioned person for the rest of your life. It is because so few people understand this that you find many middle-aged men and women maundering about their lost youth, at the very age when new horizons ought to be appearing and new doors opening all round them.

 
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revrobor

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I have not read all the responses but after studying the subject and finally letting God choose my mate here is my take on the subject:

Romantic love and Biblical love are not the same thing. All relationships start out with infatuation. That's just the way we are made. Many of us mistake infatuation and passion for love. Don't get me wrong. Infatuation and romantic love are great. But they will eventually wane. That's when Biblical love must take over. Biblical love is what you do not what you feel. Biblical love means you do the loving thing. This does not mean there will never be any passion or romantic love but those are not the key elements of Biblical love. They are more than likely the result of doing "I love you". Many of us have bought into the "Hollywood" version of "love" and it's just not true. So when it runs out we escape the relationship because we want more passion and romantic love.

Probably our biggest mistake is running to the altar and asking God to bless our choice in a mate rather that allowing God to give us His choice. Little wonder the divorce rate in the Christian community is as high as it is in the rest of society.
 
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GodsBeard

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I get really confused about this topic. My dad says he loved my mom at one point but then they split up and she moved to some place in Europe i think. He still syas he loves her when he's drunk! :confused: :( but how can he say that when he's broken the rules from the bible about marriage and stuf????

I get confused about my girlfriend as well. She says that she loves me and that we should do unbible things, but when I talk about marriage and have sex only after marriage to make a child, she freaks out and says she doesn't want thos things.

I talked to my cousin (not blood related) about it and he said I should stay strong and just pray a lot. He's a really good guy and I like him a lot and I feel good around him.

Anyway, I really appreciate you guys letting me vent on here. I keep bringing down the mood in these threads!! :doh: sorry! you guys are great. :thumbsup:
 
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Gods4me

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i think i you can honestly say you have no dought what so ever that this person is who you love and want to be with the rest of your life. and they feel the exact same, with not even a tiny dought, its true love.


tininest dought i would say its lust and care for the person. (you can care for them and just not love them)

God will let you know if you should have doughts or not.
(speaking from personaly experance)

My mum always says if you have to ask How do you know its love? Then its not love at all
 
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