"A kind of natural, biologically necessary, hardwired, nigh-impossible-to-escape addiction. The warm and fuzzy feeling, the safety net."
No, that's the in-love high. The infatuation stage. That fades after 2 months to 2 years (sometimes less, rarely more). After it fades, then the work begins. Infatuation, being in love, is not actually loving someone. It's being dizzy with their presence and the idea of them, it's having rose-colored glasses on so you don't really see or you ignore their faults, and eventually that's going to shatter or fall away. The polyamory community has a term for it - New Relationship Energy (NRE), that dizzying consuming rush where it's hard to think of anyone else but the shiny new person; with polyamory, you have to be careful and remember that NRE happens and make sure it doesn't cause you to neglect your other partner(s). That in-love high is neurological, hormonal, biological - it's the initial rush that tends to get two people procreating and keeps them together for long enough to have a baby, and then the attention is transferred to the offspring, and the offspring keeps them together in a common survival-interest and gene-protection interest after the in-love high fades - or that's what its original function was, in harder leaner times when we hunted and foraged for survival. Now it's ... more of a problem than an aid, IMO. Though it's certainly a good feeling while it lasts.
Love (actual enduring love, not the in-love high) is a choice and a force and a state; it's not a feeling. There are not different kinds of love, in my opinion - only different expressions of love. A mother loves her children and she loves her husband and she loves her parents and she loves her friends, but those may be different intensities of love and they're certainly expressed in different manners. But they're all nonetheless the same thing. I feel the same intensity of love towards both my fiancé and towards my closest friend; the only difference is that there's no sexual expression with my friend (and wouldn't ever be even if he weren't gay). I still love them both very much.
I also don't have the in-love high with the fiancé anymore. That was over fairly quickly with us; it settled instead into something quiet and deep and slowly-growing, something built on trust and communication and time. I do still have something of the in-love high with my girlfriend; we've only been together for a little over four months, and I resisted it for a while because I didn't want to mistake actual-love with in-love and I was afraid to get too attached, so it's fairly new. But I know that'll fade too; I also know that if I build a firm foundation of communication and trust and openness now, the relationship will likely last past the infatuation stage.
One of my favorite things I've ever read on love (and sex, for that matter) was written not all that long ago by a friend of mine. You might find it interesting.
No, that's the in-love high. The infatuation stage. That fades after 2 months to 2 years (sometimes less, rarely more). After it fades, then the work begins. Infatuation, being in love, is not actually loving someone. It's being dizzy with their presence and the idea of them, it's having rose-colored glasses on so you don't really see or you ignore their faults, and eventually that's going to shatter or fall away. The polyamory community has a term for it - New Relationship Energy (NRE), that dizzying consuming rush where it's hard to think of anyone else but the shiny new person; with polyamory, you have to be careful and remember that NRE happens and make sure it doesn't cause you to neglect your other partner(s). That in-love high is neurological, hormonal, biological - it's the initial rush that tends to get two people procreating and keeps them together for long enough to have a baby, and then the attention is transferred to the offspring, and the offspring keeps them together in a common survival-interest and gene-protection interest after the in-love high fades - or that's what its original function was, in harder leaner times when we hunted and foraged for survival. Now it's ... more of a problem than an aid, IMO. Though it's certainly a good feeling while it lasts.
Love (actual enduring love, not the in-love high) is a choice and a force and a state; it's not a feeling. There are not different kinds of love, in my opinion - only different expressions of love. A mother loves her children and she loves her husband and she loves her parents and she loves her friends, but those may be different intensities of love and they're certainly expressed in different manners. But they're all nonetheless the same thing. I feel the same intensity of love towards both my fiancé and towards my closest friend; the only difference is that there's no sexual expression with my friend (and wouldn't ever be even if he weren't gay). I still love them both very much.
I also don't have the in-love high with the fiancé anymore. That was over fairly quickly with us; it settled instead into something quiet and deep and slowly-growing, something built on trust and communication and time. I do still have something of the in-love high with my girlfriend; we've only been together for a little over four months, and I resisted it for a while because I didn't want to mistake actual-love with in-love and I was afraid to get too attached, so it's fairly new. But I know that'll fade too; I also know that if I build a firm foundation of communication and trust and openness now, the relationship will likely last past the infatuation stage.
One of my favorite things I've ever read on love (and sex, for that matter) was written not all that long ago by a friend of mine. You might find it interesting.
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