How Can You Be Sure You Felt Love?

[aychamo]

As I am going through a very difficult break up right now, I find that I am frequently thinking of this concept we call love.

Love is defined as "A deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person, such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness." I'd say that the majority of us have thought that we have felt love before. But my question is how can anyone know for a fact that what they felt was love?

I ask this, because to me, without a basis for comparison, how can one be sure that they felt love? How do we know that the feeling that I felt, and the feeling that another felt, are the same "love" feeling?

To me, it seems that without someone being able to analyze your feelings directly and conclude that you indeed felt love, that you would not be able to really know that if you felt is the same "love" feeling that everyone else felt. Wouldn't that prevent one from claiming that they 100% felt love?

 

[Curious3141]

If you have to ask, it wasn't.

 

[aychamo]

That isn't really an appropriate answer. I feel that I love my ex-girlfriend. I know that I wanted to spend my entire life with her and that every little minute detail of her I loved and I knew how she made me feel on the inside.

But how would one *know* that it was love? Or the same feeling that you would say you have when you love someone?

 

[motai]

That isn't really an appropriate answer. I feel that I love my ex-girlfriend. I know that I wanted to spend my entire life with her and that every little minute detail of her I loved and I knew how she made me feel on the inside.

But how would one *know* that it was love? Or the same feeling that you would say you have when you love someone?

Love is a very tricky thing. My personal experience with it has yielded conflicting and perplexing emotions (ultimately ending in disaster). Perhaps love is approached asymtotically, meaning only one can experience certain "degrees" of love.

I have never "truly" been in love, so I cannot offer much advice regarding whether it was love or not.

But from what you were describing, it does sound like some form of love. I have noticed that all forms of love are reflections of true love, but it does not show the path to get there. Other than that I'm not sure.

 

[Mahler765]

Love is defined as "A deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person, such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness."

I believe the key word in your definition is "ineffable" meaning that the feeling is inexpressible in language or by any other means. It must be known by experience and you can't communicate that experience to another person.

 

[Entheos]

aychamo,

I am guessing this is your first love.

That's always the hardest one. Good luck with dealing with it. No matter what you do she will be in your mind for your whole life, just learn to accept that now and it will make things a bit easier.

I doubt that you loved every minute detail about her. Some people think that's what love is, but I find that not to be true, at least not for myself and probably not others.

So my advice is to find what you really did love about her, and what you did not. Then go fishing with that knowledge. I hear "there's other fish in the sea" :)



p.s. If you truly think she is the one then try to get back with her, but if she doesn't take you back, then it was never meant to be, and should be thought of as more of a learning experience.

 

[cronxeh]

love is a combination of physical attraction with pheromonal compatibility and with mutual intellectual satisfaction.

its like walking down the beach with a girl you love and its sunset time and you hold her hand and then you start kissing each other and your temperature rises and the time stops for both of you and you lay down on the sand and start talking about distant galaxies and she just looks at you and tell you you are crazy

thats love. but then again its only one solution. its like an integral. you get your Constant and when you try to derive it you find that all the women that you ever loved followed same slope.

there are million women out there. find available one and assign her a number. if she doesn't like you, find another one. the more you fall the more you realize how many are out there.

 

[rachmaninoff]

Ineffable? The definition is given in the OP. So there!

 

[aychamo]

Hey guys. I appreciate the kind words :-)

I think the point I'm bouncing around is that love is an emotion, a feeling that is person to ones self. You can think that what you feel is love, but since it's basically impossible to show exactly what you are feeling to someone else, that what you and someone else consdier as being love is possible to be a different feeling.

Or..

 

[Problem+Solve=Reason]

If you believe it, you can achieve it.

I believe I am in love, so I am.

A person should be sure of their feelings strictly for the reasons of sanity .

----- nwO ruoY evaH ,deeN oN <----?eeS I tahW eeS uoY oD