Many people who have only been in a relationship for a year or two feel that the fireworks and romance they start off with will last forever.

But for those who have been through.longterm relationships and have experienced the FULL gamut of love from the butterfly feelings , to the mild annoyance with each other to feeling like room mates, enemies or even strangers......

How do you define committed romantic love ,and the broad spectrum of pleasant and unpleasant experiences that it encompasses?

I would hate to think love is merely a feeling as many people believe it to be because our feelings as humans are super fickle.

I would also hate to think of love as the joyless commitment to uplift your partner as it seems to become for many couples in the longterm.

So is love a feeling? A daily choice? Ongoing acts of service ? A joyful labour ? All of the above?

And since love is not always a happy go lucky feeliing , how do you guage if the love can still be salvaged or if it has in fact ended?

It's funny you bring this topic up myself and a few friends were talking about this very thing over the weekend....

I start off each relationship making it perfectly clear that we are to people first most.. two individuals..
Not one another's property..
We treat each other with respect and consideration... never talk to each other as though we are no longer individual people... couples tend to develop language... that does not revolve around each person being a individual with separate feelings and needing respect....
. That's one of my top requirements to a happy relationship...

Trying not to go to bed angry does not always work.... but as long as you both know the other person isn't going to smother you in your sleep with a pillow...lol... then you just work on it.. the issue over the next few days..
. Saying good morning and goodnight and putting a kiss in there is always a good idea....

Being considerate to each other opening her door doing things that need doing without being asked...

Stepping up and taking some of the load off her shoulders try not to put any more load on her shoulders than necessary...

Always be giving to each other in the bedroom... do not become selfish...

Yes of course the quick quickie in the morning is great...
But sometimes you need to give her pleasure.. and try to build up to it during the day with a little romance..

Don't just grab her and bend her over the kitchen sink while she's doing the dishes..hmmmm... although that can be pretty hot sometimes..mmmhmm..


Tell them you love them even if you're not feeling it sometimes... but a little I love you now and then goes a long ways...

I always try to appreciate the little things as long as I feel they are putting effort into it.....

If your cooking dinner in the kitchen and you have your phone glued to your ear.. and then serve me some kind of half cooked half cold dinner and expect me to be thrilled about it..
Ummm.. probably not going to happen.. and that going down on you later tonight probably is not going to happen either..lol.wink..... oh great now I have to worry if she's going to smother me with my pillow while I sleep..lmao..wink

All of the above coz when you love someone, you felt it and continue to feel it. It is a daily choice coz we have that freedom to either stay in love or not and look the other way around. Ongoing acts of service and a joyful labor? Definitely....coz it just makes you happy to serve the one you love without expecting anything in return, doing it everyday of your life as long as there is breathe in you, thinking of things that would make him happy even just in simple things, it doesn't have to be grand .... just saying "I LOVE YOU" EVERYDAY is even overlooked and forgotten by many but has deep impact to others who just wants to be reassured that you are there for him or her....

I don't think feelings are fickle.
Feelings are fleeting. They are moment to moment.

Love is like that. Moment to moment.

Aside from the love you feel for your children and parents
Love for that significant other person you wish to enjoy
is constantly tested.

Every moment you assess and reaffirm your dedication to
that person in the way you percieve them.

When everything seems right, you feel 'in love' but when
something goes wrong or you understand it as wrong it makes a mark
in your memory.

Toleration of those bad memories allows you to
continue to adore the person but hesitation begins to occur.

When your lacking toleration overcomes your
dedication, desire and commitment, love for that person
wanes and you seem to "fall out of love".

It happens moment by moment often without you even
realizing it. We live moment to moment. It is our
memories that give us continuity.

Is love the memory of the best moments or all the moments?
Live in the present and experience life, and love, in the here and now.

Love can still be salvaged if you still both care for each other and work your differences out and come up with solutions agreeable to both of you but if you don't hear a word anymore from your partner then it really is over......

Love is initiated by experience and sustained by experience and selective memory.
Love ends when the selected memories and the experiences fail you in some way.

So Im gathering that love to you is about ongoing acts/gestures of service and respect for the person's individuality? Am I understanding you correctly?

And how do you know after all the ups and down of a relationship if love can still be salvaged or if it has ended?

So you think its a combo of everything Twin

love is a feeling

its an emotional connection with someone or something else

I feel REAL love , once it is created, never dies

but , I feel people believe REAL love should be accompanied by self devaluation,, in other words, REAL love for someone else should come second to loving ourselves or expecting standards in our life

..yes.. how to know if love can be salvaged..hmmmm.. well I suppose if you split up for a while and you feel completely heartbroken..well.. that for starters will tell you that you were truly in love.... then I guess you have to look at why you are no longer together.. on The Love Boat...now if it's a you issue... then you both need to sit down and pinpoint what that is..
And then you have to dig deep and decide if you can change that about yourself....
Same thing goes if it's a them-issue...
Can they recognize that issue and are they willing to work on solving it or. Changing what it is that drives you crazy...lol....

If you're both willing to do this then yes love can be salvaged... but you have to let go of the past you cannot hang on to it and keep bringing it back into the ship..no

Thats a very interesting slant you brought to this discussion Tom.Rather than defining love as a action or feeling, you conceptualised love as a lens of sorts with a a focal pint that is determined by the giver and receiver of love.

Its interesting that you said that because I remember telling someone that I tend to take mental snapshots of every kindness rendered to me by loved ones , so that when the love is tested at some point as you mentioned in your post, I am anchored in the good that the person brought to my life instead of the not-so-good.

Im actually impressed that you brought that up. I dont know a lot of people that practice that .

Super contribution Tom!

it's all of the above
I mean I hope you feel the butterflies in stomach in the beginning
but it is commitment over time

Ummm... the above-mentioned I believe it's called building a relationship foundation.. it is emotions and the memories that you draw from.. good or bad throughout your relationship..

Hopefully you build the foundation built on more good than bad...
But however some people just tend to remember the bad... so easily do they let go of the good..yup

It's like your job your boss very seldom Praises you for all the good you do but the one time you screw up there right there to jump down your throat...yup... not a good foundation..

So the ability salvage love is based on the couples joint ability to work things out in your opinion. But what if the couple is working on DOING all the right things but the feeling we talked about earlier is gone for one person...

Do you think those feelings can be restored?

...
Like the feeling of losing.. trust in someone.. or respect for them..

Well if you had these feelings for them initially you trusted them you respected them... then it's just a question of them regaining your trust regaining your respect... and here is the kicker.. you then have to let go of the past.. that is the Premier that is the key

Im really torn about that feeling centred approach Ms H.

I think my conceptualization of love has bounced on extreme ends of the spectrum.

When I was younger , I had a more feeling centered approach to love, and I truly believed that that feeling never went away no matter how difficult things got in a relationship.

then with age, and the emerging concept of commitment and responsibility, I became totally focused on that, and I believed that it didn't matter if you felt love or not, as long as you honored your commitment to love with ongoing acts of service

And now Im drifting somewhere in the middle between feelings and committed acts of service.

From what I see, feelings of love is what everybody revels in at the beginning of their relationship journey , but look how many people lose that feeling after a year if they even last that long?

How do you reconcile that that blow hot/ blow cold mercurial feeling that many people go through in their relationships with the endurance and resilience that we theoretically associate with love?

I've found that love is similar to faith. Especially in the sense that as soon as you try to qualify it, quantify it, or worst of all, contractualize it, it's gone. or at least you prove that what you had, was never actually love to begin with.

Mistakes lots of people make include:

* thinking that it's a magic force which will either cause them to behave themselves well no matter what, or excuse them from responsibility for whatever self-indulgences they choose to invest in.

* expecting the fact that they'v declared it, will engage some sort of universal rule system on their side, so that they can now control the life and choices of the person they "love."

* behave as though it's a form of cash currency, that they can give, barter, withhold, or otherwise use as a tool or a weapon.

* think of it as a kind of insurance policy, such that after they have some, they can relax and ignore safety, sensitivity, preparation for the future, etc.

* deciding that it's something that can be earned or created through work, good deeds, exercise, expenditure of money, and so on.

Myself, I've sort of given up on working on or for "love," because it's so confused. Instead, I look at who in the world is living a life that I want to be a part of, and to protect, and to help, and to commit my own safety and best interests to supporting. Like the old marriage vows, for the most part. If someone wants to call the "wanting to go along for the lifetime ride" 'love,' that's okay by me.

I think you can have all the love in the world
between 2 people, and still lose it if their
level of commitment is not the same.

But if you have true commitment, then love can
fill in all the cracks, ebb and flow around a
relationship, to keep it sturdy and growing.

Love is an action. I don't mean to be religious but read 1 Corinthians 13... That my definition of love