[kygirl]

For me, love is when your SO being happy makes you happy, their being unhappy makes you unhappy. I don't mean that you trade your happiness for them, but rather that seeing them happy really makes you happy.

Good way of putting it as well I didn't read these first because I wanted to figure out my thoughts and how to describe it myself first

[Sprite]

For me, it's when you can't imagine your life without that person, and can't remember how you got through it before meeting them. They are the person you love and your best friend in the same person. And their happiness totally trumps your own.

Yes, I love the way you put that, and I completely agree with you!!

[Sprite]

I always know I'm in love when I cross that point where I look at them one day and realize that their happiness is as important to me (or more important) then my own. Knowing I would do anything to make them happy and to see them be happy even if that meant letting them leave. It always hits me when I least expect it (or I guess I mean I realize it when I least expect it).

I love this explanation too. Even if it means you don't benefit by it, it's the point where you're not selfish!

[ThexMrs]

That is a very good yet very tough question to answer. In the past I thought that I was in love only to realize that I wasn't. You know what made me realize that I wasn't in love? I actually fell in love, lol. Yep... I met a man who was my best friend, my confidant, my lover, my everything. He showed me what true love was. We went through so many ups and downs but that only brought us closer together.


For me love is when you can't imagine a life without them and when you try to think about living without them it makes you sick. It's a feeling deep in the pit of your stomach. There is any empty ache when you can't be with them.

It's when they are your best friend, your everything.

It's when you would give your life for that person. You would do anything for that special someone.

It's when their happiness means more than your own.

It's when you are willing to compromise because of that love.

It's when you give your entirety to that person. You bare your soul without fear.

After almost 2 years I still get butterflies everytime Marty calls me. I wouldn't trade that for anything.


With that said though... Some of those things can be mistaken as love and can actually be infatuation. Lots of people think that they can't live without this person until they have to. Then they realize that it wasn't love.

Love is a very hard thing to describe. It varies by person and how you mean it. I think that you will know when you are in love. It may take some break ups and infatuation until you meet the right person but when you do... You will know.

[Sprite]

Wow, ThexMrs, what a wonderful response!! Thanks so much for that!

Do you think true love could ever be questioned? Somehow it is hard for me to believe that in every relationship that a couple is truly in love, it is never questionable?!

[CHANDLERS WISH]

When your so in-sinc that you finish each other's sentences, laugh at each other's stupid jokes, put your hand on their shoulder when you walk past because you want to, look at them with total lust, yet your heart melts at the same time, feel fulfilled, nothing is missing, trust them and know your safe, visa versa, share your day and what happened, feel that they are also your best friend, feel the earth move and the souls reach and entwine and become one.

Two souls that equate as one..................

[Sprite]

Wow, that's really deep...and I like it
Thanks so much for giving me a greater understanding of all this!

[GlitterAndStuds]

I really hate to quote a movie like this (even though I love it), but I remember in Wedding Crashers they say "True love is the soul's recognition of its counterpoint in another" or something to that extent. I think that means, to me, that when you're truly in love, you know. For a fact, no question.

I remember the first night I met my boyfriend. After I first saw him, and the first minute I talked to him, all I could think was "....That's him".

[GlitterAndStuds]

This part also applies to family, especially your children, and to many friends. This is so hard to really pin down.

There is an almost undefinable difference or shift of perception and interaction that moves from loving to being in love. I love the LOML. I could be in love with him, if he would open up. It's a level beyond, for me it requires a receptivity on his part, an openness and reciprocation, that allows a much higher level of trust, connection, awareness and Ohhh maybe I'm really talking about something beyond, "in love" and more a state of actually "being love" together.

Very, very true. It never occurs to me until someone else says it. I remember there being another thread in here at some point asking the same question, and every response could be applied the same way to others (like you said, children, family, etc).

I know I feel that way about my niece, too. The second I met her, I was totally in love (just in a different way, obviously). It's always hard to describe emotion in any way other than "You just know".

[pretzel]

I wish I could remember the line in one of Tyler Perry's movies that put it best,

(guessing here)

"There's a special little place in my heart where your soul sits".

When one can say that, that's as good a definition as I've ever heard.