
How do we know when we’ve fallen in love? (2016) - rohmanhakim
https://qz.com/793908/how-do-we-know-when-weve-fallen-in-love-my-informal-survey-reveals-three-big-patterns/
======
IgorPartola
So I’ll just leave some bits here. For me the quote that started to
conceptualize romantic love was “Love is that condition in which the happiness
of another person is essential to your own.” from Robert Heinlein. But really
that’s not the whole story. Just like we have many different kinds of non-
romantic love (kids, candy, outdoors, parents, friends, motorcycles, precision
instruments, algorithms) we also experience many different kinds of romantic
love. We often talk about “the love of your life” and “the one” as the
ultimate version of romantic love. But it’s not an escalator:
[https://offescalator.com/what-escalator/](https://offescalator.com/what-
escalator/). And if you follow this model of relationships, you quickly arrive
at the concept of casual love:
[https://www.carsieblanton.com/blog/post/82149148832/casual-l...](https://www.carsieblanton.com/blog/post/82149148832/casual-
love).

The idea that you can say “I love you” to a partner 2 weeks into a
relationship and not place any expectations on it being actionable is very
freeing. I have experienced it myself several times on both ends. It is a
wonderful thing. Remember folks, you don’t have to love every partner you
have. And if you love them, you don’t have to do anything about it. You can
love for a week or a lifetime, you can love for a lifetime and never get
serious. You can get serious but not married. The choices are yours and many
options exist for all kinds different relationship types.

Edit: if anyone wants to nerd out about non-monogamous/polyamorous
relationships, I am happy to talk about it.

~~~
shrimp_emoji
I understand "casual love" poorly, but imagining myself engaging in it, I
picture some chaotic asteroid collision chain reaction. The asteroids are
people, and the collisions are the hook-ups. The hook-ups must be episodes of
sex mixed with the psychological trauma of infatuation ("falling in love"?).

It sounds horrifying and disruptive...

But, to me, even sex in itself would be unappealing so casually; the only
thing that can overcome the surface-level, material ugliness of other humans
enough to make me _want_ to have sex with them is long-term familiarity and
mutual interest, and that sounds pretty anathema to "leave anytime, no
expectations lol". :p So I guess the typical relationship escalator is what
feels most natural to me.

But then the poly model probably assures you a LOT more sex and relationships
than mine, which requires meeting naturally and then building guarded,
incremental trust, which, due to a mix of how our society is structured
(there's HEAVY sexual partitioning of interests, hobbies, and careers) and my
personality (I only engage with the most partitioned elements of society),
ostensibly never happens for me. :D

~~~
davidjnelson
> surface-level, material ugliness of other humans

What does this mean? If it's just physical attraction, why not date more
attractive people?

~~~
IgorPartola
Not the person you are asking but if you think about it, sex is weird, gross,
and makes you very vulnerable. For some that is offset by it being wonderful
and hot and sexy, while for others it takes more to go past the reality of it.
That’s why the asexual spectrum is a thing: not everyone is down with getting
down. And because as a society we expect sex and sexual attraction to be the
norm, people on that spectrum may not always be out about it.

Not saying the other poster is on that spectrum, just pointing out that many
different brain configuration exist, with some going “all the sex” all the way
to “sex? No thanks.”

~~~
davidjnelson
That makes sense. It seems about 1% of the population is asexual from some
quick googling.

~~~
IgorPartola
My guess is that it is slightly higher than that because often times the label
“asexual” is applied to people who have 0 interest in sex, while others
experience a reduced emphasis on sex, hence the “spectrum” part. Also it isn’t
something people openly admit to it, so it suffers from the same problem as
trying to quantify the numbers of people who identify as bisexual.

~~~
mercer
And then there's people who the label could be applied to, but spent much of
their lives trying to conform to more socially acceptable ideas about
sexuality.

------
lcall
Long experience, observation and reading lead me to say that the pop-culture
idea of "falling in love" is just hormones and curiosity and adventure. Real,
true love is a decision to faithfully be there and serve a person through
thick and thin.

It is best if that decision is well-made. Related to courtship and marriage, I
have put many thoughts here (based on experience, research and lots of
observation): [http://lukecall.net/](http://lukecall.net/) (under "Life
Lessons").

~~~
Invictus0
You should really reconsider the UI for your site. Yours is the most
aggressively hostile website I have encountered in recent memory.

~~~
lcall
Thanks for your candor. I grant you it's not very prettified. For someone with
my personality (sounds like not for yours, that's OK), that could be a good
thing: I like text, lightweight and skimmable (though I know elegance and
pictures are more popular and pleasing). I try to make it so someone can read
a page, and click parts of interest for more details, something like an
outline, to make it navigable & useful to different interests, even with large
amounts of information eventually contained there. Also, it is generated from
my OM organizer software, so each page is not designed separately. And I have
to prioritize limited time & energy carefully.

Having said that, specific suggestions are very welcome. It also has an email
address for feedback (in the small footer). :)

Edit: would a sans-serif font, and/or larger, help?

~~~
Invictus0
I am no UX designer, so take anything I say with a grain of salt. I would
suggest increasing the text size, increasing the spacing between lines, and
maybe organizing things a little better. Clicking down a rabbit hole of links
with no sense for where I am in your organizational scheme or when I'll
actually arrive at the content I'm looking for feels very disconcerting. The
actual content is a monospaced font text file which extends across my entire
monitor because I'm browsing in full screen, which makes for an extremely bad
reading experience. Lots of hate for Medium on HN but notice how text on
Medium has a font that is easy on the eyes and the width of the reading window
is not very wide; I would try and mimic that experience.

~~~
lcall
Thanks. As time permits I will plan to look at what you've said. I'd like to
balance that with my desire for an "outline" so I can have large amounts of
easily-navigable info without creating huge pages.

I see what you mean about the text file: I just haven't evolved it into a web
page yet, so I can shorten the lines easily enough, but not sure how to
integrate it best into my organizer software beyond that.

One idea is that, I can export content with the software into single-page
(text) outlines of selected subsets of the content, showing the outline
structure with indentation (just using white-space for indentation, like org-
mode, only farther in, currently 6 space characters per level) or 1.1, 1.1.1,
2.1.3 -style numbering with some indentation, down to N levels at a time.
Perhaps sometime I could automate linking pages to/from such text outlines
(they are 80-columns by default), when I generate the site. At selected
places, or through out. Hmm.

If I drop off here for a while or you want to continue conversation later,
feel to email per the bottom of each page.

Thanks again for the suggestions.

Edit: Another way to put the problem is this: I have enough content, with much
more probably to come, that I want to make it _useful_ while avoiding the
whole "TL/DR" syncrome for someone who would only want to read _some_. And let
them easily choose which "some", while skimming or skipping others, thus my
thinking in terms of outline-like structure. I hope that makes sense.

~~~
graeme
You could massively improve the outline simply by making the hierarchy
visible. You can nest lists under lists.

Right now it's unclear how many layers one has to go through to reach an
actual article.

~~~
lcall
I have to think about what you are saying. We are coming to the info with
different expectations.

I'm not immediately sure how to make the hierarchy more visible with this
data. The source data has no single entrypoint except arbitrarily chosen, and
can be (or seem, practically) infinite in all directions, with arbitrary
relationships at any point -- maybe something like a very large wiki with a
different internal structure (more at http//:onemodel.org ). A structure could
maybe be chosen for presentation purposes though. But the "article" you refer
to was made as an exception and is not the way information in my ~"knowledge
base" is typically structured. Each page I see as not a document but as an
entity with properties and also a set of references to whatever else relates.
More about my outline comments elsewhere in this discussion, where I can
export chunks of it as individual outline documents, to some # of levels from
any point, but conceptually it does not lend itself to paragraphs or
documents, as much as ideas and relations. I'm not explaining it as well as
I'd like -- again, there is more at that web site about the intentions of my
software that this comes from. It's like a big mind map (with future plans to
hang more data and code, on all the nodes.)

Or maybe each page could be seen as a paragraph, broken into bullets which
each can link to details on that thing, if someone is interested. Or it is a
set of topic sentences, with contents underneath each sentence or link being
the full paragraph, for the interested -- like where I wrote in this
discussion about enabling skimming.

I don't want to stifle discussion, if you have questions or more suggestions
that can in some way account for the above, or improve on it... Thanks.

------
emit_time
This really doesn't relate too much, but I've realized over time that I'm
essentially in love with one of my best friends (of the opposite gender).

We've been friends for 10 years, and just spending time around her makes me
feel so relaxed and satisfied with life, it's a unique feeling to someone like
me who hasn't been in much of a relationship so far in my life.

I'm able to maintain a good friendship despite this, and I guess I just treat
it as some weird thing. I'm super grateful for the friendship we have, and
it's amazing that these feelings persist even though I now only see her a
couple of times a year.

I think part of me hoped we'd end up dating at some point, but I find that
highly unlikely to work given certain circumstances. Either way, I remain
grateful for what I have, and hope to find someone else that I'm able to
relate to emotionally in the same way.

~~~
tempromance1
Same here.

Friends for 5 or 6 years. All the same feelings you mentioned. Thought it
would never go anywhere but was happy with it as it was. She initiated it
being something more. Now we're coming up to our 4th wedding anniversary and I
can confidently say both of us could not be any happier and we're even trying
for kids.

Anything can happen. Never say never.

~~~
emit_time
Congrats!

She's asexual, so I don't think it'd work out.

------
harryposner
> In Russian, the verb that means discover or recognize also contains the verb
> to know.

The English very nearly does as well. The "gn" in "recognize" has the same
etymological root [1] as the "kn" in "know"\---and as the "зн" in "сознать"
(recognize) and "знать" (know). It's not quite as obvious as in the Russian,
but "acknowledge" means nearly the same thing as "recognize" and includes
"know" as a substring.

[1] [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-
Eur...](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-
European/%C7%B5neh%E2%82%83-)

~~~
ggambetta
Also same root as "cognition". Similar in Spanish, "reconocer" and "conocer"
(which also means "to meet", i.e. to know for the first time).

~~~
jacobolus
According to Wiktionary the early Latin word was gnōscere. Old English had
cnawan and cunnan.

Besides “know”, etc., modern English words “can”, “cunning”, “canny”, etc.
also come from this root.

------
amriksohata
I never understood the concept of falling in love. I can understand falling in
lust. Love is something you develop over time.

~~~
RangerScience
I never understood the concept of developing love. I can understand falling
in. Love is something you notice you already always have had.

But I don't actually need to understand your experience to accept that that's
how it happens for you.

For me, there's two big parts:

1) I can tell. Both who you are, and how I am reacting to that, very quickly,
very deeply. Consistently, this applies even to the parts of each of us that
are revealed later on; tritely (and topically for HN) I also find this is true
about software libraries and SaaS products: If it starts easy, it pretty much
stays easy, and if it starts hard, it pretty much stays hard. Note that
unfamiliarity != hard.

2) I can adjust. I don't change who I am to match someone else, but, my
preferences DO change to match THEM. It's actually one of my favorite
feelings, and every relationship I've ever been in I've noticed _when_ their
scent started to be my preference. Along with this, many little things are
fungible, or at least, are only ever momentary irritation.

But, I do actually understand developing love. I definitely also feel that, I
see those moments where a little thing they do becomes deeply enjoyable and
meaningful, that feeling of a little bit deeper of a connection forming. I
know that feeling. I also know this initial recognition.

------
LifeLiverTransp
That recklessness and self destructive behaviour make for excellent scouts of
opportunity (aka as stupidity and statistics), which is why its important to
fall quickly for them, cause they might be gone tomorrow.

------
bartimus
If it's not a "Hell yes!", it's a "No".

~~~
monk_e_boy
That's good.

I realised things were not good between me and my SO one day at the beach. I
was there alone, kitesurfing. When I got out of the sea I met a guy and we
chatted for a while, shooting the shit, having a laugh, poking fun at each
others home made hydrofoil kiteboards.

Then his wife pulled up in her car and ran down the beach to kiss him. All
excited. She forgot to close her car door.

My SO doesn't look at me like that. I think for my SO it isn't 'hell yes' I
think she settled for 'this will do'

~~~
majos
That guy may have been looking at your partner thinking "how nice, their
partner remembers to close the car door. Me, I gotta check that the burner's
actually off every time my wife makes breakfast. It's killing me!"

I of course don't know any of the context in your relationship, but love comes
in many forms. I don't think we should adhere to the standard set by what may
be naturally extroverted and demonstrative people.

------
ArtDev
Well, we can all agree that the word "love" is overloaded. With my parents and
my kids.. my love is truly unconditional.

No matter what they do or say, I will always love them.

Unconditional love has no place in romantic love. They shouldn't even be
sharing the same words.

Romantic love is absurdly conditional. We need a different word. The word
"lust" is also a temporary state, even with new couples.

Music, romantic movies and shows like "The Bachelor", have warped our cultural
ideas around relationships.

However, sometimes media can explain it perfectly:

"Listen Morty, I hate to break it to you, but what people calls 'love' is just
a chemical reaction that compels animals to breed. It hits hard, Morty, then
it slowly fades, leaving you stranded in a failing marriage. I did it. Your
parents are gonna do it. Break the cycle, Morty. Rise above. Focus on
science."

~~~
toyg
If Dan Harmon had known that R&M would be misquoted out of context so much...
he would have probably written it anyway, because it made him a millionaire
and _fuck poor people trying to make you feel guilty_ , but regardless -- he's
on record multiple times saying how he's baffled that people take Rick as a
model when it's patently clear that he's an antisocial psycho who will never
find happiness (see for example "Auto Erotic Assimilation"), borne out of
Harmon's worse instincts.

For the record, Harmon is currently engaged and will probably marry (for the
second time) pretty soon.

~~~
majos
As a fan of the show -- seems like many people love Rick because it's very
flattering to reason that you're alone (or misanthropic, whatever) and
depressed because you're so much smarter than everyone around you.

------
shadowroot
Love is not possessiveness , attachment , emotion , feeling , hormonal
activity , marriage , having kids and family, dependency , self-sacrifice ,
romance .

True love is the state of your mind in which there are zero conflicts , no
violence , just a light a joy you want to share . This sharing is called Love
. I have found something and i wanted to share it, this sharing is called
Love. Love is your own internal condition/state . It's not at all something to
do with the other person . Love is not like you got someone , it's "You found
yourself" .

------
dctoedt
The author's ex, Daniel, did the right thing by breaking up with her. He was
fairly sure that he didn't see a long-term future with the author. It would
have disserved both of them — and been woefully unfair to her — for him to
keep seeing her just out of habit and convenience. Both of them would have
been at least somewhat foreclosed from other romantic opportunities that, at
least in his eyes, would have been a better fit.

------
jayalpha
Man, you will know. Trust me. But in general:

"Don't have sex man. It leads to kissing and pretty soon you have to start
talking to them."

Steve Martin

------
westurner
Where is the feeling felt? Is there an associated color or a shape or a
kinesiologic position?

"Love styles"
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_styles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_styles)

"Greek words for love"
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_words_for_love](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_words_for_love)

------
neom
I wonder how Ayn Rand would feel about this article.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMNUdDC4tEc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMNUdDC4tEc)

------
skilled
Gather around friends, the wine is on me.

