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How many times have YOU....

Four times for me, that I would qualify as love. A couple more that I thought was love, was infatuation...of course, when one is in the thick of things, I think it's easy to confuse the two.
 
Four times for me, that I would qualify as love. A couple more that I thought was love, was infatuation...of course, when one is in the thick of things, I think it's easy to confuse the two.

There was one of the five that could count as infatuation I guess. About the only thing that would qualify it as "love" for me is the fact that I knew she was wrong for me, but still felt very deeply for her.
 
There was one of the five that could count as infatuation I guess. About the only thing that would qualify it as "love" for me is the fact that I knew she was wrong for me, but still felt very deeply for her.

At the time I was involved in the two, I think I loved them, but it was one sided. I just didn't want to be truthful with myself.
 
One time, real love, and that's Big Boss Man, sitting over in the recliner, reading the Kindle. I've been in lust a few times, been infatuated a few times, but once I really found out what love was, I realized that I never had been there before. :lol: It's an eye-opener, that's for sure.
 
At the time I was involved in the two, I think I loved them, but it was one sided. I just didn't want to be truthful with myself.

I think it also depends on what people define as love.

If you count the number of women I could see myself spending the rest of my life with, the number drops to 2.
 
Four times for me, that I would qualify as love. A couple more that I thought was love, was infatuation...of course, when one is in the thick of things, I think it's easy to confuse the two.

it is usually women who confuse it l think
 
At the time I was involved in the two, I think I loved them, but it was one sided. I just didn't want to be truthful with myself.

I actually lived with two guys who loved me!!
 
Honestly, probably never.

Don't get me wrong. I've experienced "puppy love," infatuation, and lust more times than I care to count. I'm simply not sure if I've experienced anything that could be described as actual romantic "love."

I'm actually sort in a phase of my life where I try to actively avoid such entanglements.

As far as I'm concerned, career and financial stability come first. Women come afterwards. If one is successful at the former, one will tend to be more likely to succeed at the latter anyway.
 
Honestly, probably never.

Don't get me wrong. I've experienced "puppy love," infatuation, and lust more times than I care to count. I'm simply not sure if I've experienced anything that could be described as actual romantic "love."

I'm actually sort in a phase of my life where I try to actively avoid such entanglements.

As far as I'm concerned, career and financial stability come first. Women come afterwards. If one is successful at the former, one will tend to be more likely to succeed at the latter anyway.[/QUOTE]

l believe in you because you would understand whether you were in love or not if you really experienced it

but l dont agree with the last sentence

if it is real love what we are referring to l can claim it has nothing to do with any career ,money etc.
 
Can I say 1&1/2 times?

The first, was an incredible feeling, light electricity to water. I could feel every cell in my body alive with the feelings toward her.

The second is towards my oldest friend, who has made it through thick and thin (going on 12 years of friendship now), but it's more like a slow growth. Like a tree in a sense, you can feel it coming from deep within and slowly and surely the branches reach farther and farther.
 
l believe in you because you would understand whether you were in love or not if you really experienced it

but l dont agree with the last sentence

if it is real love what we are referring to l can claim it has nothing to do with any career ,money etc.

Financial security is pretty essential for a lot of women, particularly as they get older.

In any case, I'm not saying that love cannot happen without money. After all, my parents were poverty stricken college students when they got married. They struggled for a lot of years because of this fact.

I'm simply saying that I'd rather work "smarter, not harder" in that regard if at all possible. There's not much point in committing yourself to something as serious as "love" if you don't really have the means to support it.

Furthermore, given the general cruddiness of our current economy, it's virtually guaranteed that I'll wind up having to do another couple of tours overseas with the military if I want to remain financially solvent. I'm sorry, but I've seen far too many guys go borderline suicidal over "dear john" style breakups to want to have anything to do with that kind of long distance craziness.

I don't have anything against "love." I'm as romantic as the next guy. I just think that there's a time and a place for such things, and that my current circumstances pretty clearly aren't it. :lol:
 
Financial security is pretty essential for a lot of women, particularly as they get older.

In any case, I'm not saying that love cannot happen without money. After all, my parents were poverty stricken college students when they got married. They struggled for a lot of years because of this fact.

I'm simply saying that I'd rather work "smarter, not harder" in that regard if at all possible. There's not much point in committing yourself to something as serious as "love" if you don't really have the means to support it.

Furthermore, given the general cruddiness of our current economy, it's virtually guaranteed that I'll wind up having to do another couple of tours overseas with the military if I want to remain financially solvent. I'm sorry, but I've seen far too many guys go borderline suicidal over "dear john" style breakups to want to have anything to do with that kind of long distance craziness.

I don't have anything against "love." I'm as romantic as the next guy. I just think that there's a time and a place for such things, and that my current circumstances pretty clearly aren't it. :lol:

l understand you however l also know you cant resist it when it knocks on your door :mrgreen:
 
Two times. The first was Samantha. She went to Temple, but her brother went to BU and we instantly hit it off when we met in a Starbucks. Still to this day the worst breakup I've ever gone through.

Second was Allison.
 
Just once.

Met her on October 25th, 1980, had our first date the next night at her uncles house (he was rich, he not only had cable tv, but he had HBO too). She's in the other room asleep right now, and our two sons (23 and 20 y/o) are down stairs in the basement doing something with old video game consoles (building what they call a monster game console). They're both home from college. The oldest is getting his Masters and the youngest is in pre-med Biology.

Life's good.

I can't imagine a day without her... maybe an hour or so from time to time, but not a whole day.

Oh god, the feels.
 
l understand you however l also know you cant resist it when it knocks on your door :mrgreen:

Oh, I'm under no delusions as far as that's concerned. Once those hormones start flowing, it's pretty much all over. :lol:
 
Oh, I'm under no delusions as far as that's concerned. Once those hormones start flowing, it's pretty much all over. :lol:

l know you can utilize every ovary :cool:
 
Two. Three if you count my high school first love.
 
Three, four, five times...tops.
 
...truly been in love? Not lust, not one night stands...I'm talking the real deal here.

I'm talking romantic love.

I wish I could tell if I'm really in love with someone when I'm actually with them. As it turns out, more often than not, it's when the relationship ends that I realize if it was real love or not. I've been in love just twice so far. Once with Jack, my on again, off again, first true love of my life, still my best friend to this day, can't imagine my life without him in it, even if we're just friends now. We're probably gonna be 95 and still call each other every day. The second is Dan, the most complicated, rewarding, unique relationship I've ever had. The only man who accepts me for who I really am, the only one who's ever come close to understanding what makes me tick, the only one I feel I can be myself with. We're still together, but I came very close to losing him once and the excruciating pain I felt that night told me this is the real thing. I wish I could say I was in love with my ex-husband, father of my only child, but when that ended, I realized it wasn't true love at all.
 
...truly been in love? Not lust, not one night stands...I'm talking the real deal here.

I'm talking romantic love.

Working under the assumption that a fair chunk of "young" love is infatuation, owing to the fact that when you're that age you think you know what love is but don't, or think you're in love with someone but are really in love with your idea of them -- twice, and I'm lucky enough to have both of them in my life.

Both of them have made me a better man, and both of them accept me even though most of the time they have absolutely no idea what I'm on about. :lol: I couldn't imagine my life would be like without either one, meeting them was a paradigm shift and a watershed moment all rolled into one. I'm one of the luckiest guys alive.
 
I think only once, that can actually be called genuine.

I have noticed, since long before I met her, and many times since, that any time I see an attractive woman, especially if she's at all friendly toward me, I experience a reaction that it is tempting to call “love”.

I have a theory about the concept of “love at first sight”. I think that often, two people see each other and have the reaction that I just described. They may think that it is “love”, but it really isn't. But if they act on that, spend time together, really fall in love, get married, and “live happily ever after”, if you were to ask them when they first fell in love, they would go back to that first time they saw each other, and consider that to be when it began. You would only really know that that initial reaction wasn't true love when you don't act on it, and eventually go on to fall in love with someone else; or if you were already in love, and recognize that this reaction is not what you experience with the true object of your love.

As for my one genuine instance of love, I “met” her a long time ago, on the FidoNet forums (this was a loose network of BBSes that was the center of computer geek social community long before the Internet took over that role). If you can imagine the classic stereotype of a socially-inept, desperately-lonely male nerd, and then imagine a loose social community populated nearly entirely with people of that type; of which I was probably one of the more extreme examples. You can imagine that anyone who appeared in such a community claiming to be female would attract a fair amount of attention, especially if she happened to mention that she was single and to express dissatisfaction with the romantic prospects in her home area.

It seems nothing short of a miracle to me that when a young woman by the name of Seanette Pierce appeared in that manner, in one of the FidoNet forums, that I was the one who was most successful in attracting her attention and interest toward myself. FidoNet didn't really provide any reliable means for non-public messaging, so a lot of the exchange that followed between Ms. Pierce and myself took place in the open, on this one forum, in front of all the other participants.

After several months of this, she made the trip from Reedsport, Oregon, to Santa Barbara, California, to meet me in person. Four days later, we were engaged, and a year after that…

2013-01-20 21.56.26.jpg

We've been married, now, for eighteen and a half years.
 
Once.

I never had any "relationship" with anyone but her. Never figured I would nor had any interest in a "relationship" prior. Just one-nighters, nothing else, nor nothing else allowed by me. After a while I learned it is far harder to get rid of them than to get them.

Nor is this the typical "actually I never really loved any of the ones before you (about his/her spouse)." I never told any one I loved her, made it clear this was solely for sex. and that she had to be gone no later than noon tomorrow, unless she got out of line and then had to leave sooner.

I was 29 when I told her I loved her, but she was semi-conscious in a hospital fighting for her life when I did. They didn't know if she would live. And the thought of losing her was unbearable and totally unacceptable. For 2 solid days, whispering in her ear, I both begged and demanded that she live to stay with me. She later told me that her whole universe had become nothing but pain, except for those words and those words were her fantasy finally coming true - for which she shifted from only wanting to die to end it to absolutely refusing to die.
 
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I suspect it is basically a requirement of people to tell their spouses "I never really truly loved any of them, but I will love you forever." :doh:lol:
 
I think only once, that can actually be called genuine.

I have noticed, since long before I met her, and many times since, that any time I see an attractive woman, especially if she's at all friendly toward me, I experience a reaction that it is tempting to call “love”.

I have a theory about the concept of “love at first sight”. I think that often, two people see each other and have the reaction that I just described. They may think that it is “love”, but it really isn't. But if they act on that, spend time together, really fall in love, get married, and “live happily ever after”, if you were to ask them when they first fell in love, they would go back to that first time they saw each other, and consider that to be when it began. You would only really know that that initial reaction wasn't true love when you don't act on it, and eventually go on to fall in love with someone else; or if you were already in love, and recognize that this reaction is not what you experience with the true object of your love.

As for my one genuine instance of love, I “met” her a long time ago, on the FidoNet forums (this was a loose network of BBSes that was the center of computer geek social community long before the Internet took over that role). If you can imagine the classic stereotype of a socially-inept, desperately-lonely male nerd, and then imagine a loose social community populated nearly entirely with people of that type; of which I was probably one of the more extreme examples. You can imagine that anyone who appeared in such a community claiming to be female would attract a fair amount of attention, especially if she happened to mention that she was single and to express dissatisfaction with the romantic prospects in her home area.

It seems nothing short of a miracle to me that when a young woman by the name of Seanette Pierce appeared in that manner, in one of the FidoNet forums, that I was the one who was most successful in attracting her attention and interest toward myself. FidoNet didn't really provide any reliable means for non-public messaging, so a lot of the exchange that followed between Ms. Pierce and myself took place in the open, on this one forum, in front of all the other participants.

After several months of this, she made the trip from Reedsport, Oregon, to Santa Barbara, California, to meet me in person. Four days later, we were engaged, and a year after that…

View attachment 67151506

We've been married, now, for eighteen and a half years.

My wife never was interested in dating or any casual relationships. She decided I was who she wanted in our first talk the first time together. It wasn't a date. She was just some kid on a motorcycle stranded by a sudden cold hard wind Chicago rain while driving through a VERY bad part of town having to get off the highway for the weather. She snuck past the checkers of the rough strip-club I worked at to get out of the rain. Stranded, I invited her to sleep on my couch in my crummy flat across the street - and there we talked for the first time - both completely fascinated by such opposite a person.

Since I thought she was only 15 (she was 19) and didn't think anything of it, I was perfectly candid about myself and my extreme life of vices - sex, drugs, liquor, violence - as she told of her perfect life of perfect behavior. And her own value of only sex with a husband. I said, "well then, you wouldn't marry me, would you" - my meaning I was exactly everything opposite her values and opposite history.

She dropped her head, her hands to her lap, closed her eyes for a few seconds (I think she was praying). Then she looked up with big bright eyes and said, "Yes, all that was before me."

To her mind, I had proposed to her and she had accepted. From that moment on, though not telling me any of that, her singular goal was to make that come true. And for a year I absolutely wouldn't touch her because, to me, she was perfection that I would only ruin.
 
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Just once. We celebrate our 20 year anniversary this month. Never had any real serious girlfriends in high school due to being to busy with hobbies.
 
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