What is Love?

[yonah]

This was hard because I believe in familial and platonic love, but not romantic love. I think romantic love as a phenomenon is the combination of strong platonic love and sexual attraction.

This is probably because I am aro.

I don't really understand non-aro aces.

Regardless of my personal beliefs, I have no idea what (romantic) love is or how to define it, and I'm not denying the identities of non-aro aces (is there a term for that?) I just don't personally get it

Does someone have a working definition of (romantic) love and how it is different from sexual attraction and platonic love?

I am very confused.

[inactive12345]

Have you experienced love?

I have. Of the romantic variety, I was 13-14 and had a "pen pal" boyfriend I met online and was able to meet IRL a couple times before the relationship ended. In retrospect, I think the main reason I was able to keep it going for such a long time was because I was asexual. I wasn't getting distracted by anyone else, and since it was a long-distance think my lack of desire for anything overtly sexual wasn't much of an issue. I ended it because the making-out-and-dry-humping routine felt weird and unnatural for some reason, even with someone I cared about (clue #1). Felt guilty about it for quite some time afterwards.

Different Types of Love/Set Definition of Love

While love can be expressed in a number of different ways and with different intensity depending on the person, the definition of love boils down to just one thing for me: If it came down do it, would I give up my life to save this person? Would this person's death make me want to scream, down a fifth of vodka, and start smoking again? Answer to those is yes? That's love.

Orientation/Society's Effects on Experiencing Love

Society and my orientation tend to be pretty intertwined on this. If I love somebody who's not a relative, and they are attracted to women (this most often happens with straight dudes), I tend to be much more guarded in expressing affection. Partly due to our respective sexualities, partly due to society's expectation means that "I love you"="Let's do the horizontal tango."

Do You Know How You Know You Are In Love?

Same general idea as the types/definition of love. But, for me the process of growing to love someone happens so slowly that I don't even notice sometimes.

[Larien]

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