How many people do you know that talk openly about falling in love?
Posted by SoaokingGross@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 37 comments
I know media representations of love have always been debatable but I’m hearing fewer and fewer of my fellow Americans talking love as an actual possibility. They talk about jobs and looks, occasionally they talk about “compatibility” as if they are trying to open an MS Word Document.
They never talk about love. The feeling. Almost as if they assume that if someone looks good and takes care of them, that’s what love is.
Adventurous-Time5287@reddit
So this is real life, and compatibility is important in a relationship. I also wouldn't talk about falling in love with my partner with someone other than a very very close friend.
SoaokingGross@reddit (OP)
The fact that I see people repeatedly sticking up for compatibility is exactly what I find interesting. It’s as if they feel someone has told them that love is the only thing that matters and their reaction is a defensive stance that overcompensates and focuses exclusively on “compatibility” like it’s a business deal.
Adventurous-Time5287@reddit
You cannot expect to live your life with someone and have mutual love and respect for someone without being compatible with each other. I repeat, this is real life not some shitty little hallmark movie. Falling in love happens during a relationship. The fact that you think it's remotely comparable to a business deal makes me think you got rejected by a friend who said it wouldn't work out because of it. Compatibility and communication are two of the most important things for a healthy and long- lasting relationship, no matter how much you might love that person.
SoaokingGross@reddit (OP)
Can you reread my comment because you seem to be proving my point. I never said people shouldn’t be compatible or have communication skills. What I said is that they seem to focus completely on that and exclude love from their speech.
Adventurous-Time5287@reddit
You have to be compatible to be in a long-term relationship no matter how much love there is
Does that answer your question? Is that clear enough? Can you read that well enough?
IowaKidd97@reddit
I think you are confusing something here. True love (with a romantic partner specifically) doesn’t just happen suddenly, it’s built over time during a relationship. But you need to get into a relationship first, and once in it, needs to last. It lasting (and not being miserable) is based on compatibility, and getting into a relationship in the first place involves a lot of things but big ones being initial sexual attraction, which is based on yes looks but also can be someone’s job or the income that comes with it.
Some of this is sexual attraction, some of it is logically thinking about compatibility, and some of it is wanting a partner you will be financially stable with (it’s not even necessary about being rich, just comfortable). All of these are considerations that help people find the right person to fall in love with.
Love comes after, not before. Love at first site is a myth, but passion at first site is real. I think that’s the difference between media and real life.
SoaokingGross@reddit (OP)
But like people have fallen in love without making someone pass a check list audit. Like you may have to actually love them.
bloopidupe@reddit
Which leads to toxic relationships. Have a checklist before you give your heart to someone who will destroy you.
With that being said. People I'm close to I talk about falling in love and the feeling associated with it. Or we recognize it in each other
SoaokingGross@reddit (OP)
No one is saying you shouldn’t have the checklist. The question is why is the checklist more important than love?
GreenBeanTM@reddit
No one is saying that
GhostOfJamesStrang@reddit
You're making this a way bigger and more serious deal than it is.
Aggressive_tako@reddit
I'll tell people how my husband and I met, how we got married, how great he is, what an amazing father he is to our kids. I'll even talk about how we've had rough patches and (if they are younger) how you have to chose love everyday, not just at the beginning. I don't know that I've ever told someone "I fell in love with him" as part of the story - it is so painfully obvious that it goes without saying.
Based on your post, and some of the comments, you seem to think that falling in love is a point in time or an external force. It isn't. Lust is a flash in the pan, but real love is a slow build that gets better with time. You feed it with choices that you make. Telling you about falling in love with my husband would mean telling you about every time there were surprise flowers or a kind word. About how his personality inspires me to be a better person or how his strengths line up with my weaknesses. How he moved across the country to chase my dreams and moved back home at the drop of a hat when my mom was dying. The details of our love story are intimate and built on years of personal moments.
Adjective-Noun123456@reddit
Our friends and a solid chunk of my coworkers are in that stage where everyone is either settling into something that's clearly intended for the long haul, getting married, having kids, or trying to have kids.
So love and love adjacent topics tend to come up a lot.
SoaokingGross@reddit (OP)
Yes this is the exact kind of language I’m talking about. You didn’t mention actually falling in love.
ChuushaHime@reddit
Because you don't--it's implicit to how we think about marriage and relationships here in the US.
Over the course of history and across the world, you'll find cultures for whom dating and/or marriage (or its equivalent) have served a variety of primary purposes--to forge a political alliance, for instance, or to reap the value of a dowry, or to provide an heir. Those are NOT the primary purpose of dating and marriage in the 21st century United States, where dating and marriage are primarily defined and driven by love, romance, attraction, whatever you want to call it. If you meet a married couple out on the street in the US, it is a safe to assume that they got married because they loved each other (and presumably still do, since falling out of love is a common catalyst of a breakup/divorce).
Adjective-Noun123456@reddit
I mean it's kind of a forgone conclusion at that point, no? It doesn't need to be said.
moonwillow60606@reddit
Why should they be talking about something that’s very personal with you? It’s not really any of your business.
You should consider that you’re making some wildly incorrect assumptions.
SoaokingGross@reddit (OP)
Because I personally know them.
moonwillow60606@reddit
Well the people I know and have close friendships do talk about falling in love and that being part of the relationship. Not sure why your friends don’t. Perhaps you should be having this conversation with them rather than extrapolating your limited experience to 340 million other people.
dontforgettowriteme@reddit
My dad talks about his love story with my mother. Beyond that, are you asking if people state that "falling in love" is a specific goal of theirs?
Mm can't say that I do hear people say that.
SoaokingGross@reddit (OP)
I mean yes. I rarely hear people talk about falling in love. I hear people critique romcoms. I hear people talk about getting married and why you might want to do it, or why it’s a sham. But I don’t hear people talk about falling in love.
dontforgettowriteme@reddit
My guess would be that most people see falling in love less like a thing that can be actively achieved and more like a thing you expect or hope to happen in your life.
For some people, marriage is a life goal. Underneath that header, I guess "being in love when you do it" is assumed.
SoaokingGross@reddit (OP)
Yes. Everyone just… assumes. They have a list of things to do and oh yeah… PS love.
Deolater@reddit
That's because you're in the big city
You need to go to a small town for Christmas and discover love
GhostOfJamesStrang@reddit
Only with the person they are in love with or their absolutely closest family and friends. Usually.
Outside of lovey-dovey holidays, anniversaries, the weddings, etc.
I wouldnt talk with a coworker about "falling in love" in most cases.
Ceorl_Lounge@reddit
I don't like most of my coworkers enough to confide in them about my personal life.
ChuushaHime@reddit
In addition to this, love/attraction are implicit to the way we approach dating / relationships here in the US.
We don't do arranged marriages, we don't do marriages of state, and we aren't legally or socially bound by restrictive guidelines that you can only date within your social stratification or w/e. Even people who date/marry for extraneous reasons (like money) still want to be attracted to and romantically/sexually compatible with their partner.
So there's not really a need for us to go out of our way to say that we have fallen in love with our spouse or partner, because it's fundamentally built in to the way we conceptualize the topic of a relationship.
BusinessWarthog6@reddit
Yeah, I don’t really talk about my personal life with my co workers. The only time it came up was when I put in for my time off for my wedding. After that, most of the questions are general “hows the planning going?”
Dapper-Presence4975@reddit
Is this really an Ask an American question?
ljculver64@reddit
My family and close friends talk openly about it to me... i wouldn't expect it to be talked to openly outside of the friend zone.
lfxlPassionz@reddit
The United States, and a lot of the rest of the world but not all, has a pretty toxic idea of love and relationships.
Of course this is a person by person basis. People are only recently starting to notice how toxic things are regarding relationships and marriage in the United States and many people are choosing to give up on it with how messed up things get.
However, I am one of the few who found good, real, and respectful love and I believe I found it by not looking for it. When you look for it, you often see it when it's not there. When you aren't looking for it, you just find yourself accepting it when/if it comes along instead.
DOMSdeluise@reddit
I tell my wife I love her many times every day
sneezhousing@reddit
Love alone won't sustain anything. So yes you need to be attracted to your partner, yes they need to.have a job and.not want to live off you. Those things you listed are like prerequisites. Then you date and fall in love with those that meet your minimum requirements. No one I know is treating dating and marriage like a medieval match to keep money and power. They still want to love their partner but not have life be a struggle
TheOwlMarble@reddit
Uh, most people? I've talked with most people in my circle about it to some degree.
The idea that people wouldn't talk about that with friends/family is deeply foreign to me.
sageamericanidiot@reddit
Love is intimate and not something I or anyone I know openly discussed with many outside of their close circle.
TheOnlyJimEver@reddit
This seems to me to be a function of age rather than any kind of cultural shift. When you're young, you're more idealistic and hopeful. When you get older, you either fall in love and get your happily-ever-after, in which case your love life becomes private, or you fall in and out of love, remain single, and become more jaded.
Remarkable_Table_279@reddit
It’s not something you talk about with anyone you’re not close to. I know how two my best friends fell in love (and out) and for one in & married. And my siblings love stories and my mom coming home and telling grandma “I’ve met the man I’m going to marry.” But I don’t know about others love stories as it’s not appropriate to ask …tho I know aspects that friends/coworkers have chosen to share