Is love made to be way more complicated than it ought to be?

It's weird. I have always been in the mindset that you either love someone, or you don't. I don't understand all this "I love you, but I'm not IN love with you" and all that nonsense. I also have trouble with the way people read into when and how and why someone says "I love you". Isn't there too little of it in the world to get into the elitism of who we can love and when we can love them? Should it really be that hard that we set a timetable "Well, you can't love someone you've only known for a few weeks/never met...." I hear that a lot too.





[As a new sister(and sister in law), I can say that's definitely not true.]








Sorry if that's a little confusing. I think it's all a load of bull.

Is love made to be way more complicated than it ought to be?
Put Universal Pants' and Furious Blue's answers together, and you should have a pretty good answer to your question :)





Like he said, you have varying degrees of love for many special people in your life. You have friends that you love, but you aren't interested in them romantically. Then you have friends that you ARE considering a romantic relationship with. You have love for your parents and siblings, and I should hope you aren't thinking of a romantic relationship with them......lol That is a different kind of love than the love you have for your friends.








The "I love you, but I'm not IN love with you" is not nonsense. Just some people can't seem to quite grasp the concept that you can love someone without actually being IN love with them. I have met a few of you guys........lol ;)





I believe you can love someone you have never met, or known for only a short amount of time.
Reply:Love is not all-or-nothing... there are many degrees of love... the "I'm not IN love with you" part means they love you, but not romantically...which is completely separate from the "more intimate" part....





How I love my children is different than how I love my parents. How I love my siblings is different than how I love my friends. There are too many facets to count... whatever love there is, accept it for what it is...





Our love for our partner is the most unique and the area where we get our hearts broken the most...
Reply:You are right. God is Love. Why do we forget this?


I try to be a good person and love thy neighbor, but with the increasing hate in the world it is really hard.


Why can't we change that?


Love is not complicated. Relationships are. Wait until you have difficult children. :)
Reply:Love is very simple. Make a choice to love. It is easiesr to love than hate.
Reply:Wow, I have the same idea about love.....I can't control it or say oh it is just a crush or lust and ignore being attached to someone! It comes by intuition and I can love loads.





Love is one and multiple! and No it is not bullshit!
Reply:To quote Matchbox 20 (Rob Thomas?):





"Shouldn't be so complicated,


Just hold me and then,


Just hold me again."





I'm on a Matchbox 20 kick.





ETA:


Universal and Furious B, great answers.
Reply:I think there is definitely a difference between loving someone and being IN love with someone. I love my mom, but thank g-d, I am not in love with her.
Reply:English doesn't have sufficient nuances for describing the multitude of emotions, commitments, biological urges, and pleasures associated with the many facets of "love."





Blame the language more than the states themselves.





^v^ ^v^ ^v^ ^v^ ^v^ ^v^ ^v^ ^v^
Reply:If love was easy, we wouldn't value it as much.
Reply:The short and easy answer to a complicated question is "yes", it is we who put limitations , and boundaries on love.





We would do well to learn from children upon the playground.
Reply:I think the whole "I love you but I'm not in love with you" thing is kind of a cop out. It's like a way of just saying that while you like someone a lot and care about them and all, you're just not in love with them.


As for the not being able to love someone you've only met recently, well that one I kind of agree with, to a point. There's different types of love. There's the love of a father who sees his child for the first time. In this case it's totally love at first sight. Romantic love on the other hand, that's a little different. There's all the initial feelings of infatuation, the butterflies in your stomach feel like love, but I'm not really sure that it's the real deal. I think to truly be in love with someone you have to really know that person's ins %26amp; outs. You have to have a mutual trust and understanding. It's hard work sometimes. It has to be 2 sided otherwise it's really more of a crush.


Anyways, hope this helped!!!
Reply:I can say I love you so easy to a persons face, but I am in love with you is REALLY DEEP ya know. I feel you on this.
Reply:Read 1 Cor 13.


We have a lot to learn about love.
Reply:love is something comes to our hearts without our well..........yet there are some acts and steps can help in bringing it.


you are worrying not to get certain love.................thats what make things unsettled .
Reply:After my last girlfriend, I'd have to say a definite yes.
Reply:so this is how you're going to do it????





in front of everyone else, you gonna tell me now, after all that we've been through, that you ain't 'IN' love with me???
Reply:why not put it this way: there are different kinds of love. romantic, parental, and so on.





God is love. just don't confuse this with love is god.
Reply:So far I cannot find a person who has been able to define love and it mean the same thing to another person.


It is totally possible to love a person that you have not seen face to face and it is possible to love different people in different ways. Anyone who is a parent knows this. The most pure love that can be experienced is the love a child has for a parent and vice versa.


and for the record REAL (ie romantic) love is totally complicated...
Reply:Life is complicated!








(If it was easy, it wouldn't be special.)
Reply:There is a difference between being IN love with someone and loving someone. For example my mom and dad are divorced...She still loves him as a person and as a friend but she is not IN love with him. She would not want to marry him and spend the rest of her life with him but she loves him as a person, a friend, and the father of her child. I don't think you can say that there are not different parts of love. In the Greek language Love has 4 different parts: Eros: which is passion and attraction, Storage: which is love for family members, Philia: which is brotherly love (such as between friends), and finally the highest form Agape: which is unconditional love for anyone no matter their flaws or problems. An example of Agape Love would be Mother Theresa.





The word love is used to loosely in the English language.
Reply:You can love everybody like a friend, then their is family love, and then there is love between a man and a women(preferably a returned missionary and a temple worthy women) Love is the key to life and Jesus loved everybody.