Went back and saw this.

I just want to say, that without ANY hesitation or shadow of a doubt AT ALL, I would shout to the world that I love my close friends. We exchange "i love you' s frequently, and I know I and whichever friend I am saying it to at the time both get a little bit shy and embarassed when we say it- because it's true, and we do feel that way. It's not the typical girls just saying 'love you!' to their best friend (though I know some do really mean it). I really, REALLY love my dearest friends. I love all my friends, but not the same way I love my three closest female friends. (And no, I don't love them romantically/sexually.)

It's not hard to love. Yes, their are different forms of love- I love my boyfriend a little differently than I love my family, and a little differently than I love my friends. But all of it is love, and I know it is because of the way they all make me feel. I get so emotional when people I really care about do something for me, I go out of my mind with worry when anything happens to them, and I get so emotional when I see them after being apart from them for a long time. I remember once one of my best friends and I hadn't seen eachother all summer, and we finally planned to get together one day because we missed eachother so much- the day after each of us had come back from a long vacation. We ended up just falling asleep together on the couch and not doing much, but that was enough. I'd call that love. Friendship love, not romantic love, but still love for sure.

Granted, I am more sensitive and emotional than most people, hahaha. It becomes a bit of a pain, but it also gives me a different outlook on life and generally I'm a pretty upbeat person. But the people around me all helped me to realize that.

I've always said if you aren't happy in a relationship, then why be in it?


I have to disagree with what you said about love. I know extremely old couples that have been married for something like 70 years. that never died for them. thats what "real" love is. my great grandparents were married for 90 years and died together. (sort of).
if whatever you felt for someone died after 4 years, it wasn't love imo.

Of course this is all my opinion.

That's just what I like to think.

I would sort of call that kinship. I have a few close friends. We've never said I love you. ever.


But i think its different for guys.

The difference is maturity level. Some people learn something as a kid and stick with it. Other people see that the things they believed as a kid can be done better.

There's also women who like to use the I love you as a way of control. If they say it first and you say it back, they gain control while you lose it. Don't ask me why it works that way, because it doesn't make sense. Then again, if someone asked me to make sense of humans, I would laugh my ass off.

to speak quite personally on the matter: i don't consider that to be a matter of opinion and, going one step further, unless you think love is nonexistent your claim cannot be true.

i'm not saying that love always persists through divorce (or even that it's always present in marriage in the first place), but to make a universal claim that divorce is the end to a loveless marriage just isn't right.

that's all i wanted to say. i'm not judging or anything--everyone has their own definition of love, but i just wanted to speak up on that one small part of the conversation.

how is it not a matter of opinion? Unless love itself has a universal definition that we can agree on, all things where love could or could not be present are not concrete facts.


Also there is an exception to every rule and every claim. i would probably not say 100% of divorces but more like 99%.

I think many people, like yourself, are over complicating love. It's simple. And I feel like those who don't freely admit it to one another are more or less fearful of what it could mean.

the fact that it's less than 100% is what i was getting at. whether is 80%, 5%, or 99.9% was irrelevant--i just wanted to make that point since what you said (as an absolute statement) could be taken quite personally by a number of people (myself included).

i wasn't trying to impose on your definition of love in any way/shape/form.

very very very very very very few things that people say are 100% are actually 100%. it's just annoying to type 99.9 or whatever all the time.