Falling in Love or Choosing to Love

The word destiny is often used to mean chance. In other words, it just happens to you like a bolt of lightning and you have no control over it.

That's for novels and movie scripts.

You can indeed "fall in love" - have a strong emotional feeling for a person. Sometimes that's also called infatuation. It is usually short-term.

The long-lasting love is a choice. As someone has said, love is a verb. You choose to be loving toward someone, and eventually you love that person. Day-to-day, nitty-gritty life needs the choosing kind of love.

Yes, I "fell in love" with my husband. That part was easy. REAL love and all the stuff that comes after that, is a choice. Sharing a home, building a life, living with him, life being thrown at us, struggles, joys, sadness...the gritty really life stuff, is a choice. Falling in love isn't hard for anyone. Maintaining life and love, is an active choice.

I still had to choose to marry him, you know. There wasn't anything forcing me down the aisle.

It's a bit of both.
Sometimes the pheromones really attract you to someone and they really have no/zero/zip redeeming qualities whatsoever.
It might be fun to fantasize about 'the bad boy' once in awhile but your brain should be in charge enough that you don't let it go past fantasy.

It's kind of stupid to let your glands do the thinking for you.
Glands are just a basic drive to breed - every animal has that - the urge to merge is a strong one - and a lot of conception centers around it.
(Oh, and not every parent falls in love with their kids - there are some who are like those birds who lay eggs in other birds nests and abandon their chicks to be raised by others.)
Your brain should be thinking along the lines of - will he be a good husband/father/provider/partner-in-life? Is he a good risk for the long haul?
And not enough people think along those lines - which is why many cultures will go with arranged marriages.
The people who are hormonally besotted and ready to rut (potential bride/groom) are the LEAST sane people to be making a life long choice.
Their parents often (but not always) make the best choices for who will be good matches/marriages for the long run.

To totally allow 'destiny' to make your decisions for you is saying that you have no free will - that you are not an active participant in your own life - that life just happens to you and you have no choices in the paths you take.
I have made active choices to keep some people in my life and to let others fall away.
I may not have total control all the time but I do as much steering as possible and I don't leave everything to fate.

Yes, love is a choice. You choose to spend time with someone that you may have some chemistry with, and when feelings begin to develop you choose to encourage them or not.

Even if you believe in love at first sight, you can still choose to walk away or not. You can choose to ignore the crush of "love at first sight" which is really just a rush of hormones. That zing with "love at first sight" is your pheromones telling you that the person is attractive and might be an option.

Falling in love doesn't really happen all at once. It's a process. Just like a fall. When you trip or fall off something from a height, it takes a while to hit the ground and feel the hit and then the results of the hit.

Your brain is in far more control than your body. Your brain is really your biggest sex organ. Love doesn't just "happen" to you, and a woman is not simply an extension of a man. It's Woman and Man. Not Wo + Man.

Loving your children isn't about "falling" in love. Loving your children is (or usually is for most women) automatic. It just is. I would also never use the term "falling in love" regarding children because that's just icky. It's a romantic term, not a motherly term.

I love my children. I'm in love with my husband. I love my children because they're mine, I created them with my husband, they're part of me, they're biologically bound to me... we're bonded from before birth so I simply love them. I CHOSE my husband, so I'm in love with him. Big difference.

I choose to stay in love with him by working hard at my marriage WITH him, so that we can both be happy. He's my main love. I love him above all else. That way, I can make sure that we can both love our children. Happy marriage, happy home and all that.

There's no such thing as destiny. But that's a completely different conversation than love at first sight. [Ignoring someone that could/is dangerous for you, and likely abusive, and walking away from "but I LOVE him!!!111!!! eleventy!!11!!" because of love at first sight isn't a passionless heart; it's the adult thing to do. It's what you do when you want to choose a father and a husband who will last your entire life and you can STILL choose someone you feel passionate about.)

Their = belongs to them
There = something over someplace else OR a great way to start a sentence
They're = short way to say "they are"

well, it's not either or.
and it's certainly not destiny.
there's the 'thunderbolt', the romeo and juliet thing that IS real, despite what people with no fire in their souls like to say.
there's the friendship-first path.
there's good ol' loin lust.
there are arranged marriages that end up in deeply committed love.
there are all sorts of ways for it to happen.
love is as variable and individual as people are.
khairete
S.

I don't believe in destiny. I don't believe in souls mates. What I do beleive in is when you do find that person and you fall in love then you just know. Things felt different with my husband the first time I met him...but then I CHOSE to marry him and keep working on that love.

Both. You can't help that heartfluttering attraction for the guy with dark dreamy eyes and pecs to match but we are always mistaking that for love because guess what he loves to eat salmon pie, too!
The kind of love that seems to last is the kind we can either start out like that (dreamy guy) and we choose to enjoy being in life and love with them or in some cultures your mate is picked out for you at birth and by golly you realize years later you are really in love with them. Entirely different.
We can also choose to get the heck out of 'bad' love that started out as dreamy love. And that is a wise choice. Verbally abusive people, neglectful or violent are not good love mates and so whether it just 'happened' or we learned it we always need to remember ourselves.

I think you choose who you date, become involved with, and/or marry but you don't choose how you feel about them (attraction or even love). There are actions that can help or hinder those feelings for sure. You can choose to make the best of a relationship and may develop feelings over time.

Yes, love is a choice. With that said, it can be built on chemical reactions to those we find attractive.

When I met hubby, I knew we'd marry. He was my destiny, but I picked it. Without the choice, you'd never do the necessary work to make it lasting love, I.e. More than a base chemical reaction.

Both.

If you are attuned to yourself, then you will always be looking for a person who's characteristics you admire. There will be parameters that rule out people with whom your values don't click, i.e., if you value hard work or intelligence or beliefs, then you won't have your radar up for someone lacking in those departments. If you don't understand yourself, you will choose wrong.

There has to be a chemistry that lights the fire in your eyes, though.

Then there is a kind of back and forth dance that happens with interest and compromise. There is a choice of acceptance of differences that are revealed by the complexities of life.

Ann Landers used to ask if you are better off with the person or without. I think the questions in a long term relationship are much tougher, except in the most base, abusive relationships. Then the question is, how fast do I get to safety?

The more mature we are, the better we can evaluate most differences as small and choose to love. But it's a two way street. There is another person doing the same. If both choose to love, it takes. If one chooses to love themselves more, it fails.

Why did you remove your title and change your question? I hate when people do that.

I fell in love, but it wasn't instant, it took time to get to know my husband and what kind of person he is. I don't believe it's destiny.

Attraction is the initial phase but love is a choice.
And a verb. (Trite, I know.)
I don't believe in destiny -- as in O. half of a couple that "completes" the other above all other possibilities.
I think a lot of people CHOOSE to believe in the idea of destiny--both to good and bad ends.
Too many people choose Mr. Or Mrs. Right Now instead of choosing well, IMO. Love of convenience. Situational. Etc.
Soooo...destiny? No.
Initial attraction/infatuation then a CHOICE to make it last...yes.

I think you do choose to love. It is an action more then just a feeling, something you must choose to do and keep doing every single day.

I think you are both right but at different stages. Destiny and hormones bring you together and then you make the decision to continue to do the work and take the actions that show the commitment part of love.

I think you can be with someone and not be head over heels in "love" with them. Where your heart takes off beating crazy when they walk into a room or they glance over at you and smile.

You can have mutual respect and admiration and love that person without the other stuff. There can still be passion and fulfillment too.

So I think we "can" choose to love someone and it grow over time and be wonderful.

I also think that sometimes we need to go have a brief hot affair with that person we are madly "in love" with so we can get that heat out of our system and move on once it burns out.

I think it's a little of both. It's not a common conscience choice, it just sort of just melts together.

You date and get to know different people and you decide what you want in a partner. Then you start looking for someone who has those best qualities. You spend more time with them, begin to care for them/fall in love. Then you choose that person and you stop looking.