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My SO believes that you don't choose who you fall in love with....I disagree
I think you very much choose.
So I pose this question do you choose who you fall in love with or no?
I believe you choose to a certain extent. I mean if there's someone you're drawn to and like you choose to get to know them and get close with them and of course that's how people normally fall in love when they feel close and someone makes them happy. If we could fully choose who we fall in love with I don't think we'd choose to fall in love with people who are hundreds and thousands of miles away from us.
my girls <3
Josie (SO)
Met online ~ 17th August 2017 ~
Met in person ~ 30th August 2017 ~
Became official ~ 15th September 2017 ~
Closed the distance and moved in together! ~ 18th June 2018 ~
Ash
Met online ~ 21st November 2018 ~
Met in person ~ 26th November 2018 ~
Became official ~ 4th December 2018 ~
All moved in together! ~ 30th May 2019 ~
There is definitely instant attraction. Loving someone comes with time. You make the conscious decision to spend time with them, get to know them and sometimes, it develops into love.
To those who dream, nothing is ever far away.
Distance is to love as wind is to fire. It blows out the little ones and fans the big ones.
Only in a very minor sense. We each have our own criteria for the 'perfect mate'. No one meets whatever criteria we may have, to a T. So, Going by our criteria, we are choosing.
In my case, my (ex)wife is the one that initially asked me out. I said 'yes'. But in that situation, the 'choice' was more her, than me. But, When it came to my two ex's after my (ex)wife, I chose.
A lot of my extended family are products of arranged marriages (myself included!). My mom and dad certainly couldn't have loved each other on their wedding day but there's no doubt that they fell in love along the way. I think the same is true for a lot of my aunts and uncles. I think real love is a series of choices. Physical attraction is probably another story.
If we could fully choose who we fall in love with I don't think we'd choose to fall in love with people who are hundreds and thousands of miles away from us.
Depends if you believe in the concept of free will or not. After all we're made of a bunch of chemicals that randomly diffuse around and those chemicals are made of particles which follow the rules of quantum mechanics. I'm not sure how much choice we have in anything we do.
I'd say yes and no. We obviously make choices about whether or not we want to allow an attraction to follow its course, but often I think those choices don't feel like conscious decisions. They feel so natural that they just seem to be "happening" and we're happy to be caught in their pull. I never recall thinking clearly "I choose to love this man" while I was getting to know my boyfriend, but I obviously did make the choice to respond to him and keep talking to him, give him my contact info, spend time and money to meet him - even though I told him at the very beginning that I would never do a Long Distance thing. I consciously DID NOT want a LDR, but somehow I am in one. That's the part that feels like a "lack of choice", but not in an unpleasant way.
We don't choose who we feel physical attraction or a crush on, but we do choose who we pursue to really form a loving bond and relationship. I think most people have had crushes they never acted on, and thus never became love. A crush is an initial sense of belonging, when you feel you generally click with somebody, but it can be very fleeting if you don't deepen it.
~ It'll take a lot more than words and guns
A whole lot more than riches and muscle
The hands of the many must join as one
And together we'll cross the river
I think it depends a bit of circumstance. When I met my husband, or rather, when I started up with what was then my close friend, I had just ended a long term relationship (I was still sort of in love with my ex) and my heart felt really worn and cold, but it was a very distinct physical attraction that is still there 12 years later. I remember thinking, he loves me and if I don't pick him I will loose him, I don't know if I can love him but I care for him as a friend and am very attracted to him, so.... I chose to explore things with my now husband, even if that was very mentally taxing and I was scared, almost hysterical, of being left the whole first year.
When I met SO, I had ended a sort of relationship that I had tried to end many times, I had had the final straw perhaps six months earlier. Coming out of that situation was a very different situation than the one with my ex, because it was all my dection and it felt final and right. I actually felt almost in love with the world the summer that followed. When I met SO, I was instantly attracted to him, so I planned to force myself to NOT fall in love with him. I am not sure it would have become more than a small flirt had he not pursued me, big time. I felt very shocked by myself, actually. I was the health trip leader who fell for the waiter...I felt very unproffessional! But once I had kissed him it was just... unicorns and fairy dust. I knew that I couldn't pass him up, even if I had no idea what I had to do to make it happen.
Love as an every day thing is very much about choice. You choose to see the good, water the good, not get too upset over triflets... You choose to adjust and compromise and forgive. You choose to buy the plane tickets or movie tickets, you choose to be nice or strickt if it will help the relationship.
I made love to him only twice, she thought and looked at the man laying asleep beside her. And yet still it is as if we have been together forever, as if he has always known my life, my soul, my body, my light, my pain
- Paulo Coelho, "Eleven minutes"
I don't think you can choose to love anyone. You DO choose to spend time with someone, talk to them, hang out with them etc. I took quite a few classes about love in college actually. Romantic love is kinda like a science. It's something to be experimented with. The thing that I learned from those classes that made the most sense to me was that people tend to fall in love with someone they interact with all the time. Loving someone indeed comes with time but also with interaction.
You can choose to love someone else, but not to be in love . Two different things. I love my friends.. The love I felt when they put my son in my arms..the love Ifeel when Adam just hugs me....different. Totally.
I don't think you choose, nor do I believe it's preordained who you fall in love with. I just think it's pure luck if you happen upon the person you eventually fall in love with.
Do I believe in different forms of love? Certainly. The boyfriend/girlfriend, the bestfriends, girl friends/girl friends, boy friends/boy friends, family/family, and many other connections all show love to one another, just all in different senses.
I think you subconsciously choose who you are attracted too but consciously choose to fall in love with. Most importantly though is the fact that you definitely choose who to fall OUT of love with.
I'm tired and worried about the people who stay in a relationship not knowing why. They just say 'I love him/her'. If you don't know why, than its not love, it's probably lust or obsession.
Edit: funny I just ran into this quote
'Noone one falls in love by choice, it is by chance.
No one stays in love by chance, it is by work. And no one falls out of love by chance, it is by choice. '
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