Comment on Is it reasonable to tell a person you once loved about the fact years later?
nitroemdash@lemmy.wtf 13 hours agoAttraction /= love. You did not love her.
I am pretty much sure my feelings fell under most common definitions of “love”. I wonder what makes you think otherwise.
You have a desire to have your attraction to her validated.
Maybe that is a part of it, but I also want for her to be validated. I, for instance, would be if someone told me this.
Don’t insert yourself into her life, or any woman’s life for that matter, just so you can wag your attraction to her in her face.
From the tone of your post, I feel like you had a pretty bad day. I’m sorry for whatever happened to you, get better soon.
This person’s advice is comprehensive and correct. You need to accept it. What you’re feeling is not love. Love is something that is built up over years of being in a relationship. No relationship, no love. If what you’re feeling is as strong as you claim, then the correct word would be infatuation, or possibly obsession.
You’re going to come off as extremely creepy to her. Let it go.
Love is something that is built up over years of being in a relationship. No relationship, no love.
What?
From the Encyclopædia Britannica:
love, an emotion characterized by strong feelings of affection for another arising out of kinship, companionship, admiration, or benevolence. In a related sense, “love” designates a benevolent concern for the good or welfare of others. The term is also used to refer to sexual attraction or erotic desire toward another. Love as an individual emotion has been studied in several scientific disciplines, including psychology, biology and neuroscience, anthropology, and sociology.
Romeo and Juliet never got to live as a couple. Were they not in love?
We knew each other for 11 years, were bonded by various class activities. I believe that’s enough for the proper and pure feelings to form.
Whatever you say, brother. We’re only here to provide advice. And so far, everyone’s advice seems to be on the same page. It’s your decision whether to take it.
I will however point out that, in fact, the modern consensus is that Romeo and Juliet were not in love and that it was, at best, a hormone-driven highschool crush that lasted less than a week
You’re… quoting an encyclopedia. On matters of romance and affection. You’re not coming across as “in love”; you’re coming across as infatuated. You’re in love with the idea of her, and the even more abstract idea of being in a relationship with her. I can just about guarantee you that reality is unlikely to fully match what you have in mind.
And… well, taken with your other replies and apparent reluctance to integrate and/or accept the rather consistent gist of the replies you’re getting, you’re starting to give off a wee bit of an incel vibe.
But anyways:
This isn’t a matter you can logically litigate. Human emotion is simply not a clean, cut-and-dried domain.
My further advice to you would be to focus on human connection first. Writ large, treat dating and romance as a side quest, not a primary quest. Focus on befriending people, and deepening interpersonal connection before anything else.
I don’t know what the nuance of the situation is, of course, but it sounds like you may have the opportunity to rekindle a friendship, and then see if it goes anywhere as things evolve. If you push really hard on the romance angle, especially if this is a very out-of-the-blue thing for her, you’re very likely to squick her out and nuke any chance of friendship, let alone anything more than that. Treat her as a human, and a friend, and then see where things go.
You’re… quoting an encyclopedia. On matters of romance and affection.
Well, someone was disagreeing with me on the definition of a word. What else was I supposed to quote? A dictionary?
I can just about guarantee you that reality is unlikely to fully match what you have in mind.
Not sure what you mean. We knew each other quite closely.
And… well, taken with your other replies and apparent reluctance to integrate and/or accept the rather consistent gist of the replies you’re getting, you’re starting to give off a wee bit of an incel vibe.
I… Don’t understand. The only replies I argued with tried to redefine love as someone that may not happen outside of an established relationship, a definition seemingly not familiar nor to Wikipedia, nor Britannica, nor Shakespeare, nor Dostoevsky.
Could you quote the parts where I’m giving “incel vibes”, please?
but it sounds like you may have the opportunity to rekindle a friendship, and then see if it goes anywhere as things evolve. If you push really hard on the romance angle, especially if this is a very out-of-the-blue thing for her, you’re very likely to squick her out and nuke any chance…
What part of “one-sided” could you miss? I’m not looking into meeting her again. She now lives thousands of kilometres away and definitely never liked me. My question had no hidden meaning: the “confession” was simply a matter of curiosity satisfaction, a reassuring compliment, and a way to close unanswered questions, as every person has a right to know of everything related to them in the highest possible extent.
tips hat
Ackchually milady, the eshiclopedia brihtannika says you’re wrong! Checkmate lib
laughs in incel
Genuinely think you’re arguing about semantics with the love/attraction thing. Like, you can profess your love to someone despite no romantic relationship existing yet.
It’s honestly irrelevant what term OP uses to describe their feelings.
Though I do agree with the 2nd paragraph.
It’s not a matter of semantics, it’s a matter of drawing a distinction between 2 emotions that are often confused with each other. Call it whatever you want, but what OP calls love is clearly not what a regular person would consider to be love. This distinction, which has been made by several other people in this thread as well, is important because people will and often do justify being a creep as that they’re “in love.” See how already so much of OP’s argument hinges on the idea that he is in love? To be clear, he is very explicit that he is not just attracted to her - he is very clear that he believes he feels what a regular person would consider to be love.
Granted, in hindsight and given his responses so far, it seems unlikely that drawing this distinction would make a meaningful practical difference. But I fail to see how addressing one of the core parts of OP’s arguments can be considered as meaningless argument over semantics
Canconda@lemmy.ca 13 hours ago
Life experience. You have lot of growing up to do.
nitroemdash@lemmy.wtf 13 hours ago
Do you mean the only factor you considered is my then-age?
I can testify with great confidence that I wasn’t remarkably attracted to her in a sexual way. In that regard I found her moderately cute, somewhat pretty, and a few girls and boys of our age much more so. My feelings were primarily platonic. They developed over the years and consisted mostly of platonic affection, the romantic attraction was the consequence of it.
Canconda@lemmy.ca 12 hours ago
You’re self aware enough to ask the questions but lack the humility to accept the answers.
AskewLord@piefed.social 12 hours ago
OP is def looking for bias-confirmation that if they do this it’s all going to magically be perfect and solve all their sadness.
typical internet nonsense
nitroemdash@lemmy.wtf 12 hours ago
You provided no answer but “my experience tells me so”. No explanation, no proof, nothing. IDK, my experience tells me to reject bare appeals to authorutily, where even the level and source of your authority (age, sociological education maybe) wasn’t something you bothered to explain.
SnoopSqueak@lemmy.today 12 hours ago
Other people do not know how you feel. It may well be love. But it may not be worth bringing up to her, she may get the wrong impression like others here. I wish society encouraged honesty, but I don’t know what’s best here.
Canconda@lemmy.ca 8 hours ago
K but I don’t need to know how they feel when by their own words I can see that they’re conflating attraction with love.
You seem to want to help OP. But you’re actually reenforcing a very unhealthy mindset. Give you admission that you don’t know what’s best here it is rather irresponsible of you to baselessly undermine the consensus.
Some of the people here are family men who actually do know what we’re talking about. To falsely equate your “I don’t know” with experience driven advice, is a disservice to OP.