A Piece of Advice
Is love a feeling or a choice?
Topics: Same-Sex,Age Gap,Inter-Faith,Inter-class,Inter-caste,Inter-racial,Starting Out,Dating
Many scholars are of the same mind on a key point about love, which is that it isn’t just one thing, but a blend of multiple elements. In other words, love is both a feeling and a choice.
Although the idea of having a feeling and making a choice seems pretty straightforward, it’s more complicated than it appears. As scholars have noted, love can involve multiple emotions and can reflect a variety of choices, and many believe that there are different types of love. For example, partners can feel a deep sense of affection for one another and have fun together and behave and feel as friends would. But these partners can also feel a strong attraction and longing for each other and choose to be physically closer and more intimate. This same couple can also feel a great deal of compassion and soft heartedness and take steps to be there for one another to offer comfort, attention, and assistance.
However, no matter what kind of love we’re talking about, it involves feelings and choices we can make in our relationship which will help it to thrive. One of the most important choices around love is one that lays the foundation for it: To listen to ourselves in deciding who is right for us and to allow ourselves to be open to love with that person.
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