How do we know when we’ve fallen in love? (2016) | Hacker News Reader

How do we know when we’ve fallen in love? (2016)

qz.com

157 pointsrohmanhakim102 comments

So I’ll just leave some bits here. For me the quote that started to conceptualize romantic love was “Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.” from Robert Heinlein. But really that’s not the whole story. Just like we have many different kinds of non-romantic love (kids, candy, outdoors, parents, friends, motorcycles, precision instruments, algorithms) we also experience many different kinds of romantic love. We often talk about “the love of your life” and “the one” as the ultimate version of romantic love. But it’s not an escalator: https://offescalator.com/what-escalator/. And if you follow this model of relationships, you quickly arrive at the concept of casual love: https://www.carsieblanton.com/blog/post/82149148832/casual-l....

The idea that you can say “I love you” to a partner 2 weeks into a relationship and not place any expectations on it being actionable is very freeing. I have experienced it myself several times on both ends. It is a wonderful thing. Remember folks, you don’t have to love every partner you have. And if you love them, you don’t have to do anything about it. You can love for a week or a lifetime, you can love for a lifetime and never get serious. You can get serious but not married. The choices are yours and many options exist for all kinds different relationship types.

Edit: if anyone wants to nerd out about non-monogamous/polyamorous relationships, I am happy to talk about it.

I knew you were poly as soon as you mentioned Heinlein as one of your biggest influences on your theory of romance. :)

Love without expectations is a wonderful joyous thing.

A couple songs my longest partner and I love are https://climbingpoetree.bandcamp.com/track/cant-help-but-fly... and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeGFu05xB-8

Heh. Heinlein wasn’t actually how I came into it, but because his writing was always in the back of my mind, it made it a lot easier to accept. I fell into it the way one falls into a puddle: by a series of mishaps. And those links/songs are excellent, thank you!

I am glad someone bought up Heinlein. He has certainly been a very important influence in my life.

I don’t like the label of ‘poly’ and I don’t understand the definition of ‘love’ as we know it in society..and I have a dim view of marriage as a social construct as I see how it can be regressive for women(I am female).

That Heinlein quote is one of my favorites. I embrace it better as something that causes a tumble and release of brain chemicals in a certain synchronized way.

I also wonder if entheogens can help human beings grasp the concept of love and guide them to be emotionally non violent(to themselves and to those they love) about it.

Perhaps we will all love each other universally if someone added ‘shrooms in our tap water.(I was being facetious! Altho..it is more of an absurd seed for maybe a weird tales story contribution.)

I kind of agree. I got into an argument with an ex once about how love is just brain chemistry. She didn’t like that because that made it not romantic. I think it makes it more romantic: out of basic biochemistry you get “this insane feeling!”

I do think we would all be nicer to each other and ourselves if we didn’t strive to make our partners our “everything”. It isn’t the solution to all our problems but it is a solution to a problem that plagued many marriages/long term relationships. If it wasn’t, cheating and marriage counselors wouldn’t be as common as they are.

I don’t really like labels in general (I prefer to use verbs than nouns if I use one), but poly is what I have been doing for about 7 years now. In addition I have realized that other forms of non-monogamy fit me as well. Love can be felt more or less in those than in poly.

> love is just brain chemistry

A great read about that is “a complete idiot’s guide to chemistry of love”, which gave some solid peer-reviewed confirmations to some of the trends I thought I was spotting.

Quite much agree with the rest, not a lot to add :) - life is most beautiful in its diversity.

Relationships run into the danger of co-dependency if young people have baggage while transitioning into adulthood. In a lot of ways, the baggage can be multi generational and gets heavier.

I don’t know the answer but monogamous relationship is suitable when children enter the picture. It’s a whole different ball game now.

Digressing a bit, I am fond of beckoning the monogamous nature of our bird friends. It is very expensive for them to gather resources to raise their young(aka perpetuate their species) and monogamous bonded pairs have a better chance of a surviving brood. Perhaps in times of restricted resources or hard to access survivability resources, monogamy is the best answer.

Consider apes and big cats, they have completely different social structures. They conserve energy when the alpha leads the pack for food. The alpha also gets the pick of his ‘harem’, as it were..And they are not monogamous. So there’s that.

I think that while we like to believe that we have access to free choice as human beings, we are not that far removed from our mammalian cousins. Having said that, we are also finding ourselves in a situation where resources are becoming scarce(exponentially increasing population) and mating choices are restricted due to individual’s place on the economic and social hierarchy.

I am compelled to pick serial monogamy over poly or true monogamy. Our biology compels us to obey the brain chemicals. To disregard that is an enormous act of will against nature. Unless we deal with the pesky problem of religion, values and morals along with our resource constrained hierarchical world, hypocritical forced monogamy is here to stay.

In a lot of ways religious morality induced monogamy has paved the way for pair bonding and successful child survivorship statistics....so from the gene POV, monogamy must be winning in some way.

I have read several books that would argue that our biology specifically predisposes us to not be monogamous, especially when it comes to child rearing. Sex at Dawn and Sapiens are two examples. The latter makes a weaker case for it, but it equally rejects that we are biologically monogamous. The author there argues that best we can tell, when we were still evolving to be what we are today, there were tribes that practices essentially polyamory and group parenting, and there were more monogamy-centered ones, leading to the conclusion that we do have a choice in the matter. Bonobos, great apes closer to us than Chimps, are non-monogamous to a fault. I have two children that are a result of a non-monogamous relationship, and yes, it was definitely easier to have the extra hands and extra resources during their first few years.

While anecdata, I will also bring up the example of my 80 year old grandfather. When he was in his 60s, my grandmother suddenly died. A few years later he reconnected with an old friend, and they developed a romantic relationship, and are married and still together. They are some of the most co-dependent people I know. Happy, it seems, but co-dependent. I think co-dependence doesn't just afflict young people.

Multi generational families had multiple hands and shared resources to raise children. It’s the grandmother effect. I was raised in such a family. All my grandmothers children and grandchildren lived under the same roof. The women went to work, were able to pursue education and were financially independent. Everyone participated in child rearing with the grandmother at the helm and contributed to the common pot. It was based on kinship bond and a product of a strong matrilineal lineage. It comes from kinship/communalism and not individualism. But all the world is individual now as most societies around the world become westernized.

I think religious morality and wealth inequality greatly affects the hypothesis in both the books you mentioned.

No doubt, there will be a small percentage of world population that will play out that hypothesis but majority will not.

The chances that the human species will adopt poly lifestyle is small to nil, imo.

However, I think marriage as well as polyamorous or just about any relationship should come with reevaluations and time limit. It is a human universal to want to have an ownership stake in any relationship. It’s higher during reproductive age(due to the cost of rearing young).

If the concept of marriage(because it does carry a respectable heft of societal approval and reflects religious morality) is abolished AND if women are truly independent..especially financially, then I think it would become more prevalent and acceptable.

In one of my imaginary worlds, communal child rearing will also likely allow people to embrace free love, as it were...I believe that love has the propensity to include many people and at the same time, but only if external pressures that cause relationship insecurities and vulnerabilities are alleviated.

I am trying to remember the book where I read the different kinds of love...courtly love, romantic love etc etc. it was fascinating because ‘love’ through the various centuries was entirely a function of religion and society and economics. But love is what happens between our eye brows and inside our skulls powdered by brain chemicals. We are resistant to accept it.

I find myself happy to accept love when I recognize it, hold it in the now and then release it. On the flip side, I realize that I have enormous capacity to hate. It surprised me but I don’t deny it either. I dislike as many people as I love. It’s like curses and hexes kind of hate. I guess it is my unintegrated shadow inching towards my self.

I agree with a lot of this. I do think that as we replace extended family structures with free market alternatives (you can replace your grandmother with a hired babysitter, etc.), we will see alternative relationship structures become more common. Also, let’s not forget that religion is slowly losing hold of our collective minds. More people identify today as atheists than a generation ago. And of course while unrelated, marriage equality has shown that messing with the institution of marriage in now way destroys society. And speaking of marriage, in the US at least it is such an expensive proposition, that a long of millennials simply don’t do it (along with not buying cars or houses). Imagine a society where the majority of the people grew up with Tinder and never want to get married. That’s the reality we live in now. In fact, a majority of millennials report having participated in a non-monogamous relationship at some point. I doubt it will become the norm any time soon, but it could certainly become a norm.

If you remember the name of that book, I would love to read it!

I hear you. But first thoughts: 1. Replacing family structures with free market alternatives means that one must be comfortably wealthy to be able to buy into it. 2. Perhaps this would mean that poly lifestyle is only suitable to a certain sector of the population 3. Perhaps this is why religion found its most viral vectors amongst the poor and disadvantaged as it offered a sort of moral support and hope towards ‘something better’ than strained existence (promise of heaven)in return for their faith in whatever organized religion. 4. That most people now identify as atheists makes me believe that we ahve indeed conquered most of the crushing poverty that was prevalent only half a century ago. I would ascribe it to capitalism. It seems to be a better route than communism which started with atheism but didn’t succeed as an economic system. 5. That marriage is not an attractive proposition in the USA is likely because there are more ‘empowered women these days than before. I don’t think it’s a tinder effect. Most women simply don’t want to be married and pop out kids. They are likely subscribing to serial monogamy than polyamory.

As mentioned, the above enumerated points are ‘first thoughts’...i want to ponder further to see if any of them contradict each other.

Re: the book. I can’t remember!! Somehow I feel like it is probably one by Leonard Shlain. I found his book Alphabet and the Goddess enthralling at one point and then binged on everything he wrote.

From his wiki page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Shlain

[..]His books include Art & Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time, and Light (1991),[3] The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image (1998),[4] and Sex, Time and Power: How Women's Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution (2003).[5][..]

I want to say it’s one of his for sure. It was beautifully written and I loved the words as much as the content. So I want to say that I am 90% sure it’s one of Shlain’s books!

Amazing food for thought! Thank you for the links

Not trying to criticize here, but if "love" becomes freely applicable to all sorts of relationships of varying intimacies and understandings and bonds, doesn't that cheapen the word?

Maybe the word doesn't need to be love -- but I think we need a word that expresses commitment. Perhaps not exclusively, but at least through-thick-and-thin support. Love without this sounds oxymoronic to me.

It depends on how you define it. It may sound like I am preaching “the one twue way”. I am not, I support those who define things differently. Having said that, the way I view it is that love is already used all over the place: “I love this game!” “I love chocolate cake!” “I love you, and your sister, and your little brother! I love my kids!” Why do we “allow” such usage without qualms, but when it comes to romantic love we only allow for it to mean “feelings you have toward one partner that you must then try to be with, and possibly marry and procreate”? Why can’t you enjoy someone’s company so much that you love them for just that moment, that hour, that year?

And what about the whole mutual love dilemma? Have you ever witnessed a situation where two people are together and one is nervous to profess their love to the other because they might not say it back? And if they do, do they feel it the same way?

That I think actually brings me to the most interesting way “love” is cheapened: when it is unexpressed. Say you are dating someone and by all accounts “it’s too early”. But you know you are in love. And maybe this is some puppy love because you are a teenager, but maybe you found the person that makes you feel just right in your late 40s after two divorces. You know what Love feels like for you and this is it, but a month in you cannot just profess it to your partner, can you? Well why not? If you tell them “I love you. I feel it deep in my belly, and in my fingertips when I touch you. This doesn’t mean I need to marry you, or we need to be together forever. It doesn’t even mean that you have to love me, now or ever. But I want you to know that you make me feel this way, and I am lucky that you are here with me right now.” How is that a cheapened version of “real love”?

I agree with what you've said, but your last paragraph also points to a simple, easy way forward (on the individual level): just describe the specific feelings without needing to roll them all up into that one loaded word. The specificity is probably better communication anyways. It also maybe frees the other person to express the same kind of appreciation.

Sure. But why? Because someone else somewhere else might feel uncomfortable with how you feel with my partner? If what you feel can only be described as love, but you don’t plan on making a commitment, why would you call it something else? Wouldn’t it be the person who wants commitment that needs to say “I love you and want to be with you forever” rather that the person who just is experiencing love that has to clarify “I love you but am not necessarily looking for a commitment”? If you accept that loves doesn’t mean commitment, it logically follows that you can experience a form of love unburdened by expectations. After all, I love chocolate but that doesn’t imply that I should only eat chocolate.

It looks like we just disagree on definitions -- my definition of love entails commitment and obligation, yours doesn't.

But there are so many existing ways to communicate your definition of love: you're so rad! hanging out with you makes me feel great! I'm having such a good time! or any of the things you wrote responding to my comment above. Why take love and make it synonymous (ignoring issues of correctness, I think the current popular meaning of love, expressed between two romantically involved persons, is closest to the "serious" one I have in mind)?

I think we should generally be careful using words that may have charged meanings for people -- not for the sake of anonymous third parties not present, but because one of the two parties may be such a person.

Yes, I think that's really the only place where we disagree. And for the record I am OK with that, and just responding as an intellectual exercise, not because I think you are wrong for using that definition.

First off, the argument that I can't say "I love you" without it immediately obligating me to start working towards a long term commitment (LTC), and instead having to say "You are so rad" feels a whole lot like the last argument people used against marriage equality: "but why do you have to call it marriage. I am happy that you found someone but marriage is between a man and a woman, has always been that way, and should remain that way, otherwise we are messing with society's understanding of marriage, and that's dangerous." Not saying that this is what you are saying, it just has the same feel to it. If I love someone, I tell them so. I don't think they are rad. I think I am in love. They are different things.

Second, if we are looking at these terms as constructs, with the ability to define what they are, I would argue that simpler is better. Love is love. Commitment is commitment. Isn't it better to communicate them as separate things, than have the ambiguity of implying them together? Love is a feeling. Commitment is an choice and a set of actions. Why does a feeling imply action? No other feeling really does: "I dislike you" doesn't mean "now we must fight", and "I think you are funny" doesn't imply "we must start telling jokes". So why is love special in this way?

Third, the practical problems of telling someone "I love you" a week into that relationship. Yes, in a vacuum that can be a supremely bad idea. But as someone with some experience with this, I can tell you that practically, it's less of a problem than it would seem. Typically, I will be very upfront about my non-traditional view of relationships and people usually self-select pretty quickly to be the kind that understands them. Also the term casual love specifically is pretty well known in my circles, or I simply explain it as I did here, providing the original post about it. I never had an issue with someone mistaking it for "... and I want to be together forever", nor have I heard of it being mistaken that way. So I would argue it's a non-issue.

And fourth, love is a feeling an individual experiences. If you love someone, ok great good for you. Why should that compel you to do anything about it. Like, you suddenly and inexplicably fall in love with someone who isn't your spouse. Are you now obligated to get a divorce and try to pursue this new person? Just because you developed a feeling? Love shouldn't imply expectation. I guess you could argue that if you are in a committed monogamous relationship you could never fall in love with someone else, but let's face it, being committed to person A has rarely prevented someone from developing feelings for person B. Or is the idea that you can develop feelings, it's just not love, because you are in an LTC? Or you can't call it that? That to me that brings it back to the talking heads on TV saying "well where does it end? Today you feel love for your neighbor, and tomorrow the society crumbles?" Again, I think we are all big boys and girls and know when we feel in love, why not call it what it is?

So in conclusion, in my mind better communication wins. "I love you" vs "I love you and want to form an LTC" are different things, and rolling them into just "I love you" is what puts all the expectations on someone.

> Wouldn’t it be the person who wants...

Ah, yeah, definitely, in the ideal world. I wasn't thinking about other people, though, but about being clear to the person for whom you're feeling the feelings.

I understand "casual love" poorly, but imagining myself engaging in it, I picture some chaotic asteroid collision chain reaction. The asteroids are people, and the collisions are the hook-ups. The hook-ups must be episodes of sex mixed with the psychological trauma of infatuation ("falling in love"?).

It sounds horrifying and disruptive...

But, to me, even sex in itself would be unappealing so casually; the only thing that can overcome the surface-level, material ugliness of other humans enough to make me want to have sex with them is long-term familiarity and mutual interest, and that sounds pretty anathema to "leave anytime, no expectations lol". :p So I guess the typical relationship escalator is what feels most natural to me.

But then the poly model probably assures you a LOT more sex and relationships than mine, which requires meeting naturally and then building guarded, incremental trust, which, due to a mix of how our society is structured (there's HEAVY sexual partitioning of interests, hobbies, and careers) and my personality (I only engage with the most partitioned elements of society), ostensibly never happens for me. :D

> surface-level, material ugliness of other humans

What does this mean? If it's just physical attraction, why not date more attractive people?

Not the person you are asking but if you think about it, sex is weird, gross, and makes you very vulnerable. For some that is offset by it being wonderful and hot and sexy, while for others it takes more to go past the reality of it. That’s why the asexual spectrum is a thing: not everyone is down with getting down. And because as a society we expect sex and sexual attraction to be the norm, people on that spectrum may not always be out about it.

Not saying the other poster is on that spectrum, just pointing out that many different brain configuration exist, with some going “all the sex” all the way to “sex? No thanks.”

That makes sense. It seems about 1% of the population is asexual from some quick googling.

My guess is that it is slightly higher than that because often times the label “asexual” is applied to people who have 0 interest in sex, while others experience a reduced emphasis on sex, hence the “spectrum” part. Also it isn’t something people openly admit to it, so it suffers from the same problem as trying to quantify the numbers of people who identify as bisexual.

And then there's people who the label could be applied to, but spent much of their lives trying to conform to more socially acceptable ideas about sexuality.

I totally understand where you are coming from. Poly isn’t for everyone, casual love isn’t for everyone, and casual sex is most definitely not for everyone. Not engaging in those things is a valid choice, and if that is right for you, it is right for you.

I will say that casual love != casual sex. You can experience casual love without any sex at all. You can form romantic relationships that do not involve sex. While I personally am not wired that way I have plenty of poly friends who are. The longest running podcast on the subject, Polyamory Weekly, to this day uses the slogan “it’s not all about the sex.”

Casual sex for a lot of people is a much less satisfying experience than sex in a long term relationship. But to be fair, let’s acknowledge that loads of committed relationships also suffer in the bedroom, so it’s not all great there either. Ultimately it depends on you and your preferences/needs. And of course on the partners you select.

Empirically I can say that I experience love towards a partner about 1/10 times or so. Though my sample size is not actually all that great because while poly, I am very very selective. This may be surprising but the reality is that poly doesn’t mean “screw everything with two legs.” It just means that if someone does interest you, you are free to explore that however you want, and your partners have the same freedom. Whether you choose to have one anchor partner who you share your home life with, or you do “solo poly” where you live alone and have multiple partners with whom you have no plans to ever progress on the escalator is 100% up to you. A couple of people I know actually identify as monogamous, while practicing Polyamory through their partner being poly. Not my cup of tea, but that seems right for them.

Long experience, observation and reading lead me to say that the pop-culture idea of "falling in love" is just hormones and curiosity and adventure. Real, true love is a decision to faithfully be there and serve a person through thick and thin.

It is best if that decision is well-made. Related to courtship and marriage, I have put many thoughts here (based on experience, research and lots of observation): http://lukecall.net/ (under "Life Lessons").

You should really reconsider the UI for your site. Yours is the most aggressively hostile website I have encountered in recent memory.

I would say "spartan".

"Aggressively hostile" more brings to mind the pop-up, notification-requesting, cookies-warning sites that don't render, double-render, or GIGANTICALLY-render elements when you (wisely) turn off JS that most web entities use. : P

True, those are worse. Maybe my eyes are shit but I just can't even read that page.

This is why I set firefox to always show me my chosen font, with a minimum font size that is still easily readable. I know better than some web designer when it comes to what font I can read most easily.

It looks like raw html styling. Maybe browsers' default stylesheets aren't keeping up with the needs of all users.

Agreed. Browsers need better default stylesheets so authors can focus on content.

Thanks for your candor. I grant you it's not very prettified. For someone with my personality (sounds like not for yours, that's OK), that could be a good thing: I like text, lightweight and skimmable (though I know elegance and pictures are more popular and pleasing). I try to make it so someone can read a page, and click parts of interest for more details, something like an outline, to make it navigable & useful to different interests, even with large amounts of information eventually contained there. Also, it is generated from my OM organizer software, so each page is not designed separately. And I have to prioritize limited time & energy carefully.

Having said that, specific suggestions are very welcome. It also has an email address for feedback (in the small footer). :)

Edit: would a sans-serif font, and/or larger, help?

Check these websites [1][2][3][4] (in order) that makes fun of the design in modern websites, which I consider much "aggressive hostile" with cookies and trackers than your site

[1] https://motherfuckingwebsite.com [2] http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com [3] https://evenbettermotherfucking.website [4] https://thebestmotherfucking.website

I am no UX designer, so take anything I say with a grain of salt. I would suggest increasing the text size, increasing the spacing between lines, and maybe organizing things a little better. Clicking down a rabbit hole of links with no sense for where I am in your organizational scheme or when I'll actually arrive at the content I'm looking for feels very disconcerting. The actual content is a monospaced font text file which extends across my entire monitor because I'm browsing in full screen, which makes for an extremely bad reading experience. Lots of hate for Medium on HN but notice how text on Medium has a font that is easy on the eyes and the width of the reading window is not very wide; I would try and mimic that experience.

Thanks. As time permits I will plan to look at what you've said. I'd like to balance that with my desire for an "outline" so I can have large amounts of easily-navigable info without creating huge pages.

I see what you mean about the text file: I just haven't evolved it into a web page yet, so I can shorten the lines easily enough, but not sure how to integrate it best into my organizer software beyond that.

One idea is that, I can export content with the software into single-page (text) outlines of selected subsets of the content, showing the outline structure with indentation (just using white-space for indentation, like org-mode, only farther in, currently 6 space characters per level) or 1.1, 1.1.1, 2.1.3 -style numbering with some indentation, down to N levels at a time. Perhaps sometime I could automate linking pages to/from such text outlines (they are 80-columns by default), when I generate the site. At selected places, or through out. Hmm.

If I drop off here for a while or you want to continue conversation later, feel to email per the bottom of each page.

Thanks again for the suggestions.

Edit: Another way to put the problem is this: I have enough content, with much more probably to come, that I want to make it useful while avoiding the whole "TL/DR" syncrome for someone who would only want to read some. And let them easily choose which "some", while skimming or skipping others, thus my thinking in terms of outline-like structure. I hope that makes sense.

You could massively improve the outline simply by making the hierarchy visible. You can nest lists under lists.

Right now it's unclear how many layers one has to go through to reach an actual article.

I have to think about what you are saying. We are coming to the info with different expectations.

I'm not immediately sure how to make the hierarchy more visible with this data. The source data has no single entrypoint except arbitrarily chosen, and can be (or seem, practically) infinite in all directions, with arbitrary relationships at any point -- maybe something like a very large wiki with a different internal structure (more at http//:onemodel.org ). A structure could maybe be chosen for presentation purposes though. But the "article" you refer to was made as an exception and is not the way information in my ~"knowledge base" is typically structured. Each page I see as not a document but as an entity with properties and also a set of references to whatever else relates. More about my outline comments elsewhere in this discussion, where I can export chunks of it as individual outline documents, to some # of levels from any point, but conceptually it does not lend itself to paragraphs or documents, as much as ideas and relations. I'm not explaining it as well as I'd like -- again, there is more at that web site about the intentions of my software that this comes from. It's like a big mind map (with future plans to hang more data and code, on all the nodes.)

Or maybe each page could be seen as a paragraph, broken into bullets which each can link to details on that thing, if someone is interested. Or it is a set of topic sentences, with contents underneath each sentence or link being the full paragraph, for the interested -- like where I wrote in this discussion about enabling skimming.

I don't want to stifle discussion, if you have questions or more suggestions that can in some way account for the above, or improve on it... Thanks.

Actually, there is no single hierarchy, just an artificial one created by my top page that makes it seem like one. Maybe there should be one or more real hierarchies made as entrypoints to a large data set that can go in all directions without limit, in order to better meet reader expectations (but pls read on for more).

With a possible exception of the very first page of the site, the things you are seeing as navigation, I have intended to be content first, and navigation second. (The document you found is an exception that I hope is temporary.) Almost all entries, things with bullets, are part of the content, even if it is also a link to more content directly related to that sentence. The situation might have been confused by the fact that at the entry level (~ top level, but really any point I consider an entry point in a way), some of the bullets really are navigational titles.

My intent is that the size of the content (the number of pages and things I have to say about each thing, present and future) neither prevents reading the key points, nor prevents drilling down into more parts of interest. Again, to get the point across, and provide details, but to avoid "TL;DR" syndrome.

So, maybe I should have a note at the top of many pages like "HOW TO READ CONTENT AT THIS SITE:" which links to a page that says "Every sentence is a sentence first and a link secondarily (or sometimes a title). So, to digest the information, read a page completely, then click on links of interest to read more about those statements." I tried to put something like that in a few places, but it describes it more in terms of skimming.

So, there could be a need to better bridge the gap between typical expectations of web pages as documents, and the fact that I think of each page on the site as both navigation and content, almost like an app. There is so much content that to put it into a set of documents means choosing, somewhat arbitrarily, which content goes together, when in reality, it all goes together at every level, with an allowance for seemingly infinite amount of related content in all directions.

(In fact, in the original system where these are stored, prior to being exported as html, each page and each entry on a page is an entity in an intended object model of reality including of thoughts, where each entity can have attributes including numbers & dates etc, code, and references to other data, trying to represent knowledge at an atomic level, considering documents as merely one type of expression of that knowledge. More at http://onemodel.org .)

So, maybe I need to meet reader expectations by one or more of:

- making (somehow auto-generating?) many entrypoints each with clear a hierarchy,

- creating documents that are really data exports in outline form, to N levels.

- finding a UX designer who understands the issues well and can suggest presentation techniques for this system,

- or at least that I use the "HOW TO READ CONTENT AT THIS SITE" idea noted above.

Ideas welcome. Thanks much for considering it to this point.

When sites are heavily styled, it makes it annoying to go from site to site. On one site, text is big and navigation is at the top. On the next site, the text is smaller and lower-contrast, and navigation is on the left. On the next site there is a sticky navigation bar that follows me down the page. The result is constant adaptation. It is like (hand)writing a book, but after each page you have to reach into a big bin of pens and find a new one. Each one requires a slightly different grip, a slightly different pressure, a slightly different lift, etc. I go so far as to read most sites with the provided CSS blocked (via uMatrix) just to achieve a relatively uniform experience. Your lightly-styled, simple page design is basically my ideal.

Good to know; thanks.

"Love" is a terribly overloaded word, perhaps because billions of people intentionally abuse its meaning. An aphorism I enjoy is "love is something you do, not something you feel". Also, "love is when you value someone (or sometimes some thing) else as much as you value yourself."

I've described it as such:

Love is both the emotion and the action. As humans, we should expect love the emotion to wax and wane, and there is beauty in that ebb and flow. But love the action, is steadfast and true, as in we can always make choices to keep it as such.

So basically?:

“Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. O no, it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand'ring bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken."

~ Bill the Bard

> Real, true love is

So... no infatuated scotsmen then?

That's a semantic evasion. In fact the linked article is surely talking about the hormone thing, which is a real behavior that deserves to be understood and discussed, not mocked.

This really doesn't relate too much, but I've realized over time that I'm essentially in love with one of my best friends (of the opposite gender).

We've been friends for 10 years, and just spending time around her makes me feel so relaxed and satisfied with life, it's a unique feeling to someone like me who hasn't been in much of a relationship so far in my life.

I'm able to maintain a good friendship despite this, and I guess I just treat it as some weird thing. I'm super grateful for the friendship we have, and it's amazing that these feelings persist even though I now only see her a couple of times a year.

I think part of me hoped we'd end up dating at some point, but I find that highly unlikely to work given certain circumstances. Either way, I remain grateful for what I have, and hope to find someone else that I'm able to relate to emotionally in the same way.

Weird to read this as I've recently discovered exactly the same thing with a friend in my life. Relaxed and satisfied with life, that is precisely how I feel around her. Thanks for putting this to words.

Thank you for sharing your story! I believe that is what love is as well.

Love is when you see a very flawed individual and someone with a bad past and behaviors. And you are hopeful for them because of their potential and changed outlook.

Love is seeing them with a significant other and knowing that you have zero chance of ever being with them, because of circumstances or past events, and yet would do anything and everything for that person. And you have done that, giving up all money/time, and taking in personal pains, just so you can see a smile, or knowing they are in a better place.

Love is for an individual totally unrelated to you, isn’t an obligation (family members) or part of lust.

Love is knowing that they will be alright at the end of the day. And you shared something special with them. And if you don’t see them for the next 50 years, you would hope for their happiness every day.

> Love is seeing them with a significant other and knowing that you have zero chance of ever being with them, because of circumstances or past events, and yet would do anything and everything for that person. And you have done that, giving up all money/time, and taking in personal pains, just so you can see a smile, or knowing they are in a better place.

This is pretty toxic tbh. If you really feel this way about someone who has a significant other that they're serious about, the best thing you can do is leave their life (if you really can't get your feelings under control). No good will come from a one sided relationship with someone who not only is unrequited but also happily involved with someone else. It's not fair to any of the three parties involved.

If you really want what's best for them, let them go.

Yeah. As much as I think "toxic" is overused, it's definitely not helpful to you or the person you "love" or the person they love to pine after the "beloved" forever.

I mean, wouldn't you feel weird if somebody had these very strong feelings for you that you just could not reciprocate? Would that make you want to keep the relationship going, or would it make you feel a queasy mixture of guilty, flattered, and uncomfortable?

Same here.

Friends for 5 or 6 years. All the same feelings you mentioned. Thought it would never go anywhere but was happy with it as it was. She initiated it being something more. Now we're coming up to our 4th wedding anniversary and I can confidently say both of us could not be any happier and we're even trying for kids.

Anything can happen. Never say never.

Congrats!

She's asexual, so I don't think it'd work out.

To me, what you describe would be long-term love.

I've fallen in love very few times, but the last one(about 5 years ago) felt 95% like being on high quality stimulants.

I felt like I could conquer mountains, pick up any new habbit for her, that life was so bright and fun, I felt like I was the best version of myself when I was around her, that I was always at 110% performance; I found every gesture, look and verbal habbits stick in my head; I would just up and leave in the middle of work meetings because we were having lunch together.

When I randomly met her at the subway my knees would go weak.

Just the opposite happened with me. When I first met one of my friends we were in college over 20 years ago and I was very attracted to her. She had an older boyfriend, and I knew I couldn’t compete. I was also not seriously dating someone. We became good friends. We graduated, we moved about five hours away but still remained good friends. We would see each other about three or four times a year. She was still dating the guy.

Fast forward 12 years. I was divorced, she was single with two kids and reconnected. We became very close, took vacations together but this time, there was no romantic connection. We talked about getting involved on an academic level but we both knew we would be settling. It was just a comfortable, unstressful, “safe” relationship.

I started dating my now wife five years after my divorce and one of the hardest things was detaching from my friendship with her but I knew it wouldn’t be healthy for my relationship with my wife.

I have another close friend that I met when she was a freshman in high school and I was a senior. We stayed in touch off an on and would hang out. She’s objective attractive, we used to have fun when we hung out as adults, she was easy to talk to, but I could never see her as a romantic interest. It was just weird thinking about her that way.

> In Russian, the verb that means discover or recognize also contains the verb to know.

The English very nearly does as well. The "gn" in "recognize" has the same etymological root [1] as the "kn" in "know"---and as the "зн" in "сознать" (recognize) and "знать" (know). It's not quite as obvious as in the Russian, but "acknowledge" means nearly the same thing as "recognize" and includes "know" as a substring.

[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Eur...

Also same root as "cognition". Similar in Spanish, "reconocer" and "conocer" (which also means "to meet", i.e. to know for the first time).

According to Wiktionary the early Latin word was gnōscere. Old English had cnawan and cunnan.

Besides “know”, etc., modern English words “can”, “cunning”, “canny”, etc. also come from this root.

Perhaps in German it is even more obvious. "to recognize" => "zu erkennen" "to know" => "zu kennen" (alternatively, "zu wissen")

I never understood the concept of falling in love. I can understand falling in lust. Love is something you develop over time.

It's definitely a thing. Here's one theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limerence

I never understood the concept of developing love. I can understand falling in. Love is something you notice you already always have had.

But I don't actually need to understand your experience to accept that that's how it happens for you.

For me, there's two big parts:

1) I can tell. Both who you are, and how I am reacting to that, very quickly, very deeply. Consistently, this applies even to the parts of each of us that are revealed later on; tritely (and topically for HN) I also find this is true about software libraries and SaaS products: If it starts easy, it pretty much stays easy, and if it starts hard, it pretty much stays hard. Note that unfamiliarity != hard.

2) I can adjust. I don't change who I am to match someone else, but, my preferences DO change to match THEM. It's actually one of my favorite feelings, and every relationship I've ever been in I've noticed when their scent started to be my preference. Along with this, many little things are fungible, or at least, are only ever momentary irritation.

But, I do actually understand developing love. I definitely also feel that, I see those moments where a little thing they do becomes deeply enjoyable and meaningful, that feeling of a little bit deeper of a connection forming. I know that feeling. I also know this initial recognition.

If it's not a "Hell yes!", it's a "No".

That's good.

I realised things were not good between me and my SO one day at the beach. I was there alone, kitesurfing. When I got out of the sea I met a guy and we chatted for a while, shooting the shit, having a laugh, poking fun at each others home made hydrofoil kiteboards.

Then his wife pulled up in her car and ran down the beach to kiss him. All excited. She forgot to close her car door.

My SO doesn't look at me like that. I think for my SO it isn't 'hell yes' I think she settled for 'this will do'

That guy may have been looking at your partner thinking "how nice, their partner remembers to close the car door. Me, I gotta check that the burner's actually off every time my wife makes breakfast. It's killing me!"

I of course don't know any of the context in your relationship, but love comes in many forms. I don't think we should adhere to the standard set by what may be naturally extroverted and demonstrative people.

So what do you do if you only get lukewarm 'yes'? Wait forever?

Find your "Hell Yes". Settling for lukewarm is almost always a bad choice.

Well, we can all agree that the word "love" is overloaded. With my parents and my kids.. my love is truly unconditional.

No matter what they do or say, I will always love them.

Unconditional love has no place in romantic love. They shouldn't even be sharing the same words.

Romantic love is absurdly conditional. We need a different word. The word "lust" is also a temporary state, even with new couples.

Music, romantic movies and shows like "The Bachelor", have warped our cultural ideas around relationships.

However, sometimes media can explain it perfectly:

"Listen Morty, I hate to break it to you, but what people calls 'love' is just a chemical reaction that compels animals to breed. It hits hard, Morty, then it slowly fades, leaving you stranded in a failing marriage. I did it. Your parents are gonna do it. Break the cycle, Morty. Rise above. Focus on science."

I used to think that. Until I met my true love. Hope you get to experience it some day. 23+ years of embarrassingly romantic, lustful, sacrificial, unconditional straight-out-of-a-Shakespearean-sonnet divine true love.

There is such a thing. Rare. But it does exist.

It's not unconditional if it's also lustful.

Ha. I'll leave it to you to parse adjectives. All I'm saying to the delightfully Spock-ian logical HN poster is that all the cynicsm and scientific Mumbo-jumbo about endorphines and the like vanish upon laying eyes on your soul-mate. I could never convince you of true love. I don't mean to even try. I hope you have the distinct pleasure and privilege of discovering it for yourself.

The GP was making a distinction regarding the application of the quality of unconditional to romantic love. At the minimum, if there's lust involved, it's by definition not unconditional. You snarkily leave me to parsing adjectives all the while triumphing your definition of true love over others. One can accept the notion of 'true (romantic) love' but pretending its unconditional is lying about facts.

I'd also argue that even parental love and the love for the offspring is not unconditional either: you love them because they are your parents, or your children.

We can participate in the varieties of the human experience, but let's not lose sight of the truth or muddle the meaning of words. I'm of the opinion that completely unconditional love can only occur in relation to an other from whom one stands to gain absolutely nothing.

> If there's lust involved, it's by definition not unconditional

Can you elaborate on this?

Lust is conditioned by pleasurable sensory inputs and the prospect (or consummation, if you're lucky) of the sexual encounter.

Right, but how is that necessarily a condition (pre-requisite) for love?

You can't call a (romantic) love unconditional, if there's lust involved. The lust conditions the (romantic) love. This is not the same as saying lust is a necessary condition for love (but is usually a factor in romantic love), which I have not said nor implied.

Why must lust necessarily impose conditions/pre-requisites on unconditional love? This is the part I don't understand.

We're talking about romantic love where lust is a dominant factor, if there was no sexual attraction bringing the two parties together, then how could there have been any subsequent love to arise? The sexual attraction (lust) is a condition that caused the love to sprout in the first place.

I'm not saying there aren't other possible ways for people to get together, but we're specifically talking about cases where people get together because they're attracted to each other (the condition).

I think what you're wanting to say is that a conditioned love (for example, one that starts with lust) can become an unconditioned love. But I don't think you can separate the cause and effect like that, because the memories, experiences and identity shared between the parties is still going to rest as a factor for them staying together for a "unconditional" love to take place, and hence its not truly unconditional: it's based on something.

> We're talking about romantic love where lust is a dominant factor

Oh, I thought we were talking about unconditional love in general.

> if there was no sexual attraction bringing the two parties together, then how could there have been any subsequent love to arise?

Afaik sexual attraction isn't a pre-requisite for love in general, let alone unconditional love.

All this considered, I'm still unclear on why unconditional love and lust cannot co-exist. I can see how uni-directional/unfulfilled/non-reciprocal lust could in some cases diminish the love felt by one party (this would be a case where it isn't isn't actually unconditional love), but the part I don't understand is that unfulfilled lust must do this, even if the lust is strong.

I'm not making the case that sexual attraction is a necessary pre-requisite for love. I'm making the case that in a love where sexual attraction is the pre-requisite, that love is not unconditioned.

I meet a woman. She's beautiful. I'm attracted to her. She's attracted to me. We do the deed. Multiple times. Girlfriend. Boyfriend. Get married. We keep doing the deed. Multiple times.

Eventually, we stop doing the deed, grow old. Now we say we love each other unconditionally. But how can we say that, do we now live in a vacuum that we're going to ignore the entire history of our past and that our sexual attraction (or simply, our enjoyment of each other) caused the dominoes to fall the way they did?

I can't say to this woman when I'm old: "I would have loved you even if you weren't hot when we were younger" because this is an untestable claim and ontologically absurd since the "you" (from my perception of her) she was when she was younger is inseparable from how "hot" I found her.

> I'm making the case that in a love where sexual attraction is the pre-requisite, that love is not unconditioned.

Ah ok that's the misunderstanding then, because earlier you said "If there's lust involved, it's by definition not unconditional", which is obviously something different so I got confused.

> Eventually, we stop doing the deed, grow old. Now we say we love each other unconditionally. But how can we say that, do we now live in a vacuum that we're going to ignore the entire history of our past and that our sexual attraction (or simply, our enjoyment of each other) caused the dominoes to fall the way they did?

"But how can we say that"....well, that's been my question all along, I was hoping you could explain how it isn't possible to love unconditionally in this situation, or one where lust is involved.

But now that you've provided extra constraints and context (where sexual attraction is a pre-requisite, and that you are speaking from your individual experience) I think the confusion is cleared up.

> I can't say to this woman when I'm old: "I would have loved you even if you weren't hot when we were younger" because this is an untestable claim

Exactly, as is saying unconditional love is not possible in the presence of lust - it would require a means of knowing the emotional feelings (something notoriously difficult to measure) of all people who have been in love throughout history.

> Ah ok that's the misunderstanding then, because earlier you said "If there's lust involved, it's by definition not unconditional", which is obviously something different so I got confused.

I didn't really say anything different, I was replying to an OP who said that he is participating in a love which is both unconditional and lustful, and I said that it can't be both. You can't simultaneously lust for someone and love them unconditionally, the lust colors the fact that you give a damn about them in a first place. Even after the lust disappears, you still have the shared memories, experience and identity that bind the relationship and form the basis of the love. These are all that condition the love.

> But now that you've provided extra constraints and context (where sexual attraction is a pre-requisite, and that you are speaking from your individual experience) I think the confusion is cleared up.

These "extra constraints and context" you point to are explicit and implicit if you read the post I was replying to, I did not provide any new modifiers to this discussion. Nor am I speaking from individual experience.

> Exactly, as is saying unconditional love is not possible in the presence of lust - it would require a means of knowing the emotional feelings (something notoriously difficult to measure) of all people who have been in love throughout history.

Why do you need to know their emotional feelings? Is it not enough to know that lust causes attraction?

How are you defining unconditional love anyway? My definition: love which is not based on conditions. How can the presence of lust NOT condition any resulting love? You can't reject basic cause and effect.

> Why do you need to know their emotional feelings?

How do you know whether all people are unable to love unconditionally when lust is involved?

> from whom one stands to gain absolutely nothing

Some people look at unconditional love as something where both parties gain absolutely everything.

I'd also argue that even parental love and the love for the offspring is not unconditional either: you love them because they are your parents, or your children.

Yes. An expectation of unconditional love is often abusive. It often boils down to expecting slavery and servitude from another person.

I was a full-time mom for nearly two decades. A lot of people seem to expect unconditional motherly love from me while they don't give a rat's ass about my welfare or do a fucking thing for me. My actual biological children treat me very well.

I think of actual love as symbiotic. It enhances the lived of both parties. This is a highly conditional definition.

> An expectation of unconditional love is often abusive. It often boils down to expecting slavery and servitude from another person.

I agree. I realized this, when my wife told me she would love me unconditionally, and I later pressed her to fulfill that oath in the midst of me behaving unreasonably towards her. That's not love, that's subjection.

What she meant by unconditional love is that she'd love me even if I'm sick and poor, and I'd rather she'd love me then than when I'm being a tyrant.

My last serious boyfriend was from an older middle eastern culture. In his view, setting a high bar for leaving a person's life intact, even if it means letting them go and walking away, is merely friendship, not love.

I'm not at all impressed with the high percentage of people who promise to love each other forever when they take marriage vows, then seek to vindictively tear each other part during the divorce. My divorce was amicable.

Didn't mean to be snarky. Your post below regarding your wife and her definition of unconditional evidences great self-awareness on your part; namely, acknowledging when you were being unreasonable. I'm not that great at a parsing the differences in meaning between all the different types of emotion-laden words. Not my forte. That is, I can read books and whatnot about the 'five different love languages' and stuff like that, and it just doesn't compute. Maybe I'm the one who is Spock-Ian.

But, at the end of the day, all I know is I saw this chick once and utterly fell head-over-head in love and it hasn't worn off or diminished in any respect... it just gets better and better each and every day. Maybe I'm unique. I don't know. Or, maybe SHE's unique. Like I said, it's embarrassing how ridiculously blessed in this regard I am. I just perceived, from reading the comments, that behind all the analytical profundities, there is a sad hoplelessness lurking whereby some posters have resigned themselves to the dismal idea that 'True Love' ain't real. Well, I'm just here to say they're wrong. Thank god. They are utterly wrong. And thats all I have to say about that.

He forgot to mention paradoxical. Which it so is.

Ha, Rick and Morty, best show ever ;-)

If Dan Harmon had known that R&M would be misquoted out of context so much... he would have probably written it anyway, because it made him a millionaire and fuck poor people trying to make you feel guilty, but regardless -- he's on record multiple times saying how he's baffled that people take Rick as a model when it's patently clear that he's an antisocial psycho who will never find happiness (see for example "Auto Erotic Assimilation"), borne out of Harmon's worse instincts.

For the record, Harmon is currently engaged and will probably marry (for the second time) pretty soon.

As a fan of the show -- seems like many people love Rick because it's very flattering to reason that you're alone (or misanthropic, whatever) and depressed because you're so much smarter than everyone around you.

Love is not possessiveness , attachment , emotion , feeling , hormonal activity , marriage , having kids and family, dependency , self-sacrifice , romance .

True love is the state of your mind in which there are zero conflicts , no violence , just a light a joy you want to share . This sharing is called Love . I have found something and i wanted to share it, this sharing is called Love. Love is your own internal condition/state . It's not at all something to do with the other person . Love is not like you got someone , it's "You found yourself" .

The author's ex, Daniel, did the right thing by breaking up with her. He was fairly sure that he didn't see a long-term future with the author. It would have disserved both of them — and been woefully unfair to her — for him to keep seeing her just out of habit and convenience. Both of them would have been at least somewhat foreclosed from other romantic opportunities that, at least in his eyes, would have been a better fit.

Man, you will know. Trust me. But in general:

"Don't have sex man. It leads to kissing and pretty soon you have to start talking to them."

Steve Martin

Where is the feeling felt? Is there an associated color or a shape or a kinesiologic position?

"Love styles" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_styles

"Greek words for love" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_words_for_love

I wonder how Ayn Rand would feel about this article. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMNUdDC4tEc

That recklessness and self destructive behaviour make for excellent scouts of opportunity (aka as stupidity and statistics), which is why its important to fall quickly for them, cause they might be gone tomorrow.

Gather around friends, the wine is on me.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com