I think everyone has that one first love where they realised - Help.com

Linuxya, I never said it was love or not!!!! Notice I said ‘realised what love is, or THOUGHT they did’.

And that isn’t true what you said. Ever heard of unrequited love? Where one person loves someone but the other person doesn’t love them back? In that case, the person who doesn’t love them back makes no sacrifices for the other person, but the one who is in love makes plenty of sacrifices. So I am sorry, but love is not just about sacrifices, and it isn’t just an action between people, and it is a feeling. You can NOT disregard unrequited love just because one party isn’t in love with the other.

And, you know what, at the time, it was love. I loved him with all my heart. Every little thing about him, even his annoying traits, his faults, everything. And none of my friends could see why as he was just a completely average guy to them, not even good looking in their eyes. But I loved him. And I constantly made sacrifices for him, and did everything I could to be there for him. So don’t disregard it linuxya!!! A very true saying is ‘perception is reality.’ I perceived it as love at the time, hence for me it was, which makes it real for me. I was hardly thinking ‘ah well, linuxya is going to say it isn’t in a few years, so it isn’t. This applies for anything. Someone with a lot of money may perceive themselves as poor due to the fact that their relatives are exponentially richer than they are, and they live in a community where the standard of living is higher than usual. They may not be starving on a street in Africa, but because they can’t afford certain objects, they will consider themselves poor.

And please don’t call him a crush. I have had crush’s before, and he wasn’t a crush. That just sounds HORRIBLY teenagery. (and I am most definitely not a teenager!)

Linuxya, I am not freaking out at you! Far from it. I am trying to have an adult debate about something we disagree upon!

I still think you are very wrong. Let’s equate it to music. I am quite good at music, and I even came second in the world in one prestigious competition I was in. Because of this, I expect a high standard in music. It is very easy for me to listen to other musicians and say ‘God, that isn’t music. WHAT are they thinking?’ Or for me to say ‘They call themselves musicians? Yeah right.’ I could do that, but I don’t. I realise that just because I am lucky enough to have been given such a talent, I shouldn’t look down on others who aren’t so lucky.

You may think that what I just said has NOTHING to do with what we are debating, but to me it does. You’re like me with music, in that you have ‘17 years experience’ of love, from what you say. You have the ‘talent’ and the great ‘experience’. Like I do in music. Unlike me in music though, you compare everyone else to you, and you do seem to look down on others who don’t have the same ‘talent’ as you. If I was to put it in terms of you being the musician like me, you would in other words be saying to others ‘hah, you call that music? That’s just a joke. You aren’t even a musician.’ You should learn tolerance, and realise that if someone else claims they love someone, just because they don’t have 17 years of ‘wiping their ***’, it does NOT mean that it’s not love. Are you saying that if you were lucky enough not to have to go through the rough times with your partner, that you wouldn’t love them, is that it?

And thanks Michael Leibman!!! That was a novel idea! I don’t think Linuxya is going to let a source like that sway her from her notions though. I just realised the absurdity of saying love isn’t a feeling……Linuxya, you can’t suddenly change one of the world’s most basic facts based on your own judegements and experiences. I am a teacher, and one of the first things children learn in english is nouns, adjectives, so on. And they are taught that emotions and feelings are abstract nouns, and that one of those is love.

Love is a feeling, which can manifest itself in actions. But without the feeling, the actions wouldn’t occur.