Guys…are you ready to let it all out?
To put your heart on your sleeve and let us know what you think really constitutes true love?
Well, if so, then you’re in the right place!
Because these AskReddit users let it all hang out!
Check out what they had to say.
1. Both can be true.
“When you feel like you’re home.
Although a recent book I was reading said it’s a good idea to build a home within yourself too.”
2. Beautiful.
“My GF set her alarm so she could be up early enough to wish me luck on an important game this morning.
She was up late last night, and did this deliberate act of love for me. I want to deserve this beautiful person.”
3. Comforting.
“The comfort in knowing that person is also willing to invest in you.
Too often do we focus on bettering others because we don’t feel worth it.
When someone else is able to make us feel the way about ourselves that we want others to feel, it’s just indescribable.”
4. Sincere love.
“My partner had a very rough and abusive family. She was blown away by my oddly normal loving family when she meant them.
It has been a tough journey so far with changes in our lives. Medication, a pandemic, and we also are both first time parents. She has rough days even weeks. It leave me to pick up the slack with many things including our son.
I have supported her to go back to school. Stay home and help develop our son into a good human.
I am the bread winner in the home so trying to balance all of this can be extremely draining, but I do it all for her and my son. I want them both to have the best possible life they could live. It is the truest and most sincere love I could ever give.”
5. All about trust.
“Giving someone the power to destroy you and trusting them not to.
Sometimes it scares me how quickly my husband could destroy me, but then I’m comforted to know that he would never do that.”
6. There you go.
“I read a poem a while back called A Bookmark Near the End by Julia Nicole Camp
He loves history. He wanted to write a biography of John Quincy Adams. I, shamefully, knew almost nothing about John Quincy Adams, so I went online and bought every biography of him I could find. One day, he called me, claiming that we wouldn’t work out long term. He said he loved me but that we had different interests. “What does love mean to you?” I said. “That’s an impossible question,” he replied. I, however, find love to be quite simple. Love is the stack of biographies on my nightstand with a bookmark near the end.”
7. Right on!
“Here is an exact definition courtesy of Lazarus Long as told by Robert Heinlein:
Love: When another’s happiness is essential for your own.”
8. In a loop.
“Well it’s a feedback loop.
The two of you should be constantly reciprocating affection, appreciation, and services.
S** isn’t a service by the way, that’s supposed to be affection at its highest form.”
9. Interesting.
“I (gay male, 48) used to work with a lot of couples from places like India and Pakistan where arranged marriages were the norm, and they seemed like some of the happiest, most functional marriages I’d ever seen.
After about a decade of that pattern I started asking them if they thought that might be true, and if so, why. The answer I got over and over again was, “To us, love is a decision rather than a feeling.”
They would make a conscious decision to foster, create, and tend love rather than hope to “fall into it” with the right person, and eventually those decisions and actions led to the feelings.
I really took that to heart and it has changed my life. I make mindful decisions every day to be loving toward my husband, and I ask for the same in return.
You could say that it’s our contract, and those decisions, stacked up, lead me to naturally fall in love over and over again — and they help when the feelings of love seem diminished because of some tiff or stress. Right now, my husband’s work is unbelievably short-staffed (he’s a psychiatrist), so he is working crazy hours.
This mindset has helped tremendously during this stressful time. It’s hard to feel neglected or resentful when he’s making sure every day to do something loving even when he’s barely got any energy left, and on my end it really helps me not get into resentment about the extra work I have to do for our household, because those extra little things are made much more pleasant if done in the mindset of a loving act rather than an obligation.”
10. A different perspective.
“To create love, you listen, communicate- yes you will argue- but those arguments help create changes that will grow with both of you and make your love grow.
Love shouldn’t come first; it should come after all else has been achieved. If people just changed their perception on love, then I think more marriages would succeed.”
11. That’s nice.
“I’m getting a divorce, but I still love my wife.
Not in love- the want of divorce is mutual- but I still hope she finds happiness and peace in her life.
She’s the mother of my children after all.”
12. This is good.
“I started to spend more time with myself. That’s not the same as spending time by myself. I sought actively engaging in stuff I was interested in rather than a lot of passive stuff like watching TV.
Most people will just say “get a hobby” but it’s much more than that. I invested time and energy into myself in many ways. I was better about exercising and nutrition. I put more care into making the food I cooked for myself to be enjoyable instead of just cheap calories to subsist. I kept my living spaces cleaner.
I learned about finance and started an IRA for my future. I learned more about music theory and practiced more, including just getting lost in improvisation rather than structured songs. I read more than I had in years, some fiction and some more grounded in current events and society and politics.
I learned how to be more charismatic, not just in a persuasive sort of sense like a lot of people mean it, but to be a better listener and to probe further engagement in conversation because people like to have a platform to say what they want to say and they tend to like you more if you give them that.
In short, I discovered that I didn’t really like spending time with myself, and rather than bury that I took steps to rectify exactly what I didn’t like piece by piece. I started to sorta date myself. I made plans to do an activity with myself and kept to that schedule and it became a great thing that I could look forward to.
Now I’m no longer desperate for company or distractions and I can just enjoy quiet time with my own thoughts and feelings, and I’m better at processing and communicating emotionally as a result. I still have a lot to learn, but I’ve come a long way over the past few years for sure.”
13. A love story.
“It took me a long time to really get comfortable in my own skin, to learn to enjoy my own company, to be comfortable and happy while being alone, but boy did I ever do it.
I was a terribly anxious mess throughout my teens and early 20s. The loneliness was often physically painful and maddening. In my early-mid 20s, I broke out of that and “made up for lost time” by sleeping around and living a very hedonistic lifestyle, thinking that would fix me, but the loneliness was still there.
At about 32, I stopped trying validate myself through sleeping with and dating women, and focused on myself and what made me happy. I spent the next few years alone. Today is my 36th birthday, and I’m about 2 months into a relationship with a wonderfully sweet and affectionate woman and we adore each other.
She is attracted to the fact that I’m secure and comfortable being myself, and that I would be perfectly happy being by myself if we didn’t work out. Stability and confidence are attractive, lads, but it has to be genuine. No one finds love in grifting advice videos on YouTube.”
What do you think is true love?
Share your thoughts with us in the comments.
Thanks in advance!
