A mental disorder.

Night at the Roxbury intensifies

butterflies in the stomach

“Dangerous”

You get one taste of it, feel it in your stomach, the pure elation, and can’t go back to how it was before. So many, if not most, instances of romantic feelings end in heartbreak. You may even be in a situation where you intellectually know it will end in heartbreak. And you know this, but you pursue it anyway.

I have a really hard time understanding my feelings. With a couple of romantic partners, I feel myself becoming happier when I’m with them. When they walk into the room, I get a little burst of oxytocin.

I don’t think I understood what it was in all instances.

Weirdly, I didn’t always feel at ease with them.

Like others have said: it varies from person to person. I haven’t felt the prosaic emotions other commenters described.

And, of course, it changes with time.

Like a hot shower - comforting and warm, but also sometimes a bit painful. Relaxing, but also still has ‘work’ involved.

It feels like the person you desire has hijacked your thoughts in the best way possible.

It’s different for everyone, but if someone gets in your head in a way that the first thing you think when you enjoy something is that you’d enjoy it even more if they were there to share it with you, to quote the big pizza pie, that’s amore! Or rather, it’s romantic feelings that are fertile ground for full blown love to grow from.

From there it’s all about how your emotions feel to you.

When someone else’s happiness is requisite for your own.

The closest I came was just pure trust, yeah you guessed it she cheated on me. I still think it’s probably just being able to trust someone completely unfortunately that one probably wrecked me for life.

Don’t get me wrong I’ve had a lot of girlfriends etc since just have never trusted any of them and that’s probably what ruins things.

Love is just something that happens to you. You don’t get to understand it.

Having a romance makes you an expert on love the same way getting hit by a car makes you a mechanic.

Romance is when you meet someone who makes you want to cross lines you don’t usually cross with others. Sex is the really common one, of course, but I’d argue it’s all the rest of the emotional and social stuff that makes it *romance*. Sometimes it’s exciting, sometimes it’s scary, sometimes it’s really warm and comforting. But what makes it a romantic relationship rather then just a friendship is that feeling of wanting to cross a line that you wouldn’t cross with anybody else.

Hmmm, my best attempt at describing it is, to feel sad or upset in some way, if you could never see or interact with that person again. And if just being in the presence of someone is comforting in and of itself. I understand that’s not the in the moment feeling, it’s very hard to describe that, although there are ways to try, chemically, personally, anecdotally, etc. And I would say one way is not wrong over the other. But I like the retrospective approach of if I would be genuinely sad or upset if this person was snapped out of existence. If I feel like something profound has been lost if I were to no longer interact with that person. Then I know there’s real love for that person.

At first, rapid heart rate, feeling unreasonably nervous to see them then overjoyed when you do. Happy to just gaze at them for hours or getting lost in their eyes.

Sometimes that dulls a bit with time (sometimes not) and is supplemented by feeling connected to them always and wanting to include them in your life. Wanting to do anything to make them smile and make them feel seen. And feeling seen yourself.

It feels like the other person was made for you, you just feel it with their vibes.