Love is a decision

Yes, I agree with you that love is a choice we make. When my husband and I were dating, I had that feeling of love, the emotion that makes the heart beat faster and a general warm fuzzy feeling. All was right with the world! But before we married I made a decision to love him, always. So now if he does something to make me mad, I don't kick him out of the house or make him sleep on the couch. I choose each day to love him. I think this can apply to others as well, not just a spouse. I choose to love my kids, family and friends.

I agree with this! In Stephen Covey's "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" he explains that love is a VERB. It is something you DO. A man came to him saying he was no longer in love with his wife and wanted to know what to do. Dr. Covey advised him "to love his wife". He explained that love is a verb and not a feeling. When you choose to love (by doing loving things) you will begin to feel the feeling of love. I like this way of looking at it. It is something we can choose to do. We have the control. Good discussion topic!

I tend to agree with you on all levels of love, whether we are talking of romantic love, family love, love for friends, or love for enemies, and even our love for God, because the Bible tells we that we love Him because He first loved us. I do not believe in such a thing as "love at first sight". Certainly I believe in attraction, magnetism, chemistry, lust - call it what you will. There is no denying that such an attraction happens, but to call it love is belittling the word. Love develops. Love grows. Love can blossom, but love can fade and die. True love, the love that lasts a lifetime, is developed after a time (not a short time) of getting to know each other, learning to accept and respect each other, learning to adapt and complement each other's personalities, learning to share and to differ while maintaining individuality and mutual respect. Love that is based on feelings alone cannot last. Lack of respect and many individual feelings can kill that love and drive a wedge between the two. When we talk of love for family I believe here again, it is largely a case of a mental acceptance. I am thankful for my five wonderful sons. I never had any problems with any of them, but I do know of and have counselled parents who have to love "in spite of". Of course they love their children with emotion, and they know heartbreak, but it is a mental decision they must make to accept them in spite of and love them anyway. I have seen changes in relationships when parents and children have made this decision. Certainly, when we come to love our enemies, this is an emotion that would be impossible were it not for a definite mental decision to do so.

Of course love is a choice. Infatuation is an emotional high that some people mistake for love. It is fueled by interest and physical desire. Love on the other hand is when you make a rational decision that you will invest your emotions and time into someone else. It's not like a project because you receive benefit back if the love is reciprocated. One cannot fall out of love because in reality one never really falls into love. You either love or you don't. It can be good if love and lust can run on the same track, but they don't always. Love can exercise restraint and direct physical wants and attractions toward a specific individual.

yes its a decision.. but love can either be a chance or a choice or maybe a chance by choice or a choice by chance.. hehe., if its a chance, you have to "decide" whether you're gonna go for it or not.. and if its a choice, of course you'd "decide" too for how can you make a choice if you wouldnt decide what to choose duh.. however, love as a whole is an emotion, but it is done with decisions..

I would tend to agree with you sneese that love is more a decision than an emotion. I think that our response to a potential partner is purely physical at first and has been shown by numerous studies to be quite intoxicating for the first 6 months - which may be why many relationships fail around the 6-9 month mark. I think that once you have been with a person for a length of time that you begin to actively decide what it is you like about them and whether this constitutes love. As to your comment about falling out of love with someone, how many times have we heard someone say that they love their partner but are no longer IN love with them - as though loving someone and being in love are 2 seperate things. Indeed do we not unconditionally love our family because of the blood tie but CHOOSE a partner that we are in love with? Therefore i would conclude that love is a decision.

Dude ur completely gone wrong with the thought of Love , Love is a feeling from the heart , If u truely love someone then ul never me able to hate them If u feel u are hating someone u love then its not love , Its infatuation its just a feeling which u have developed for u personal assets i.e for makin ur life comfortable... Love comes from the heart and not from the Brain .... :X

I believe that love is an emotion. We CAN choose to love someone, though. Just as we can choose to set our emotions aside. If something upsets you, but you don't want others around you to see that you have been upset, can you not hide that emotion? It is still there, though. If we "choose" to love someone... do we really love them? I do not choose to love my children... I just do. I believe that you either feel love for someone or you don't, but the mind is a powerful thing, and you can make yourself "believe" that you love someone. Don't you remember your first crush? Everyone has had one... and usually, when you look back on that crush later in life, you realize that you did not really "love" the person the way you thought you did. You only convinced yourself that you did... that's why we call it a crush, and not love. As far as Jesus saying that we should love our enemies as we love ourselves, I believe that he was giving us an example of how to control our anger and hatred. Sometimes we want to hate our enemies and make them suffer if they have made us suffer, but Jesus reminded us that this is not good for US. Hating an enemy is not really going to hurt that enemy... it will only hurt US, in the long run, to harbor feelings of hatred, anger or jealousy. So, yes, I believe that love is an emotion. I cannot make myself NOT love my children. I cannot make myself NOT love my husband. I cannot even make myself NOT love my dog. This is just my own opinion, though. I'm sure you'll get a lot of mixed responses on this. It's one of those debates that I don't think everyone will ever agree totally on. :) Good discussion, though. Thanks for posting!

For me love is: 1st : a feeling 2nd: a choice or decision 3rd: a commitment... Love will undergo certain stages before we can really say that it is a genuine love....of course it will start with a feeling...then it is then your choice or decision whether you give chance to that love...Once you have accepted and love the person you like, no matter what his or her personality, then you began to commit yourself to that person....choices are always involved in any situation....

All is Energy, Energy is Love, Love is God! Read this over carefully and you will know that,"Love is all there Is!" Look around you now... everything you see is Energy (in its solid form) God is love, and God is Energy. There is nothing else! We should love Others as we Love Ourselves!We should love life and Living. Love little children. Love everybody (not just your wife or gf. Never choose not to Love, Always choose Love. Love your Enemies the same as your friends! Love is all there IS!

You are very really "Love your enemies as you love your self" I agree with you about it.... But we can love to someone with no fell jeoleous becoz in her or him have fell each other trust.............. What do you know about it?

i truly agree, cause its takes lots of time to love someone... and if love is just a feeling then it'll easily fade... hmmm...

Yes, Love is really a decision, love is not an emotion, love is not a feeling, love is not a happen-stance. Love is waking up everyday committed to honoring your mate. Building or re-building trust in a relationship, Learning the art of touching-tenderly and becoming best friends with your family.

when we were young we needed a love by emotion,just because the feeling of love opened our soul,and we enjoied ourselves.but when we growed up we needed a love by decision,just because we needed to establish a family and had to think how to live in our rest time.so in my opinion love involves emotion and decision,if it can be united,they would be happy and lucky.

I agree and I don't agree. I think we have no choice in whom we love. The choice is whether to let the feeling blossom or let it go. Likewise, we may love a family member who has wronged us; again we have the choice to let the love go but we cannot choose the original emotion. Does this make sense?

I'm sort of in your position too. I have friends and their perception of love and mine are completely different. I think the world "love" is so over used and just thrown out of proportion, that I don't even know what it really means anymore. I mean, especially when I see someone in a relationship that might be miserable and abusive, and this person still won't get out of it, because he/she "loves" him/her. I don't get that, how could you love someone who has no respect for you and who can potentially hurt you? I guess that is more or less a fear of being alone or a fear of starting over or moving on. I guess love is dependent on the roots of love, it cannot stand on its own. I don't believe in the very popular "love at first sight", it's just not possible. As you said, it's a decision and I totally agree with that. It's an emotion too, but that emotion is decidedly triggered by other decisions like trust, friendship, respect and admiration. Love is not blind, and it is not meant to be difficult. It is very much a decision that we choose to make everyday, and as such I don't think there is as much "falling" into it or out of it, as it is more like "easing" into it or out of it. Anything else is just a fantasy. Of course, love can be a beautiful thing, when it's really understood.

Yes,i'm agreed that the love is decision to... 1.Share our feeling 2.Share our life 3.Share good moment 4.Share our story 5.Share our money 6.Share our secret 7.Share our devotion!

In my opinion, love is an emotion. However, whether to love or not is a decision. There is both conditional and unconditional love. We are in control of our emotions, hence we are in a position to decide whether to love or not. This applies mostly to conditional love. As for unconditional love, one rarely makes the decision not to love. Unconditional love comes from parents where they love their child wholeheartedly especially mothers.

actually here you are talking about two different forms of love.the love that jesus refers to is a control of your hate and anger.it is more of a matter ofn mind than heart but the love felt by heart is more than an emotion.true,it is not in your control,you may forget the person you love but the love will still be in your heart.