Falling in love and love are not the same thing. So far I think we are almost all in agreement.
How to know if you are in love? How to know if you are in love? Do you love or do you love?
Is it different between man and woman?
When is falling in love born? Why do you fall in love with that person, precisely with her, why then does the falling in love vanish, or at other times it becomes love?
And does it get serious?
Do we really have to fall in love with someone in order to love someone? Or about her? Does falling in love take time? How many?
Here's what I offer you:
- Is falling in love random?
- Take the test to understand if you are in love, or in love.
- How and why we fall in love.
- What is love.
- Falling in love and love: what makes them different.
- The ten commandments of lovers (the real ones!)
- Love is above all ...
- Falling in love or loving: how to reach eternal love.
Let's go in order, let's start by understanding what falling in love is, how we fall in love, what it means to be in love and how we begin to love. Then we will see everything else. Before starting I offer you my torque test.
It will allow you to understand if your relationship has the characteristics to last or not.
Start quiz Continue Complete the form below to see the results Leave your name and email to subscribe to my newsletter and receive the test results. Your name: Your email: I consent to the processing of my data in compliance with the privacy regulations. Show results
What is falling in love: how when and why you fall in love with someone
We usually believe that falling in love is not up to us. It is the other person who makes us fall in love, falling in love is something involuntary, I would dare to say casual. It is always like this? Is it really something fortuitous and random?
How to fall in love: is falling in love random?
Maybe you also get to know someone who falls in love with people similar to each other. Maybe physical similarities, character, habits or behaviors.
Or maybe this happens to you, you realize that you fall in love with people who have certain characteristics, and always the same. Almost.
So the first question might be: if it's really random, why do we often fall in love with people who are similar to each other, or who share some very specific characteristic?
For example, someone likes girls with short hair. With all possible exceptions, does it seem very random to you that this person always (or almost always falls in love with short-haired girls)?
Or think of those girls who like muscular men: how come they casually fall in love with men with a helping and trained physique?
Or it could be romance, or music (I know girls who only have relationships with musicians!) Because it often happens that we fall in love with people who frequent our same environments and have habits similar to ours.
Maybe you too have characteristics that attract you the most, both physical and character: now think back to your past relationships, to all the times you have felt in love, or in love.
Honestly, these characteristics return? Did the people who made you fall in love always have some of these characteristics?
Do you think it's accidental that something always happens?
If you and I were betting on what the next card I will draw from a deck, and the card I say always comes up, would you say it is a coincidence?
Or is he fixing the game? 😀
If you start observing what is happening around you, if you look carefully, you will notice that falling in love is little fortuitous and random.
Sure, we meet a person without having planned it, but we meet hundreds of them all the time, we see many faces, but only some of them really capture us and, as it happens, they have very specific characteristics, which we like.
When I wrote a guide to explain what it means to love, I was doing just this reasoning: because we never fall in love with a person we don't like?
Have you ever heard such a thing: "I fell in love I don't like anything about her and our life would be crap together, I don't even want to hold her hand, but I'm in love with her ".
Credible? Would that make sense?
Many girls tell me "I fell in love of him". Well, do you know that no one ever told me they fell in love with a guy they didn't want to touch, hug or kiss?
Isn't it curious that if you physically don't like it, you don't fall in love?
And I don't mean someone who is unpleasant at first and then catches us.
I mean you don't fall in love with someone you still don't like, who you would never hug, who bothers you if you hear them talk, or see them walk.
Think about it: maybe it has flaws (who doesn't have any!), But basically something you like is always there.
If it really were random, you should fall in love, at least sometimes, with a person who, let me pass the deadline to convey the idea, makes you a bit disgusting 😉
And instead it never happens.
What a case ...
As if from the deck of cards, since I don't like money, when I take a card, one of this suit never comes out.
Chance?
I really say no, there is nothing accidental about falling in love and it doesn't even depend on the other person, but on you.
Being in love: do you decide when to fall in love?
Why do we fall in love with someone?
The obvious answer is that we like it.
And by that I mean we like everything, from looks to character, from the way he talks to his habits, his ways.
Maybe you've fallen in love at first sight too. Or to fall in love with someone seen for a few moments.
I happened to fall in love with a voice.
Yes, I never even saw the girl singing that song (it was the soundtrack of the grandpa's cup commercial), but as a teenager I fell in love with her voice.
Even if it has never happened to you personally, many people fall in love without even coming into contact with a person.
We could fall in love with a voice, as happened to me, with a face noticed in the crowd. Have you never fallen in love, or in love, with a glimpse seen in passing?
Maybe we meet someone and his face remains imprinted on us and we keep thinking about it.
There are people who for years have kept the memory of a look, of a smile, kept in their hearts the face of a person seen at the train stop without knowing anything.
And even if it's just a voice, a smile, an image we know practically nothing about, we think about it all the time, the mind is always there, and we don't care about anything else.
Falling in love, on the other hand, is just that: burning passion, desire, our mind that thinks only of who we would like to have at our side.
Why do you fall in love with even just one voice?
Why falling in love is a choice.
Unaware, please, but it always depends on you. Here's how it works.
How to know if you are in love, or how to understand if you are in love
Now let's do a test to understand if you are in love, or if you are in love.
Read all the sentences below and mark how many you see yourself again, how many reflect what you think, feel or do.
- Your mood changes quickly depending on the behavior of the person you fell in love with, or in love with (if he is well, if he is ill, if he is happy, if there is, if he does not call you and so on).
- You always think about the person that you like and this it distracts you from almost everything the rest, your mind is always there.
- Provi anxiety if you can't see or feel this person.
- You feel bad if it's not there, you always think about her and would like to spend all your time with her.
- If you get a chance to be together, you can't resist and put everything in second place. First comes the person you are in love with, or in love with.
- When you are with her, everything is positive, you relax, you have relief and you feel good.
- You can't control how you feel: the desire to be with this person is stronger than you.
- You can also lie if someone tries to stop you from seeing this person and go out of their way to be with them.
- Most of your time is dedicated to her: either physically if you can be together, or mentally (phone, Wathsapp, constant thoughts addressed to this person).
- Before seeing it or talking to it, desire and craving rises intensely to be with her, making you feel very intense emotions.
- You feel anger and frustration if someone or something prevents you from being together, from seeing each other, if there are problems in your relationship.
What score did you get?
So, can you see us again in all 11 points of the test on falling in love?
It may well be that not all of them correspond, but many. And maybe not every day but at certain times.
How to interpret your answers?
Simple, explaining where I got these signs of falling in love: if you do a search on the internet to find out the symptoms of one drug addiction, you will find these behaviors.
What score did you get then? 😀
It means you have the same symptoms as a drug addict.
Absurd?
I explain to you how do you fall in love, so you will understand why an addiction has the same signals as falling in love.
How to fall in love: you do it and you don't know it!
We connect the dots: you fall in love with people who have very specific characteristics, so you don't fall in love casually, but only with those who match certain criteria.
We fall in love, look a bit, with people who correspond, more or less, to our ideal model, to what we like, to what we are looking for.
And I repeat: both from a physical and character point of view.
We don't fall in love simply because we meet someone who might be just as we would like. A fundamental step is missing that almost everyone ignores.
You fall in love if you think about this person in a certain way.
When you meet the girl, or boy, of your dreams, who has all the qualities you've always wanted (or some of them!), You do some very specific things that create falling in love within you.
Think about it.
And not as you would think of a friend. You want this person, you want him to be with you.
You think about her, or him, and a lot.
Images scenes in which you interact, you make "movies", let's face it, and in these images you two are the protagonists and you are happy.
You imagine the dialogues, the things you do, the conversations, you imagine seeing each other, hearing each other, understanding each other.
Build in your mind a world where you feel good together, a world positive, exciting, engaging, sweet, romantic, sexy, as you prefer.
You don't fall in love with a voice, a look, a body: you fall in love with the idea you make of it, what you dream of, what you think and imagine.
Falling in love is born when you think with intensity and attraction, desire, about that person.
Mostly: you never fall in love with someone, but with the idea that you have in your mind.
Precisely for this reason I could fall in love with that singer's voice: it didn't matter who she was, it only mattered what I thought, the sweetness I attributed to his voice.
And today, listening to it again, I think it is very beautiful, but nothing more 😉
Falling in love is totally your process, the other has nothing to do with it. We always fall in love and only of our ideas about others, how we imagine them, how we want them.
This is why when we are in love others seem so perfect: we are not looking at these people, but just the idea that we have in our heads.
We idealize them.
If I like red-haired girls, I'm not really knowing Francesca or Adele at all, but “a red-haired girl” who goes by the name of Francesca or Adele.
Falling in love is very selfish: it only counts if you are the way I want, or rather, if I see you as I want you to be, because as mentioned, you don't need to know someone to fall in love with her or him.
Falling in love does not need to understand, understand, know. AND superficial, one of the most shortsighted things that exist.
And when we fall in love, the other matters little. Or nothing 😉
Does it make sense to continue your relationship as a couple?
Answer my test questions to find out.
It will allow you to understand if your relationship has the characteristics to last or not.
How do you fall in love: falling in love is selfish, the opposite of love!
The paradoxical thing is that falling in love and love have nothing in common.
Falling in love is not the antechamber of love. It is a phase in which we desire something because we like it.
When I fall in love with someone I treat them as I would treat the dress that I see in the window and that I like so much: I want it.
Do you recognize this word, this thought? I want it.
I see it and I like it.
I don't need to know more. I buy it and then I put it on.
After a couple of times, maybe, I begin to notice that doesn't fit me as well as it looked, like on the mannequin!
Then I see that after the first wash it is no longer "perfect" as at the beginning, maybe it discolours over time and what do I do?
I change it for a more beautiful one.
I don't love that dress, I don't care about the dress: I'm just interested if I like it and it suits me. It only counts what I think about that dress, how I imagine it before I buy it.
I don't care about the dress, I use the dress.
Falling in love is the same thing: we use others to derive the pleasure and well-being that we desire. And as long as they can give it to us.
Then we leave.
When does falling in love end?
When the other person is no longer the same.
Wait, no: when it is no longer as we used to imagine it.
We stop feeling in love when the idea we have in our head collides day after day with reality.
When we begin to see that there is not in front of us the reflection of our imagination and our desires, but a real person.
The dress on the mannequin was ironed and perfect. It is not quite the same on us.
That person initially seemed perfect to us, knowing her we discover that she is not exactly what we thought.
It has a US mind, le its emotions, the its fears. And we hadn't even thought of these at the beginning, when it was nothing but “what we have always wanted”!
We fall in love with people who correspond, at least in part, to an ideal that is in our head. We do it all by ourselves.
And we fall in love for interest.
At the center of falling in love there is never the other person, but always and only ourselves. It only counts what you like me, not what the other wants, not who the other really is.
As for the dress: we want it because we think it will look good on us. When we find a better one, we'll want that.
Falling in love is selfish.
Tremendously selfish. Exactly the opposite of love.
What is love: what makes it different from falling in love (I'm not in love, I love you)
I have written several pages to talk about love, since it is universally the most important thing in our life.
And love is not a couple relationship.
I explained what love is (read here), how to learn the art of loving, what unconditional love is (read here).
These are pages you should read 😉
The most important thing is this: to love you must see.
To love you I have to observe you, to meet you, look inside yourself, understand you, accept you as you are, even if it is not as I would like, welcome you in your weaknesses and in your strength, to forgive your mistakes.
Love requires one great sincerity.
At the center of my attention, if I love you, there is you. Because I cannot know and understand you without focusing on you.
If you notice it is the exact opposite of falling in love: when you fall in love, only what you want counts. And if you do everything for each other it's just to tie it to you, to get what you ask him.
In love it is the opposite: at the center is the other person.
When you fall in love you want someone and you make them the center of your life. And you cannot love if you are in love.
Because if your happiness depended on me (if you fall in love you think just that!), how can you totally accept me? Or forgive a mistake?
If I have to make you happy, then there is nothing I can do to take away this joy from you. I can't prefer a friend to you, I can't take some time for myself and take it away from you.
Any decision I make that doesn't put you first will be a problem.
When you fall in love, you expect the other to put you at the center of his life, you want to be the most important person.
Isn't that a little selfish?
When you fall in love you do not accept that the other has experiences without you, have fun with other people more than with you, experience something without involving or sharing it.
Isn't that a little selfish?
Falling in love is attachment to someone and was born for one reason only: you think that person will make you happy and you always expect them for you.
Only for you.
I'm in love? Well, I won't be able to love.
Not only does falling in love have nothing to do with love, actually, but it is also not a necessary phase to love someone.
The more I know people who experience difficulties in their life as a couple, the more I understand this: hardly anyone loves. Almost everyone falls in love.
Ma falling in love does not make you happy and prevents you from loving.
Difference between love and falling in love (I'm not in love, but I love you)
Falling in love says: “I want you because mi like you, because you are what you are io I always wanted, because you are like io I want you to be".
Love responds: “I love you because it is you".
Falling in love still says: ”Not I want that you change. I love you for who you are and I want that it remains like this, forever ".
Love smiles: "You will change, because you are not the photo I have in my head, because day after day you will become something different, and since I love you I am ready to discover yourself again every day".
Falling in love insists: “I am afraid that if you change you will no longer be the person who made me fall in love. This is why I don't want it to change, but to always remain the same ".
Love explains: “But the person you speak of does not exist. The image that made you fall in love is only in your mind, as there is no person who is the same over time. To love means to observe in reality, to understand who you are every day and don't get attached to an image of false and non-existent perfection ".
Falling in love defends itself: "Io I'm afraid I'll lose you. That you will change mi you will turn your back, you will do what I fear, mi you will disappoint. Io I'm afraid I'll suffer if I don't mi you will show every day that you love me more than anything else ".
Love reassures: “I'm not afraid of losing you because you don't belong to me, because even if you prove 1000 times that you love me, tomorrow you could still go away. But I'm not afraid of losing you since by loving you I don't want you to be here to satisfy me, I don't want to be the most important thing in your life, because if you were you would fight me every day to get everything you want, and much of it I will never be able to give you".
Falling in love concludes: “I fear that I will end, this story will end and we will get lost. I already know that I will not be forever because you run away from me and do not agree to do always and only as I want io".
Love laughs: "I know I'm not going to finish. They may change the relationships between us, the name we give to our relationship, but love never ends because it does not ask, it simply gives".
Are you a selfish person?
Answer the 7 questions in my selfishness test.
It will allow you to understand if (and to what extent) you are a selfish person.Start quiz Continue Complete the form below to see the results Leave your name and email to subscribe to my newsletter and receive the test result. Your name: Your email: I consent to the processing of my data in compliance with the privacy regulations. Show results
Falling in love and love: love is a choice
My grandmother told me that with her husband they met thanks to their families, as they always did in the forties in Spain, especially in the south where I was born and live.
My grandmother and my grandfather spoke very little before getting married and never alone. Nevertheless they have chosen to love and support each other and they stayed together until he died.
In one of these (Living, loving, understanding each other) she tells how her mother did not even see her husband in the face before the wedding.
Indeed, he says that not even during the ceremony did she look him in the face, only at home, once they were married. Nevertheless they loved and supported each other For all life.
Today we want to live together, experiment, fall in love and then half of our relationships are wrecked between separations, divorces, couple crisis.
The problem is to understand that love is one thing, falling in love is one thing.
I can say that I have fallen in love many times, but that I have never loved anyone until I understand what it means to love.
And when I really understood it, I found out how to live happy and I have not fallen in love anymore: I have begun to love.
I tell you clearly: don't care about falling in love, it's not a good thing.
I think falling in love is the sign of a totally self-centered, selfish and immature way of life.
Choose love, is everything you are looking for and you need if you want an eternal love (I talk about it on this page), a relationship that lasts forever.
And of course this also means understanding if a relationship makes sense for it to continue.
Being in love: the 10 commandments of love
The ones I propose to you are the 10 commandments of lovers.
When I write "in love" I am not referring to the common sense of the word, but to those who they choose to love and they really love, with heart, mind and soul, and not just for the passion of the moment.
Because "being in love" means be in love, while usually when we say we are, we are more than anything else in a state of attachment, need, desperate search for happiness that we hope the other will give to our life.
That said, here are the 10 commandments 😉
- I could go away and live happily even without you, and do 1000 other wonderful things. But I choose to be next to you because I want to share my every joy with you.
- I will never give up on something to please you. Because this renunciation would turn into a blackmail of my fears against you.
- I don't choose you for your beauty, your tastes, your way of speaking, your habits or your job. I only choose you because it is you.
- We are not a couple. I have chosen to love you, you have chosen to love me. Our relationship is just a side effect of this choice.
- I will not think you are "this" or "that", I will not define who you are in words. You do not "are", but you become something different every day. Loving you will mean wanting to find out what you will become every day.
- Whatever your mistakes will be, you can always come back to me because this is your home: I will love you for who you are and not for what you do.
- I do not possess perfection and I cannot promise you that I will not be wrong. But I will continue to love you despite my limitations.
- I do not place any limits, constraints, rules or conditions on you. You will be able to do whatever you want, because if you have chosen to love me, I will have nothing to fear.
- I will not ask you to make me happy or to be the most important thing to you. This would kill my love and I would start demanding my happiness from you.
- I don't ask if you will love me: I choose to love you and your shadow by my side will be your answer for me.
Love is wanting, falling in love is expecting
I've always wondered what kept people together. And then I realized that there is no real reason. Only one really holds them together; the will. Whoever really wants to stay; whoever does not really want is lost. The things in common, the affinities and all the rest do not count, but only the will.
Silvia Nelli
This is a love phrase (many others can be found on this page).
Or as I like to say it: love is a choice.
They often ask me on the basis of what, since love is a way of life, we should choose a partner. I think Silvia is right: it doesn't matter what we usually rely on.
The only thing that matters is the willingness to love this person. The question might be: is he the right person? Why her?
I see it like this: why not her?
In my opinion it matters little whether it was the color of the eyes, the way of speaking, the shared passion for cooking, or sports, or photos.
Whether it was a chance meeting or work forced you to see each other every day for months. If you share the same hobby, if you like how it eats, if it's romantic or if it's beautiful.
Io I don't believe in the case and I think all these things are just one of the possible excuses why we can meet a person.
But they matter little.
What matters is if you decide to love, if you decide to love yourself.
There are certainly two aspects that I consider essential. First of all that the most important thing for you in the world is the same thing for whoever you will have by your side.
And woe betide each other your priority. It would be the end!
Having said that considering the other as the priority in our life is self-destructive, what is priority for you will determine every choice, every thought, every emotion and your entire life.
To understand what this role deserves in your life, read this page.
If you share this fundamental priority, then here we are.
The second key thing is wanting to love each other, letting oneself free without getting lost, staying close without getting attached. You would go on a plane with a pilot who drives badly?
I say no.
Do not create a relationship with a person who does not know how to love, who does not really want to love and instead it demands happiness (or whatever!) from you.
It doesn't matter if you don't know how to do it today. Love is learned and can be done together. And a couple makes no sense without this one mutual, free and unconditional will.
Don't choose a person who does not want to learn to love with you, day after day.
- If the other tells you what you can do and what you cannot do, it is not love.
- If the other tells you who you can see and who you have to push away, it is not love.
- If the other expects you to change, it is not love.
- If the other lives for you, it is not love.
- If the other expects you to love him, it is not love.
- If the other suffers if you do not do what he wants, it is not love.
Love does not have nothing to do with possession, the jealousy, control, the suffering.
Another huge mistake: love does not hurt.
Love is not a list of requests to be fulfilled.
If you find this, think about it because to create a happy couple you have to be two happy people who choose to love each other by sharing this joy.
And it does not matter whether it has been so up to now. It matters if you both really want it to be and you question yourself to build it together.
No doctor prescribed a report for us. It must come from two happy hearts that choose to love each other, everything else is not love.
If you want to understand more, discover my path "Love without being used“: There are the foundations for building a healthy and happy relationship. Find it on this page ⇒
Discover the 5 Steps to Living INTENSIVELY a life Full of Emotions and Find You Well and in Balance in Every Situation (without Feeling Bad anymore) Training Your "Emotional Independence”, Even If You Don't Believe That Things Enough May they Be Different ...
... If You Don't Trust Yours Capacity or Yours Character It Doesn't Help You!
To fall in love or to love?
I want to summarize everything I have explained to you so far.
- We fall in love because we think someone will make us happy, that he is the perfect person who will give us what we lack.
- If we do not see a person in these terms, or we stop seeing them like this (for example due to a crisis or couple problems), all the emotion of falling in love quickly vanishes.
- Falling in love depends on me, on you, not on the person we care about. When you fall in love you don't even see her, it's just you, your interests and what you want from her.
- Falling in love is selfish: you want someone until you think they can give you what you want. If one day you realize that this is not the case, that this person is not what you thought, how you would like it, you go away and look for another "dress".
- To love you don't need to fall in love, on the contrary: falling in love is the worst obstacle to love, just as if you like the sun you can't look for it by going out during the night!
I realize that what I am showing you is totally contrary to how we usually live life, relationships, love.
But I know for sure that we have understood almost nothing about love.
And what I write is not the result of my "intuition", but I see it every day with dozens of stories of couples in crisis who write to me.
And the road on which I see them reborn has nothing in common with falling in love. But it is love.
In order to fully understand what I am explaining to you, you must also understand a fundamental point: emotional independence.
In practice, our every emotion depends from how we live situations and people and not from what happens.
Nothing and no one can make you happy or sad, your emotions, today as in every moment of your life so far (even without realizing it), are always the fruit of your thoughts, of your way of living life.
So you fall in love because you think that person is what you have always been looking for, and you love because you choose to act with love.
Your every emotion depends on the meaning you give to what you are experiencing. Always, without exception.
Do you think this point is so important that I even wrote my first book on it 😉
Understanding this allows you to understand that you don't need someone to be happy and this is perhaps the main revolution you need to make if you really want to change your life.
Only when you feel that no one will make you happy, do you stop chasing that impostor we call falling in love (selfish and a source of negative emotions!) and you can finally love others.
And obviously it's not something you do overnight, but a process of change, of personal growth with which you learn to see reality for what it is, freeing yourself from the romantic illusions of films, novels and songs that they fill our culture with nonsense about married life.
You don't have to believe me, of course, but open your eyes, reflect on what I showed you today, read the other pages I have reported to you for ask yourself many questions.
Try to understand. To see.
You really have a lot to think about.
Falling in love is not what we think, it is not the most beautiful experience or the best phase of the couple, but a selfish dimension that strengthens our dependence on others.
I think you have two paths in front of you and in front of you (if you are already a couple): fall in love, or choose to love yourself and live a happy life. The choice is yours 😉
