The_Face_of_Boo wrote:
NorthWind wrote:
314pe wrote:
I'm a rational adult. I can certainly control myself and I can choose what's best for me.
Right, and why would it be more difficult to choose if it were lust and not love? Are rational adults more able to control their emotions than their sex drive?
Also, attraction is a feeling, not an action. So even if you feel attraction and know the other person isn't good for you - no matter what feelings are involved, love, lust, whatever, you could still decide not to get into a relationship with them. What you can't do however, is choose to feel attracted to someone, you don't feel anything for - that would merely be pretence and a relationship for the sake of social status, easy access to sex, other advantages.
You may be attracted to several persons, but you somehow decide who to love, really - by choosing to talk to him/her and spend time with him/her the most...etc.
I've once been in love/ felt that kind of love for someone. I got to know him in a more natural way and not via online dating or anything like that. Thus I didn't choose to interact with him because I was attracted to him. I was already interacting with him before I got attracted to him and to not interact with him I'd have needed to intentionally avoid him. The situation didn't make intentionally avoiding without being impolite particularly easy.
Yes, he wasn't the only one I ever felt attracted to but no matter how much time I'd have spent with most of the others, I don't think I'd actually have fallen in love with most of them. It simply was a different kind of attraction.
And sure, as long as it is just the beginning of being attracted to someone it isn't emotionally difficult to choose not to interact with them. Yet, for me it's still a lot more easy to forget about the initial attraction and ignore it if it's purely physical attraction than if I actually like the other person.
But it's true, since falling in love takes time and you need to get to know the other person you can choose whether you let yourself fall in love with someone by interacting with them or not - if you can easily choose not to interact with them.
Still, since attraction due to lust is the easiest to ignore, attraction due to infatuation is a little less easy to ignore and attraction that already turned into love/being in love can't just be switched off (although it of course can be avoided to act on it) I really absolutely don't agree with 314pe.