How can people fall in love AFTER they start dating?

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I just don't get it. I always thought you had to fall in love first before initiating a date (I know I would), but people tell me dating is about "getting to know the other person." How is this possible?

And what's the difference between casual dating and two friends hanging out? I've hung out one-on-one with a bunch of guys before, most of whom I had no romantic interest.

Strong connections I have experienced have always happened at first sight. I believe it is a myth that we fall in love after dating someone, I have read that first impressions play a strong role in how we perceive someone else.

Falling in Lust tends to be instantaneous and is based upon the physical, in my experience, whereas falling in Love takes time, requires nurturing and is based upon intangibles.

Hence the point of dating.

To add, even if the dating is casual it still requires romantic interest in the other person, which may lead to the physical, whereas friends usually tends to the platonic style of interaction (If the friendship is the normal style of friends anyway - ie not fwb etc)

Last edited by boofle on 27 Mar 2016, 1:53 am, edited 1 time in total.

with my fiance in the 80's, we knew each other superficially from work. we found out that we were both interested in music. he asked me out. after a couple of months, he said he was in love. a bit later, i fell in love with him.

another time, i went out on a blind date. we dated for about a year. i'd say i fell in love after about six months.

i've also been in love with folks i never dated. friends that never turned into romances on their side.

It isn't. At least not for some of us. It will go wrong one way or the other. Either we will develop no feelings, or we get a strong crush when on the first date, and then are dumped.



There is none other than an implied intention to possibly have a relationship.

How does that relate to asexuality? I mean, we asexuals still get strong infatuations, but they are obviously not related to lust for sex. And how do you separate "falling in love" from infatuation?



So you mean there is some point of dating?



Wrong. I don't want my infatuations to end in physical stuff like sexual intercourse. Once I have a crush on somebody, I have ZERO desire to have sex of any kind with that person. The difference between a friendship and a relationship for me is not "the physical", but having a crush. A crush is the only requirement for a relationship and it will typically be initiated by flirting and a nonverbal phase while a friendship will typically start with something verbal. Thus, for me, dating will either result in a quick crush or nothing but a platonic friendship.

Dunno. Why, is OP asexual? I was unaware if that's the case.



Personally and in my experience? I see "infatuation" as the superficial. It's fast, fierce and all consuming. I see "falling in love" as the almost opposite. It's a gradual process. It comes with time. It requires work.
In my experience, infatuation feeds itself, whereas love requires feeding.



Heh. Yep, again, in my experience there are lots of advantages to dating.



Well, my reply was based within the context of 'normal' sexuality since OP didn't mention asexuality.
Naturally your asexuality would mean that my reply wouldn't apply but as I said, I based my response within a non-asexual context. Doesn't make it wrong. It just happens to lack relevance given your particular circs.

Very easily. It's called "getting to know the person."

I've fallen in love both "at first sight" and through "getting to know the person." The former tends to fade quickly; the latter tends to last longer.

We cannot have models of love that fail to account for 10-20% of neurodiverse people.



Infatuations can go on for years. They just need the proper environment and feedback for that to happen. I also would prefer if we don't use diffuse concepts like "love", which can mean so many things. I think that what you mean by "love" in the above context is attachment. Attachment needs to be built before infatuation is lost, overwise people will break-up. However, I don't think attachment necessarily needs feeding. I once was in love / attached to a girl for 3+10 years, and I never saw her after the three initial years in college, which kind of proves that's wrong. I'd even claim that you got the two things mixed-up from my perspective because my infatuations do need feedback to survive, while the attachments don't.



Actually, I'm not asexual in the typical way. I just have a strong dislike for bonding with sex, and I find it especially disgusting when I'm in love with somebody. There is also an additional neurodiverse trait that is relevant in this context: To be more sexually attracted to strangers than to people one knows well (like a partner).

Since your argument lacks relevance for a not so small minority of neurodiverse people, it cannot be how love operates in everybody. So you need to change it to something like "this is how love operates in sexual NTs" or something.

That appears to work for some (maybe even the majority), but for me verbal communication is an initiator either of a friendship or a relationship. Thus, if I have an infatuation and then date, my brain will believe I'm in a relationship. If the same happens without an infatuation, it will believe it's a friendship. In the friendship scenario, I will be able to terminate if I find the person awful when I get to know them, but that doesn't work if I have an infatuation because part of an infatuation is to hide bad traits in your beloved one.



Not so for me. A long, intense, obsessive, infatuation phase without any kind of verbal communication is the basis for extremely long-lived attachments for me. Also, falling in love with somebody after initial verbal communication never happened to me. That's a scenario that always leads to friend-status, and never will lead to infatuation. Attachment can and will typically also build to a friend, but it will not be the romantic kind that is linked to infatuation.

You don't know the person before you start dating them -- they're cute and fun and you want to spend more time with them. The love thing happens AFTER.

I was in love once, although I tried to hold myself back from getting too attached because it was a long shot. We started out as friends and it happened after I got to know her. In the end though it didn't work out and I'm glad I held myself back because I was able to get over it in just a few days.

You don't need to date or converse with somebody to get to know them. You can observe them from a distance, and if you do that over some time span, you will get to know them even without any direct communication. I'd say that way also will give a more honest opinion about somebody because they will not try to behave the best they can as they will when dating.



So what is love to you? Infatuation, attachment or something else? (please explain if it is the latter).

rdos

As I said, my comments were made in the context of normal sexuality. This thread is about the OP, not about you, so my comments probably don't apply to you but they were not intended to.
No comments about these things can be made that include everyone and applies to everyone, and here we're discussing a specific issue the OP has.
If you want to discuss how things are for asexual people then feel free to start your own thread about it and people will answer within the context of asexuality.