There is nothing that feels quite the same as being in love. For centuries, poets have dedicated their creative lives towards trying to explain what being in love feels like, and while that means we as a people have thousands of wonderfully beautiful poems, what we don’t have is a crystal clear explanation about what it is like to be in love. While I don’t believe we will all ever come to an agreement about what makes the perfection description for how being in love feels, we can learn a lot about other people when we ask them their opinion on the subject. And if you ask men what they think being in love feels like, chances are they’ll each have their own explanation. For the romantics of the world, being in love is puppies and candies and roses. For the practical people, it’s meeting someone who shares your interests and your plans for the future. When you’re talking to a man and trying to figure out just what kind of guy he is, you can’t go wrong asking him to tell you his personal definition of love and what it feels like for him. RELATED: 11 Men Share The Moment They Knew It Was True Love One Redditor recently discovered this to be true when they asked the guys on the Ask Man subreddit, “What should ‘being in love’ make you feel?”
So if you want to know what love feels like, check out what 15 men had to say and you’ll see exactly what I mean …
1. You don’t need rose-colored glasses.
“When all the new wears off, you don’t have butterflies every time they call or text or you know you’re going to see them, you’re not getting all giddy about ‘firsts’ in your relationship, you’re no longer both on your best behavior, you can see their faults and let them see yours, you’ve survived a few disagreements, you’re not intimate every time you catch some alone time … And after all that, they’re still your favorite person. You still do things for each other, for the simple joy of making them happy. The absence of the rose-colored glasses of new lust hasn’t been replaced with resentment, it has evolved into comfort, stability, and security with that person.”
2. It should feel happy and safe.
“Happy and safer than you’ve felt before. And a strong urge to ensure the other feels the same.”
3. It can feel like food poisoning.
“For me, love is like a nauseating stomach feel where you’re super hungry but want to throw up at the sight of food, or like smelling liquor during a terrible hangover.”
4. It goes deep.
“I guess everyone is different, but for me, love is feeling like you really know someone and have a depth of affection that goes deeper than with anyone else, along with a bond of companionship and physical attraction. When I don’t know a woman very well but she feels really exciting and like the most important person on earth, that’s really just lust and infatuation in my experience. I don’t think I could really love someone with having spent a lot of time with them and gone through shared experiences.” RELATED: 6 Ways Infatuation Is Different From Real Love (And How To Make Sure You Always Know The Difference)
5. It’s indescribable!
“It’s very hard to put into words how I feel about her but I feel a connection that I can’t describe. It’s a connection that makes me know exactly what she’s feeling at any given second and I know she knows how I feel. I would sacrifice everything for her and I know she feels the same way. Love just can’t really be described, but I know I’m in it.”
6. Love feels like home.
“Everyone saying ‘Happy,’ ‘Euphoria,’ ‘Excited’ … is, in my opinion, wrong, very wrong. True love feels comfortable, it feels right, the person feels like home.”
7. Being in love makes you listen.
“When you listen to her over your mother and you don’t feel guilty about it later.”
8. There are different stages.
“There are a few different stages. Initial attraction, obsession and seeing her as perfect, then slowly seeing the real person and the feelings left over are true love or nothing.” RELATED: If You Haven’t Experienced These 7 Things It Isn’t Really Love — Yet
9. It’s pure joy.
“Whoopi Goldberg as Guinan in ‘Star Trek Generations’ described it (well, something else relative to the movie but it still can apply here) well I thought: ‘It was like being inside joy, as if joy was something tangible and you could wrap yourself up in it like a blanket … and never in my entire life have I ever been as content.’”
10. Love isn’t a feeling, per se.
“Okay so some people may disagree with me, but I do not believe that love is a single feeling that you hold on to. Love is a bond and a connection that can have so many different feelings, mostly good ones, sometimes bad ones, sometimes no feelings. The important thing is that forgiveness and respect rule your relationship from both sides. You should feel needed and wanted, and so should they. Not at all times, you’re allowed to have rough spots. In fact, having a level of healthy discourse is a good reminder that you both are still human beings trying their best. A lot of relationships and marriages get stale when one partner finally just decides that they are going to roll over for good and let the other do everything.”
11. It’s a habit.
“Love is a habit. Not an emotion. Your emotions change all the time. There will be days when you don’t want to be married. That’s where the habit fits in.”
12. Being in love is a conscious choice.
“Love is where you want the absolute best for someone and will do anything for them. Anything other than those feelings are not love but rather attachment or infatuation. Love is intentional — it does not just happen to you!”
13. Love unconsciously rearranges your priorities.
“Love for me meant subconsciously putting her needs before mine and deriving joy from her smile.”
14. It’s about gratitude.
“Words don’t do it justice, and it’s sort of a ’explain salt to somebody who hasn’t tasted it’ paradigm. Love felt safe. A warmth. A gratitude that that person, and not just any person, was there beside you despite all the chaos of the universe and the world. The person who cared to understand who you were and how you ticked. Love is being each others’ entire world, where you wait up for the other and can’t imagine parting. There’s a gentleness in your interaction, a joy of being around them. Love is being a calm voice during a panic attack and the big spoon after a bad day. Love is gathering wood, lighting a fire, and contemplating the immensity of space and the improbability of your union, considering your utter smallness but being okay because you’re small together. Love is a steady voice and a warm embrace during a bad trip when your soul’s raw and exposed, when everything immutable and essential gets reduced to meaningless cliche. Love is waking up and seeing her little body and curly hair taking up 80 percent of the bed, pushing your considerably larger frame to the brink, seeing her toothy smile and her intensely colored eyes almost disappearing into themselves as the day’s prospects excite her. Love was the time I spent sharing my soul.”
15. It’s as simple as knowing you don’t want anyone else.
“When a more attractive woman hits on you but you love your girl more so you don’t consider it.” RELATED: Why Being In Love Is The Best Feeling In The World Rebecca Jane Stokes is a writer living in Brooklyn, New York with her cat, Batman. For more of her work, check out her Tumblr.
