Men: what do you feel when you fall in love?

I think the answer is it depends.

People occupy a broad spectrum of emotional space. One man falling in love two different times could have completely different experiences.

Foolonthehill said:

Can you please help me figure if men and women have more or less the same emotions when falling in lust and then love?

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They don't. As Drachen said, it all depends because there is no big difference between men and women, but more of a difference between individual people regardless of gender and sex. We all feel differently.

Attraction works on three main levels: Chemical, physical, mental. Mental attraction is what we think of as "feeling" for the person, or like/love. We like their thoughts, what they do, who they are. Physical is easily said to be lust. Body, their actions, their reactions. Chemical can be apart of lust, but it also plays roles in other aspects, just like when a new mother holds her newborn after birth--they share a chemical connection that links them from the start. Whatever attraction comes into play first and the individual's own reaction and actions to what they experience is personal to them.

Also, the "contradicting" answers are probably not contradictory, just as men can be "corny" despite what you might believe. Men can react the same way women can, and it's natural for a man to try to act masculine because that's what marks them as a man in society's eye and some try to live up to that assumption.

I think the answers are contradictory because the experience is different for different people. Not all men are alike, and not all women are alike.

For me personally, it's sort of hard to describe. I'm not into drugs, but I'm guessing it's like being on some sort of powerful euphoric drug. Being with the person you're in love with is like a shot of adrenaline. You feel more energetic and just more alive. Your heart can literally start pounding as soon as you see her. When you're not with her,
you can't stop thinking about her. And not just sexual thoughts--you may fantasize just about things you'd like to say to her or places you'd like to go with her. If there's some day when you just get to see her for five minutes, that will still be the high point of your day.

Everything in the whole world seems more vivid and more real. You almost have to resort to metaphors here. It's like impossibly good music is playing just for you. It's like you're walking barefoot in the grass on a bright spring day after endless months of dreary gray winter. It's like you've recovered from a long sickness and now you feel like running a marathon. Sorry if I'm getting a little poetic here, but I'm not sure how else to put it!

If there's a difference between men and women, I think it's that men tend (on average) to have, well, somewhat wider standards for who they find sexually attractive. So you may meet tons and tons of people that you find attractive that way; which means there has to be an extra-special something-or-other to really make you fall in love. Once you do, though, there will be a sexual component to it. The person you're in love with will become extra, extra-attractive.

Another difference is that I think men will be more likely to become very protective of whoever they're in love with. There's a negative side of that...being protective can slide into being controlling. If you know what you're doing, you'll keep an eye on yourself to make sure that doesn't happen.

Then, of course, if things don't work out it can be crushingly depressing. It's like you have withdrawal symptoms from the drug. The whole world will seem empty. You can go for months having a hard time concentrating on your work or daily activities. Hopefully, you'll recover after a while.

Maybe the word "you" is wrong here--really this is all "me." As I said at the top, I'm sure plenty of men do have different experiences. But I hope this helps some!

(By the way, I wouldn't say I've ever had "butterflies in my stomach." Actually, I'm not quite sure what that means...)

I can't imagine why it would be any more different between men and woman than between any two women or any two men.

I feel obligated to answer your question to prove that not all men feel the need to avoid feeling unmanly. (Enough double negatives there? "Not", "avoid", "un".)

I've experienced two distinct flavors of falling in love. One I strongly considered love at the time, but now see more as infatuation. It was the kind of feeling of awe you get looking at the stars. She's utterly beautiful, and you want to get to know all her mysteries.

The other kind, which I'd now call real love, is more a feeling of familiarity that comes with time. Touching her is as natural as touching your own skin, but it's still thrilling when you discover how comfortable it's becoming.

Here's an observation from my wife, though, based a lot on romantic movies. Men seem to fall in love when they see a woman get out of her clothes. Not that that's all there is to it, but that's when it finally hits them. Can't totally disagree with her. I have to admit it was one of the important steps in our relationship.

The butterflies answer does strike me as lame. I've never felt anything that felt like like butterflies in my stomach associated with any experience or emotion. Maybe some people really feel that, but most of the time I think it's just a cliche. It sounds like he didn't really have an answer, because a) he'd never been in love b) he forgot what it was like c) he's been in love but not emotionally competent enough to put it in words d) he thought you wouldn't approve of the real answer. I'm curious what the other guy's "manly" answer was. I'd like to see whether I judge his answer to be brutal manly honesty or manly hiding of feelings he won't admit.

What are you looking for, really? Surely you know not all men are alike so I'm sure you don't expect any one man to speak for what all men feel.

You got the expected slew of responses from people saying that men and women feel exactly the same things, and I don't think that is true, but it is certainly true that individual differences will tend to outweigh gender differences.

If you want the "typical" (or what some might call "stereotypical") male response, then being in love will be, to a large degree, similar to what a woman feels (happiness when together, unhappiness when apart, a tendency to brush aside all negatives and accentuate all positives, more of a tendency towards strong emotion, distraction, even euphoria). Men will tend to have a strong sexual component to this, frequently displaying "can't keep his hands off her" behavior, and men also tend to feel a strong sense of protectiveness, and react well to feeling needed.

I emphasize that this is the "typical" reaction; it does not universally describe all men, nor am I claiming that it is exclusive of women.

Honestly, just content and happy. If I am acting, "unmanly," by buying her flowers or being more expressive than usual, etc, then I am not aware of that. I just like making her happy b/c I -- well, you know, l.o.v.e. her !

The thing is, every man has his maleness and humanity in common with every other man whilst at the same time being a unique individual with his own responses, feelings and narrative.

So why not write yourself a whole list of things a man might feel.

Then eliminate anything that you deem corny because, obviously, it's impossible for men to feel stuff like that.

Pick a few characteristics or feelings from what you have left over.

Foolonthehill said:

Can you please help me figure if men and women have more or less the same emotions when falling in lust and then love?

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Women don't even have the same emotions as other women. And men don't even have the same emotions as other men.

But if it matters, my husband wrote me poetry when we first started dating. Bad poetry.

Don't sweat stereotypes. Write how your characters are.

It's not a gender thing, as others have said, it's an individual thing. It reminds me a bit of threads have seen where people are questioning if they're allowed to write characters of another gender to them. It doesn't matter, because people are people first and foremost, not genders.

That being said, my first love was a long-distance thing. It ultimately did not work, partly due to that distance, but while it did... the closest I can describe is like the adrenaline, like Kevin mentioned above.

It also let me feel I was working for something, a purpose I have been lacking and missing since.

What everyone else said. I'd add one more level of complexity - it feels different each time you do it. Or at least it did for me. I've been married twice (and had a few adventures that didn't end up in a church or a solicitor's office) and they all felt different.

How to sum up the feeling of being in love? For me, there are two main elements to attraction - a selfish part and a selfless part.

On the selfish side of the equation, we have feelings of lust and physical attraction. He/she has a great body and I'd like to ... you know. Or that he/she will look after me. Be nice to me. Laugh at my jokes. Give me space to get oily repairing the sports car. Look good on my arm.

On the selfless side, we decide that he/she is someone we want to look after, to protect. We want to give them things, both physically and spiritually. We want to make them happy.

If both of those elements were connected to a dial, then falling in love feels as if someone has just twisted the dial all the way up. To borrow a line from Spinal Tap - it's as if they have just turned it to eleven.

Being in love is not quite the same. After a long time, a constant love doesn't feel like an amplifier turned up to eleven. Instead, it feels like two people who have been grafted together. My wife feels like ... like another arm, a part of me. If I started out red and she started out blue, after 15 years of marriage we're both tinged with purple.

Hmmm. Strange answers. I've always gotten a mysterious letter from the government telling me: "As per the Mandatory Love Act of 1958, you are now in love. Please act accordingly."

Emotions are somatic, mental, and neural. Because emotions are somatic, love would feel different for a man than for a woman, because men and women have different bodily structures and hormones. I don't know what lust feels like to a woman, but when I am attracted to a woman, then there is a bit of physical preparation that leads to a desire for more more. Whether "love" would feel more different I don't know, because people use that word to describe different things.

I loathe these kinds of speculations about how men and women perceive x differently. If anyone has scientific evidence or answers I'd be keen to hear them.

However, if nothing factual is forthcoming in the next few hours, I'm inclined to close the thread.

A few relevant links:

http://examinedexistence.com/why-we-fall-in-love-the-science-of-love/
http://www.utexas.edu/features/2009/02/09/love_science/
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/...-time-shows-where-we-feel-love-fear-and-shame
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/201...tions-on-the-body-love-makes-us-warm-all-over

And there are many more articles on the matter. Whether they are complete or accurate is a question. There are also nutritional matters that touch on the matter of love and how it is experienced. If one does not have adequate amounts of some nutrients, then love would be incomplete. It is an interesting study. I wrote a blog post on "The Love Diet" a few months ago.

Search human physiology emotions, love, and related terms

Cath said:

I loathe these kinds of speculations about how men and women perceive x differently. If anyone has scientific evidence or answers I'd be keen to hear them.

However, if nothing factual is forthcoming in the next few hours, I'm inclined to close the thread.

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Don't quite get this: your complaint is that a discussion about love is not factual enough? I think the OP was asking an innocent question, looking for personal experiences. It's the replies that turned it into a debate about whether men are different from women, and if you say so demanding that you prove it.

I think that some of the responses have been evading the question, just pointing out that all individuals are different. Well, what's your individual experience of love? If everybody just answers, then it will be easy to conclude for ourselves whether all the answers are similar or different.

My husband revealed to me recently that he felt more of a pull toward me when my grown children were at home. He speculated that my protective instincts were releasing hormones that he may have unconsciously detected.

Chemical attraction might start the ball rolling. Natural smell might be part of it. How does the man physically react? I don't know, but hubby surmised I might be a good match for him because I didn't immediately dissolve in a puddle of hysteria during our first date, which involved horseback riding in a raging blizzard.

Maybe not a flutter in the stomach, but an increase in heart rate can induce that fluttery feeling.

Sat Nam! (Literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

Cath: I'm getting something out of this in preparation to write a love scene from a man's POV. No, I'm not the OP, but I think this thread has value.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

I'm a dinosaur, age wise but only fell twice. When I did I felt committed, protective of the lady, more willing to tolerant emotions I could not understand in the woman, and a willingness to accept responsibility for things I never did or said.

Cath said:

I loathe these kinds of speculations about how men and women perceive x differently. If anyone has scientific evidence or answers I'd be keen to hear them.

However, if nothing factual is forthcoming in the next few hours, I'm inclined to close the thread.

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It would be great if you didn't close the thread as it may come across as censorship based on personal preferences. Also, it wasn't a question of 'what's the science behind,'...but rather, 'could you tell me how you feel' (of those willing to do so).

Kevin Nelson said:

I think the answers are contradictory because the experience is different for different people.

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Hell it's different for each person every time they fall in love

It would be great if you didn't close the thread as it may come across as censorship based on personal preferences.

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lol, what?

Threads get closed here for numerous reasons -- not factual based evidence,speculation masquerading as fact

Several people have mentioned in this very thread how they feel, without making it about how All Manhood feels, or Science Says (without backup)

So maybe you should take that into account?

When I did I felt committed, protective of the lady, more willing to tolerant emotions I could not understand in the woman, and a willingness to accept responsibility for things I never did or said.

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Funny that is exactly how I felt about my ex husband....



Expecting a certain level of factual evidence is not "censorship" it is "we expect more here". Censorship is "do not talk" here it is, if you talk expect to back it up. Difference

Plus this whole place is a private board.

The owner is pretty tolerant

But " free speech"a also entails "people telling you not to say that without citation, because they can, because free speech, and without citation you're just spouting words"

ETA you know what men feel when they fall in love? Same thing women do

Hence all the male-written love songs. They are just socially constrained to not say it, except in song

M.S. Wiggins said:

It would be great if you didn't close the thread as it may come across as censorship based on personal preferences. Also, it wasn't a question of 'what's the science behind,'...but rather, 'could you tell me how you feel' (of those willing to do so).

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Censorship would be if I deleted the thread and denied any discussion of the topic, not if I closed it. And yes, I used the qualifiers that this is my opinion deliberately.

And I loathe these men vs women threads because they ask us to class people as stereotypes, and through repeating those stereotypes we define expectation, and through expectation we define normality and, more worryingly, abnormality.

People are people, whatever their gender, sexual preference, skin color, etc. etc. etc.

I appreciate the need and desire to be authentic and convincing in writing but I feel that should come from both scientific and anecdotal sources and I'm going to continue to ask folks to do exactly that.

Cath - men vs women discussions can sometimes degenerate into stereotypes, that's certainly true. But unless I have missed something, I don't see that happening in this thread. It seems to me that the discussion has been mature and even-handed. Many people seem to be talking about their own experiences, which seems a legitimate and factual way to deal with the topic.

But isn't there a danger of trying to portray men and women as identical when in fact we are self evidently not identical? We have different chemicals and hormones inside us. We react differently to the same situations. We have different plumbing. I have seen countless studies showing a genuine difference between men and women.

Not better or worse. Just different.

Surely the equality we are looking for is equality of treatment, not trying to insist that men and women are identical?

Maybe we could get back to answering the question?