Love actually breaks all the rules

[enchanted]

Hey everyone,

I’ve been reading through a lot of the dating advice and forum threads here lately. Most of the discussions seem to focus on how to "get" a girl, what women want, what men want, and how most people fit into certain predictable boxes or behavioral patterns.

Don't get me wrong—I appreciate the advice. I know people are just trying to help each other navigate the messy world of dating, and some of those patterns can be useful guardrails. But honestly? It feels like we are missing the entire point of romance.

This hyper-analytical, rule-based approach is completely antithetical to love.

Love isn't a formula. Love is revolutionary. It doesn't follow a pattern; it shatters them. It breaks every single rule you thought you had about yourself and about other people. Real love doesn't keep you safely inside your comfort zone—it pulls a completely new person out of you, making you someone you never thought you could be. It forces you to break out of old cycles, not conform to new ones.

I thought this forum was supposed to be a radical, free-thinking bunch. Why are we acting like a crowd of rigid rule-followers trying to reverse-engineer human connection?

If we want something real, we have to stop treating people like algorithms to solve. Let's talk about the magic, the chaos, and the radical vulnerability that love actually requires. Who else feels like we've lost the plot?

[aurum]

14 minutes ago, enchanted said:

It breaks every single rule you thought you had about yourself and about other people

It really doesn't though.

What makes people fall in love is extremely predictable.

[Ulax]

Dating is a silly game with serious rules

[Leo Gura]

Yup. Love is infinitely fluid.

[Jirh]

6 hours ago, aurum said:

It really doesn't though.

What makes people fall in love is extremely predictable.

Addiction is not love.

Most people are addicted to fun, excitement, and dopamine hits; basically, anything novel that doesn't require much above a short attention span. Especially nowadays. Most people are predictable dopamine junkies.

But that has nothing to do with love.

Edited 10 hours ago by Jirh

[ZenSwift]

I just love the entire study of it. I am enamoured with the complexity, the profundity, and the counter-intuitive nature of human connection. I was discussing with a friend today about how it appears that the most intelligent thing you can do to court women is by developing an intuition on what to do, rather than following an mechanical unconscious formula. How to develop this intuition can only come from a boat load of experience of being successful with women. Developing the holistic intelligence of intuition. 

 

I appreciate the pointer to look at this whole process from an even deeper view of the intelligence of love.

Edited 9 hours ago by ZenSwift

[Valach]

3 hours ago, Jirh said:

Addiction is not love.

Most people are addicted to fun, excitement, and dopamine hits; basically, anything novel that doesn't require much above a short attention span. Especially nowadays. Most people are predictable dopamine junkies.

But that has nothing to do with love.

How does mature love look to you then?

[Jirh]

7 minutes ago, Valach said:

How does mature love look to you then?

For me, healthy love is a combination of two main components:

Care & Respect.

Without respect, love becomes a utility or an addiction. It gets taken for granted.

And without care, love feels mechanical and boring. It becomes a performance/chore.

Edited 7 hours ago by Jirh

[aurum]

8 hours ago, Jirh said:

Addiction is not love.

Most people are addicted to fun, excitement, and dopamine hits; basically, anything novel that doesn't require much above a short attention span. Especially nowadays. Most people are predictable dopamine junkies.

But that has nothing to do with love.

I’m not just talking about addiction.

I mean long-term human love as well. It’s still extremely predictable.

[Ulax]

5 hours ago, Jirh said:

For me, healthy love is a combination of two main components:

Care & Respect.

Without respect, love becomes a utility or an addiction. It gets taken for granted.

And without care, love feels mechanical and boring. It becomes a performance/chore.

I find that true in friendship but not sufficient in romantic relationships

[Jirh]

50 minutes ago, Ulax said:

I find that true in friendship but not sufficient in romantic relationships

Well, yeah. I was talking about love in general, which includes platonic and romantic, and even other types of love like motherly or fatherly love.

The difference between types of love is not the structure, but the context.

Romantic love is based on sexual attraction. The context is mating. So of course there are other factors at play.

But once you identify it as love, it will always irrevocably have the two components of care & respect. They are the pillars of healthy love and relationships in general.

Attraction can happen without love, and love can happen without attraction.

But love cannot happen without both care & respect.

It even applies to loving inanimate objects or abstract things like loving your career for example. If you love your career, that means you respect it (you don't take it for granted) and care about it (you're genuinely invested in it).

Let's call it a general theory of love haha.

Edited 45 minutes ago by Jirh

[Jirh]

46 minutes ago, aurum said:

I’m not just talking about addiction.

I mean long-term human love as well. It’s still extremely predictable.

How can it possibly be predictable if it's long-term? That would require constant performance at all times, which is tiring and will quickly lead to burn out. Then the mask will fall and the performance will stop and the relationship will fail.

I don't think you can predict love in long-term relationships. It has to be authentic to work and endure time. And authenticity is different for everyone. So it's unpredictable.

Edited 1 hour ago by Jirh

[aurum]

44 minutes ago, Jirh said:

How can it possibly be predictable if it's long-term? That would require constant performance at all times, which is tiring and will quickly lead to burn out. Then the mask will fall and the performance will stop and the relationship will fail.

I don't think you can predict love in long-term relationships. It has to be authentic to work and endure time. And authenticity is different for everyone. So it's unpredictable.

People are not that unique.

They’re generally all looking for the same things.

[Miguel1]

16 minutes ago, aurum said:

People are not that unique.

They’re generally all looking for the same things.

You are correct. But honestly, it’s hard to call this love. It’s more about projection, idealizing, and escapism.

Rarely does two individual actually develop true intimacy and fall in love with each other, as a real core person.

It’s all about fake masks, unintegrated beings, traumas, repressed emotions, and selfish desires type of love. This is more narcissim, rather than love.

Edited 1 minute ago by Miguel1