Scarleteen

I'm bi and for the longest time have thought myself to be strictly hetero romantic. I recently went into a relationship with a guy, and I'm convinced he loves me, but I'm not so sure If how I feel about him is "true love" or simply friendship with the added bonus of intimacy and sexuality, should I tell him about this? Again, I'm unsure if I really do love him in the way he loves me, but I realize sexuality is fluid so this might just be me labeling myself unnecessarily

Hey!

So the issue here might be our trying to qualify true love, and categorise our feelings in that way. We can generally count on the fact that the way we feel about a person is going to be different from how they feel about us because we are ourselves unique so our feelings are too.

It can be more helpful in my experience to look at what I'm doing with a person and how we feel about that, aside from thoughts of whether it counts as love etc. If it's kissing, and I enjoy kissing them and I feel they say they enjoy kissing me, then thats an activity we can enjoy together. If kissing is ok for them but they fear it's going to lead to other feelings, and leaves them feeling uncomfortable, then we can change the activity to address that feeling.

Love or romantic-orientation, these things are not set in stone and in many ways are very cultural and mean many many things. So personally I would be very careful saying something like "I think you love me but I don't love you"... If love just means caring about another person's wellbeing, then this could be hurtful and sound like "I don't care about you", so what is meant is important. It is also assuming that what he means by love (which he has not expressed to you) and presuming a lot about his experience which might be unfair to put on him.

So, it might be wiser and kinder, from what I'm reading, to ask how he feels, and how the ways you both feel might effect your relationship. If you're both happy with what has been happening between you right now you also both get to decide to continue or not.

For a bit of further reading, I really 'love' this answer by Heather Love, Growth, Fear & Other Kinds of Big-Scary-Wonderful

thank you, this article helped a lot, and I think what I'm most motivated by here is the fear that I'll somehow let him down, promise more than I can give, and grow more attachment and less love as the article puts it

since I've had my fair share of relationships that fell apart because of impossible requests like these, proclamations of unconditional permanent love and the like

and I've already essentially told him that I don't expect it to last forever, but he's made it clear he has romantic feelings for me, as well as the more general kind of love expressed in the piece you pointed me to, so as I've said before even though i know this isn't binding i subconsciously feel obligated to say what he wants to hear. I mean, not that there isn't a possibility those feelings are shared, but its all this baggage I've mentioned that's making me unsure if that's really the case

sorry if I'm rambling, contradictory, making this harder for myself etc.

so yeah in the end you're probably right that its best if i just talk to him

I'd say so yes. Honesty can be difficult... really difficult. But it pays off.

I have a similar problem, I guess... I never get long term romantic crushes, but my boyfriend's already said he loves me. Tell me where to go if I shouldn't be posting this in reply to somebody else's post (sorry) but I could use some help.

Also, good luck with your guy.

said guy I broke up with and I currently am with someone else and have been for over a year, as documented in my other threads