Butterfly feelings

[Jacob]

Zoia asked this in another thread but it actually feels like an interesting topic to talk about generally. Hence this is new discussion topic!

Is 'butterflies' or feeling 'butterflies in my stomach' when you are around a crush, new partner or even long-standing partner something that people can relate to?

If so, when does it arrive and when does it go?

If not, what's that like? Is it just weird that people talk about a thing you don't experience?

[Zoia]

In my personal experience, that feeling goes away within a couple months or so. Maybe a year or longer for my current boyfriend. I did ask my therapist this question, he's been married somewhere between 20-30 years. Sorry that's vague, I don't remember anything. And he said that he still gets those feelings. I did also ask a friend who was in a LTR for several years, and he told me he got butterflies all the time, until she broke up with him. But you know, point being it stayed.
Very curious on everyone else's thoughts

[Jacob]

Interesting! It might be your therapist felt it that whole time, or perhaps means something different to what I mean.

For me it feels like a form of nervousness mixed with excitement and attraction. It's not an unpleasant nervousness, not dissimilar to the feeling of jumping into a cold pool, exciting, refreshing and a bit of a shock to the system. With a new person, there is extra-vulnerability to opening up to them for the first time, so I think the spikey nervousness just makes me extra alert to the other feelings.

As a relationship continues, the butterflies slowly go when I feel more safe and trusting, I could still frequently excited to be around them and enthusiastic about the relationship but in a calmer way. It has also gone away when I have discovered things about them that I don't like, and the enthusiasm portion has dropped out.

On the flip-side, I have also felt a comparable feeling in relationships that were unhealthy or abusive and needed to be over, where the connection wasn't actually that authentic. The instability of the relationship can provide that nervousness again, and it can help make the moments which do feel a sad nicer also a tiny bit more thrilling. It is really not helpful in getting out, or ending a doomed union, but it can mean there is at least the consolation prize of an available nice feeling leading up to the ending that has to happen.

In situations like that it's been really important that I ignore 'the butterfly feeling' and treat it as unreliable information, this has really helped me make the steps needed to move on.

[Zoia]

Oh I love that take on it Jacob.

And yes, you know exactly what I mean with the butterflies, and yes there is totally a difference between new butterflies and then relationship ones.
I haven't asked a lot of people about it, but I might. I sometimes get ideas in my head that I'm curious about what everyone else would do, so I conduct mini surveys between my friends and FB family
My therapist said he still got them every time he saw her. Though truthfully, I don't know how honest they would be with 'personal' questions, and I also don't seem him anymore so I can't ask for follow-up questions lol

[Mo]

This is a good question. I think the "butterflies" feeling I tend to get is mostly around people I have strong crushes on or have a sense that there is a mutual attraction that no one's acted on yet; for me it's kind of a feeling of anticipation mixed in with attraction and excitement about someone. That feeling tends to fade, for me, after I get to know a partner better and we feel more familiar to each other, but I wouldn't say that it corresponds with all excitement about them fading, too. Sort of what like Jacob said, sometimes it's replaced with a calmer, comforting sort of feeling. When it feels like that initial excitement just peters out into nothing, and isn't replaced with that comforting familiarity, or there's no excitement at all remaining, that is often a sign that the relationship isn't great or just isn't great for me.

I don't generally have that sort of nervous-excited-butterflies feeling with my current partner that I live with, although I certainly did in the time when I knew I wanted to date them but we hadn't started yet, and in the first couple years of the relationship. I do have a lot of warm loving feelings for them, for sure, but that sort of giddy feeling doesn't show up very often. There are a lot of moments when I have a very strong sense of warmth and excitement with them, but it's definitely more of an "I'm excited that I get to spend my time with you" feeling and not an "I'm excited to see where things go with you" one, which I felt with them years and years ago.