What do people mean by "I was in love with the idea of being in love..but not really in love"?

You refuse to make her/him a sandwich.

The one I make sandwiches for.

They were in love with the concept, rather than the emperical reality.

If you love the idea of being part of a “we” and all its trappings, but aren’t quite so enthused about what your partner’s likes, values, etc. are.

That, to me, refers to falling in love with a distorted image of the partner. It’s kind of like constantly fantasising about a partner to the point where even reality cannot live up to the perfect ideal you have in mind.

The signs of it? Something simple like… just realising that when you’re physically with the person, you don’t feel as euphoric as you do when you’re alone and thinking about him or her.

Loving someone is actually quite hard work. You have to tend your relationship and sometimes the person you love is a horrible to you and most of us have habits or ways of acting that are irritating to our SO (and vice versa). However, some people fall in love with that early stage of the relationship, the honeymoon phase. They love the part of the relationship when they first get together with someone and are in the throws of that infatuated love, when their partner walks in the room and they feel our world brighten, and their SO seem to be perfect and have no (or very few flaws), People can even become addicted to this phase when all that serotonin is coursing through their veins. Then reality sets in… and the perfect SO becomes a lump of normal clay… and they want to move on to find that perfect, special love again. That’s my take on the whole “I was in love with the idea of love, rather than the person” thing.

They mean “help me i’m rather bewildered & confused.”

They mean they enjoyed the journey, but didnt like the destination.

They like the concept, but don’t like the effort. They want “happily ever after” without the day-to-day.

Apparently, people who make this statement have no idea what being in love with your soulmate is all about.

Its psychological mumble-jumbo. And, maybe they are just fooling themselves.

My response to you includes a spoiler from this past series of Mad Men, so anyone who hasn’t seen the last episodes, turn away!

Don Draper starts a relationship with a woman named Faye during this series, but the more she got to know him and learned his secret, saw him throwing up and and not as the cool, collected persona he’s developed, started really caring for the man without the mask. But this was freaking him out and he started arguing with her, cheating on her and avoiding her. By the end of this season, he threw her over and immediately got engaged to his secretary Megan in a matter of days on a business trip, who is a woman he really doesn’t know very well. He breaks up with Faye over the phone and she says to him, “I hope she knows you only like the beginnings of things.”

What Faye meant was that Don likes the giddy, fantasy-strewn parts in the beginning of a relationship, when lovers don’t know each other all that well and they can project a fantastic image of perfection on the other person. That’s what “being in love with love” means, getting that oxytocin high. The more you get to know someone with their faults and foibles, that’s when some people come off the high and bail. I had a bf like that, and I didn’t realize it until I saw him go through the cycle with 3 other women. Then I felt less bad.

It means they are a hopeless romantic.

To me this sounds like when people have to be in a relationship, you know those people who just can’t/won’t stay single because they are too insecure. They often find that they are so ‘lovy-dovy’ real early in the relationship, talking about marriage and such, only to find that in a short time the relationship goes south. The person wanted to be in love, was enamored with the idea of it and even may have fooled themselves into believing they were in love, only to find that they were just trying to hard and that things weren’t really working out. They think that the only way to be fulfilled as a person is to be in love, and they will do anything to feel that way, even when it isn’t real. Thusly their relationships become many and superficial, starting with sparks but fading quickly, one after another, until the person realizes what they are doing.

It means it doesn’t really matter who is next to you, as long as someone is and you’re feeling the rush of ‘my gosh, they love me’.

Sometimes people say this when they’ve been in a relationship (or a series of relationships) in which they felt all of the beginning sensations of passion and lust and joy, but then they come to the realization that the person who they were with was not a very good match. Maybe the person was physically attractive and that is what sparked the passion in the first place, but maybe they found out that the person had nothing in common with them, had a very different idea about how to “be in a relationship” or was not on the same intellectual level as themselves.

And sometimes people get together and never really “get to know” the other person. Maybe they have a long distance relationship or maybe they have some type of “arrangement” that is unclear and oftentimes people will only see what they want to see until one day the bad stuff (or the stuff that is not working or the stuff that will ultimately make a relationship un-sustainable) is pointed out to them.

The person loved the idea of being in a relationship, but they weren’t in a good relationship (or in some cases, a real relationship) Sometimes the “image” of a relationship is much better than the actual relationship itself.

Personally, I would say I can somewhat relate to those statements, in the sense that I’ve experienced going on dates with an individual who was a really sweet person, extremely established in his life, attractive, etcetc. ( he was a great person) however, the emotional attraction, the intellectual attraction, it just wasn’t there…

I really liked this guy as a person, and I like the idea of being in a relationship- I liked what this man stood for and who he was…essentially , on paper he was the perfect guy….... you could say, on paper i liked the “idea” of him
But it’s not just about having someone there : I want to have an emotional draw to the person….

maybe thats some skewed perspective comparing my answer with some others on here, but I personally don’t want to just say oh hey this person has a lot going for them I could learn to love them….I’ll know when it comes, if it comes.

It’s probably a pretty sure sign of someone who is emotionally immature and more concerned with themselves than others.

They would like to be IN LOVE with someone, but couldnt imagine it happening

@incendiary_dan , I dont think so- I think it’s pretty admirable to find someone’s who honest and doesn’t pretend if the feelings aren’t there. two individuals can be great people but not necessarily eachothers great person….

If they had the maturity to realize that, they wouldn’t get into relationships that cause them to say that in the first place.

ehhhhh, if you say so, life isn’t so cut and dry all the time, but I’m going to opt to have different opinions on this because it’s not that crucial we agree

If you are comfortable and happy with the relationship but don’t see yourself growing old with that person then you’re in love with the relationship but not that person.

Ok thanks everyone