Can you be happy in a relationship but not be in love?

How are you defining love? That is the first question to ask.

Well, it would depend on what they wanted in the relationship. I suppose some people may want a life partner that they spend their years with and are completely happy with the “no love” part. This type of relationship is more of a companionship instead of a romantic involvement. Perhaps this person has tried “in love relationships” unsuccessfully in the past and this just seems to be “safe”. Personally I need to feel loved. I have no family other than my children and would miss that feeling, so I would not stay.

If you have a true platonic relationship and aren’t interested in more, sure. Companionship is better than being alone in my opinion. There are those who prefer to be alone.

Yes, you can, it’s a matter of it fitting your needs and the needs of the other. And while it’s not “in love” it can still be a loving relationship because of non-romantic love for the other person.

I like the saying that…

Immature love is hot, mature love is warm.

Comfort, security and warmly caring for another IS real love.
Sex and all the emotional fireworks is just natures way of setting things up during the “meet, mate, procreate” phase of “lust.”
Most people believe that if things are not “hot” all the time they are not in love.
Wrong!

“True” love is about warmth, caring, comfort and sharing, not an impossible to sustain state of heart thumping excitement.

@Coloma That is so beautiful, thank you.

As long as both parties are OK with the situation and one person is not longing for romantic love while the other cannot give it. Then I think it’s totally fine. Especially if you find someone that you really like, more like a best friends kind of thing.

I couldn’t have sex over the long run with someone I didn’t love and who didn’t love me, but I could be content to live with someone in a platonic relationship if I didn’t have a romantic relationship.

For some people, it’s all they know. Some people are able to turn off their emotions and convince themselves that it’s for the best based on the relationship

Such as if a couple have been together for 10 years and they have children, financial stability will replace emotion.

For a younger couple, it could depend on how they view themselves, such as for example a female can bounce from relationship to relationship and finally they settle for someone who can sustain them in certain areas but because they’ve been hurt repeatedly they decide to settle.

It has it’s various complexities because emotions are so sensitive but like @Kardamom @zenvelo @oneSasyRN it can benefit as long as both parties are aware of what to expect from eachother, if in contrast they don’t well it yells train wreck.

Loveless arranged marriages was the standard for thousands of years.

Some couples are in love, some are in lust and some plan on being in lust later on this evening.

Hell yes. Why fuck it up with LOVE.

Love is always preferred but people get together for lots of reasons.

I find it difficult to answer this question, because first when do you know when do you love some-one or when do you know when are you in love with some-one?
Some of us do live with another person because we don’t want to be alone and don’t want to go through that process of always finding a suitable mate so we tend to look past all their short comings and than live with it. I got a young couple at work and that seems to me that they are still in love with one another even if they are married for about a year, the little gestures, like holding hands, smiling when they chat and laughing when one completes the other sentence. You can see in their body language that they are in love. So I think love should play a role in a relationship, a few months ago I was in a short loveless sexual relationship, it was like the friends with benefits thing and somehow it did not feel right to sleep with a person and than the next morning we went our separate ways, something was missing in our relationship and that was love.