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Is love a choice, or something that happens to us?

Kavya Menon Fellow
· 4 replies
Love & friendship#choice#love
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In poetry, love is almost always something that happens to you: you "fall", you're struck, you're helpless. But in many families and religious traditions, love is described as a commitment you choose and keep choosing.

Harry Frankfurt, in The Reasons of Love (2004), argues that we don't love things because we find them valuable; rather, they become valuable to us because we love them. And love isn't fully under our control.

Stendhal, in On Love (1822), described "crystallisation": like a bough left in a salt mine that becomes covered with sparkling crystals, the beloved becomes covered in perfections by the lover's imagination.

So is love a choice, an event, or both? And if it's an event, can we be responsible for whom we love?

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4 replies

  1. Claire Dubois

    Fellow

    I think falling in love is an event, but staying in love is closer to a practice. The French have a phrase for the first, coup de foudre, the thunderbolt. There's no equivalent romantic phrase for the twentieth year of a marriage, but that's where choice lives.

    Helpful · 3
  2. Reza Tehrani

    Fellow

    In Persian poetry the lover is helpless, but the tradition also speaks of adab, the courtesy and discipline of love. You can't choose to fall, but you can choose how you carry it.

  3. Elif Yıldız

    Fellow

    Psychologically, attraction is mostly not chosen, but research suggests that small daily choices in a relationship, like attention and gratitude, shape whether love lasts. So "both" seems to be the scientific answer too.

    Helpful · 1
  4. Rohan Desai

    Fellow

    I had an arranged marriage proposal last year and turned it down, partly because I believed love should "happen". This thread is making me rethink that assumption, for better or worse.

    Helpful · 2