Is love a choice?

Answer 1

I think that loving Family is not a choice you should love them no matter what... but loving someone outside the family that's a choice!

Answer 2

I think so. I know all the songs on the radio don't say so, but I think so.

Infatuation isn't a choice: it's when you "can't help" feeling weird and mushy around your honeybear.

Lust isn't a choice: it's just good old BF Skinnerian stimulus and response.

Love is what happens after infatuation evaporates under the heat of reality and lust cools off. It's a deliberate choice you make every day to LOVE that person/persons.

Since there is not just one person in the world who you could have a good, healthy, love relationship with, the choice becomes to stay with this person instead of looking around for an "upgrade." The choice is to make a promise, like "I will love you always" then sticking to that.

If it's a healthy, mature love, then it's a decision, not a fluffy feeling.

Answer 3

No. Just look through history and see how many people made choices, apparently, that left them in a mess. Not for nothing do we love unhappy love affairs, look at literature and the Arts, soap operas etc. If you find love and its good, hold on to it whatever. If you don't you will become another statistic. It can work out but chance is there every time to bite you on the bum.

Answer 4

Yes. Love is a choice. Whatever one percieves love to be, we make a choice to be what we need to be in order to do what we do to attain the state of being we call love. It is always a choice even if we are unaware of the choice we have made.

Answer 5

Great question. You would need to define love before you determine whether it is under our volitional control. Even more important, we should look at what a choice actually is.

Take one action that we may take that is a choice: whether we can raise our right hand now or decide not to. That is a specific action requiring you to change the state of the muscles in your arm from one position to another. There is a large class of choices that depend on us to perform some kind of action. Another class of choice might be in the realm of selecting things off a menu, where there is no real action, but an expression of a preference.

I think "love" would be more like a preference. The problem here is that our preferences... the things we desire... may be outside of our control. If you like vanilla ice cream and dislike strawberry ice cream, is that in your control to simply change your preference? Can you simply by will alone say, "I like strawberry ice cream," even though you don't? Sure, you could say that, but that wouldn't ACTUALLY change your preference for vanilla.

I think the same thing occurs when humans "love". I think that there are many factors that affect who we will be attracted to and ultimately who we will get along with. So in that sense, we cannot choose who gives us an initial attraction or who triggers involuntary responses such as animal lust or admiration for someone.

The only things we CAN choose in this realm would be associated with our actions. For instance, if I had an intense attraction to someone, or I even loved someone from afar, and I knew that my chances for a relationship were slim to none... I could CHOOSE not to pursue my attraction or "love", cut off contact, and try to avoid the person. Thus, you could minimize the triggers causing the involuntary reactions happening inside your brain due to exposure to such a person.

Thus, I would argue that you cannot control the involuntary reactions that you have that would attract you to someone, but you CAN control your exposure to such a person to minimize those reactions or eliminate them altogether.

I think this sort of philosophy is very powerful for putting yourself "outside the game". If attraction is something outside your control, how could you ever be angry at someone for not loving or being attracted to you? It's an involuntary response! On the other hand, if you can learn what triggers would make someone attracted to you, you can focus on that and possibly become more successful. In addition, if someone is attracted to you and you do not reciprocate the feelings, this philosophy can help for you to have compassion for the situation and help someone to "let you go".

You can't make someone love you, but you can help the process.

In sum, NO, love is not a choice.

Answer 6

NO, I used to think everything was a choice but falling in love with someone is not always our own choice, it is our soul's reaction when it meets its mate.

Answer 7

Not Exactly. You have a choice to be with someone but you have to be able to tell the difference between sisterly/brotherly/friendly love in order to know if you have a choice. It is hard to tell the difference but we all have to learn to tell the difference or we will end up marrying the wrong guy/girl.

Answer 8

Love is an emotion. Like any other feeling it comes and goes. What Western society defines as love is a path to a suffering that is unparalleled.

The desire to be loved (as defined in our culture) is one of the most destructive and most wrenching of experiences that any of us will encounter.

If you are unloved enjoy it. it is always a choice.

Answer 9

Not directly, no. Love occurs spontaneously when two people communicate emotionally. We can see it developing and artificially take ourselves out of that situation, but that is a secondary action. We cannot choose either TO love or NOT to love any given person. We either will or we won't, unless we physically block the process.

That said, we can choose to extend our love to someone else, say as a therapist. If it doesn't sooner or later find a return signal, then it will fail, but we can arbitrarily choose to extend the overture to someone.

Answer 10

That depends.... I know of a few people that decide to be with someone just not to be alone.. so thats a choice...