how does it feel to fall in / be in love? asking as an almost-30yo who has neither ever fallen in love nor been intimate. i've asked that in another, non-English fandom community, and the answers aligned with what i have been reading in fanfiction. although intercourse descriptions in fics may not match real life, would you say that the feelings do? thank you.
Wow. What a question! How many writers, poets and artists from every culture and every corner of the globe have spent their lives trying to answer that question? It feels presumptuous of me to even try, but since you asked, here goes…
The first thing I would say is that everyone’s experience of falling in love and being in love is different, and every time you fall in love is unique.
The second thing I would say is that falling in love feels VERY different from being in love. Falling in love is devastating and contradictory, it’s joyful and agonising, exhilarating and terrifying. It amplifies every feeling and tosses you in a storm of emotion that you have no control over. Every high is a zenith, every low a nadir.
It might sound a bit clichéd to liken it to the proverbial “rollercoaster of emotions” but that’s not a bad description of the physical sensations of falling in love. The excitement, fear and anticipation, the vertiginous highs, the swooping sensations, the plummeting lows. The dizziness and disorientation, the racing heartbeat, even the queasy sickness.
Being in love is different. If you’re lucky, and your love is reciprocated, these sensations will mature and mellow into something nurturing and sustaining. If you’re unlucky, and your love is unrequited, it becomes a torturous agony, a destructive sickness, that drains all joy and colour from the world.
Intimacy is different again. I don’t think you have to be in love to enjoy sexual arousal and physical intimacy but for many people those sensations are heightened if you are. There is something truly magical in the warm touch of your beloved’s skin. (If you're that way inclined.)
You asked whether the feeling of love is comparable to the way it’s written in fic, and obviously it depends. I do think there is a bit of a tendency for fic to focus on the romantic aspects of love, to romanticise romance. Perhaps it’s a reflection of my age (ancient lol) but I’ve often said that I find romance to be one of the least interesting aspects of love. It’s all the other stuff that I find really captivating; trust, devotion, sacrifice, compromise, understanding, forgiveness, acceptance. Sometimes love isn't grand gestures and declarations, sometimes love is just saying thank you. This is what makes love really work. And you can find this in fic, particularly in fandoms with more mature authors, older characters and established relationships.
I read somewhere once that shippers and fic writers are “in love with being in love” and I definitely think there’s something in that. So much of what we write is an attempt to capture the feelings, emotions and physical sensations of experiencing love in all its myriad forms. Your question got me thinking about all the fics I’ve written about Erwin and Levi falling in love and being in love, the 100+ fics I’ve written that have tried to capture the breadth and depth of their relationship. I know you didn’t ask, but I think if I was to pick out one fic that spans the full extent of love it would be Triskaideka.
Thank you for the interesting ask Anon, and I hope that answers your question in some small way.
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