#nre

True Love vs. Infatuation: Is It Meant to Last?

Have you ever wondered if the butterflies in your stomach are true love or just a passing feeling? Love is a powerful emotion, but it's important to understand the difference between genuine connection and fleeting infatuation. This article explores the hallmarks of healthy love and how to distinguish it from a temporary spark.

Love: More Than Just a Feeling

Love is more than just feeling good and saying "I love you." It's a deep commitment built on trust and respect for your partner. Healthy love involves mutual support and a desire to see each other grow. Imagine a team working together towards a common goal – that's the essence of true love in a relationship.

Beyond Butterflies: Unconditional Love vs. Infatuation

Infatuation often feels intense and exciting, filled with those fluttering butterflies. But it's often based on surface-level attraction and can fade quickly. True love, on the other hand, is unconditional. It means accepting your partner for who they are, flaws and all, and being there for them through thick and thin.

The Pillars of Lasting Love

Healthy love thrives on a foundation of core values. Imagine these like pillars supporting a strong building:

Trust and Respect: These are essential for any healthy relationship. You should feel safe and secure with your partner, and you both value each other's opinions and boundaries.

Communication: Clear and open communication is key to understanding each other's needs and working through challenges.

Commitment: True love involves a willingness to be there for the long haul, through good times and bad.

Honesty and Integrity: Being honest with each other is essential for building trust and respect.

Intimacy (Emotional, not just physical): A deep emotional connection is what sets true love apart. You feel comfortable sharing your feelings and dreams with your partner.

Friendship: A strong foundation of friendship fosters trust and understanding in a relationship.

Compromise: No two people are alike. Healthy couples are willing to compromise and find solutions that work for both of them.

Humility and Empathy: Being able to see things from your partner's perspective and understand their feelings fosters a deeper connection.

True Love Weathers the Storm

While infatuation may thrive on excitement, true love deepens during challenges. Imagine a strong tree bending in a storm but not breaking – that's the resilience of a genuine connection. True love helps you weather life's difficulties and emerge stronger together.

Love Shouldn't Fill a Void

Healthy relationships don't rely on one person to fill the other's emotional needs. Each partner should feel complete and fulfilled within themselves while also enriching the other's life.

Communication: Key to Understanding and Growth

Open and honest communication is vital for any healthy relationship. Being able to express your needs and feelings, and actively listen to your partner, helps you overcome challenges and grow together.

Feeling Safe and Supported: A Sign of True Love

Ultimately, true love is about feeling safe, supported, and accepted by your partner. You should feel comfortable being yourself and know that you have someone who will always be there for you.

Oooh thank you for these! It was fun to ponder how NRE fits into my polyam these days. 2-2, love or hate NRE? How do you cope with it?

My affection and distrust of NRE cannot be summarised as love or hate. I love love. I love falling in love, and I'm also deeply suspcious of how going gooey eyed with NRE can absolutely upend my life and run me ragged if I let it. NRE is an opportunity to turn stupidly infatuated into connecting deeply.

NRE offered me a rollercoaster thrill ride when I first slept with my Lover eighteen months ago. The ways they touched me, soft and confident, I knew I was fucking IN for it. We'd both done the polyam-round-about several times before. I historically, can get swept up. My way of coping with NRE intensity is to enter the water gradually, with explicit negotiation, and consideration of how much energy I can devote without compromising other parts of my life.

We circled each other for those first couple of months, like predators weighing up if its worth risking its own hide to get pleasurably filled. We tested our footing before commiting our weight to unknown ground. We didn't even have sleepovers our first several hookups, it was an additional step we negotiated rather than an assumed thing we'd have. Within the first month or so I indicated I wanted a weekly date with them. After fourth months we said I love you, and were hanging out more than once a week. It also became essential to spend a minimum of six hours a week screwing each other silly to sufficently express how down bad we are. This trajectory was the quickest and most certain I've ever been of finding a person I want to keep in my life. I've learnt to manage NRE by ensuring I also keep tending to my long term connections in approximately equal measure to my new ones. I plan ahead dates and cute outings with all my partners. We check-in and actively talk about how the balances are feeling. Making room to hear someone else's insecurities while it's still fledging is much more managable than getting the overwhelmed by jealously download weeks later.

Another thing that softens the scary parts of NRE is integrating that person into your social life. Do polycule time sooner rather than later, sharing hang outs with your friends and find out what they're like in group settings. Getting to know the person in as wide a context as possible helps integrate what they're actually like, and gives me a better sense of how they'll be long term.

Also, use the intense motivation for closeness to find out how they respond when you're vulnerable. There's temptation to push hard convos aside when the NRE rose coloured glasses are in play. But there's no ruining the magic by being authentic about your needs. The magic is here to help you both turn towards each other and use the NRE to empower growth. It was hella motivating when the person I'm head over heels for told me with absolute certainty that they actively need to be celebrated by their partners for their slutty exploits with other people. It was a clarity of need that resonated in me and made me shift towards greater compersion in a way I'd struggled to access previously. NRE can gift you breakthroughs when you bring vulnerabilty.

5-3 where to for a polycule all expenses paid holiday?

1. Meeting a long-time crush this afternoon as he’s traveling and in my hood for today.

2. Meeting some eye candy at a munch next week (he’s as cute as a golden retriever puppy)

386: both of you.

PRIVATE - A Golden Rock within a Pebble; [APIS]; No Reluctant Epiphany.

<GRP> ......

<GRP> .........:}

<APIS> ...

<APIS> ...Uh.

<APIS> Hey, there, Goldy's best friend guy???

NRE: Hi!

NRE: im NRE, as you can see from the username