Love is a Choice

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We’re taught to think of love as something that happens to us, like a lightning bolt out of nowhere. Movies and songs frame love as this overwhelming emotion that sweeps you off your feet and takes over your life. But that version of love, while intoxicating, is incomplete.

Love isn’t just a feeling. It’s a choice.

Anyone who’s been in a long-term relationship—romantic, familial, or platonic—knows that emotions are fickle. Some days, you feel deeply connected. Other days, you don’t feel much at all. Life gets in the way. People change. Routines dull the spark. Stress takes a toll.

If love were only an emotion, it wouldn’t survive these cycles. But if love is a choice, then it can endure. Because choice isn’t reactive. It’s active. You decide to keep showing up, to keep caring, to keep investing.

When you choose love, you take ownership. You’re not just along for the ride. You’re steering. That means:

You don’t walk away when it’s hard.

You apologize when you screw up.

You listen when you’d rather be right.

You support when you’re tired.

You stay when it would be easier to leave.

It’s not always romantic. It’s rarely easy. But it’s real.

“Falling in love” is passive. It implies we had no say in the matter. That sounds nice until things fall apart, and then suddenly, we’re powerless again. But love, when it’s a choice, gives us power. Not control over the other person, but control over how we love.

You don’t “fall” into long-term love. You build it. Brick by brick. Day by day. Choice by choice.

Like a craft or a discipline, love improves with practice. You can get better at being patient, at setting boundaries, at giving grace, at showing up. None of those are feelings. They’re skills. Feelings can inspire love. They can deepen it. But they can’t sustain it alone.

Love that’s only emotional burns hot and fast. But love that’s chosen—again and again, on the good days and the bad ones—is firewood. It keeps you warm for a lifetime.

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Published by Kafkaphony

A (now) sometimes funny and hopefully thought-provoking misanthropic, anarcho-communist/libertarian socialist, anti-natalist, Marx/Chomsky/Lenin/Kropotkin and Camus loving blogger who talks about humor, mental illness, socialism, communism, and omnicide that sometimes leans toward the absurd.

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12 thoughts on “Love is a Choice”

  1. You know how they say that Eskimos have many names for snow and we only have a few, I’ve thought it strange that we have such a short word for love and not much else.

    I agree with your thesis here, the love people talk about is a lot like petrol, you fill your car, you do some circle work, cruise, race, then you drive home and slowly it peters out. Sometimes rapidly, I’m not an expert though, but I do understand that often it’s not love it’s lust, infatuation, need or worst of all habit. To maintain that you need to choose to bridge the gaps.

    It’s easy to love when there is openness and communication, but like you say it’s also practice, as people become better people they become better at love. You know how you said “sometimes you feel nothing at all”, most honest people I know have said that but you say that to a lover and often they take it personally, if they admit that too – at least you know they are honest.

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  3. you’ve spoken my heart. ❤️Lovely post.

    sigh, so many more words I keep typing that WordPress keeps choosing to delete. 🤨 I’m sorry, but I’ll attempt to leave at least this, choosing to love and including choosing the other person to love and live as who they are with no expectations of entitlement to any part of them but what they want to give is what I see would be a turning point in what we are currently calling love.

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    1. Yes. This is such an important point. Love without entitlement is a game-changer. So much of what we call “love” is actually control, expectation, or projection. Choosing someone as they are, without demanding they bend to our wants, is rare—and powerful. It shifts love from ownership to presence.

      And it asks something of us, too: to let go of the fantasy that love guarantees access, certainty, or permanence. That can be scary, but it also makes the love we do receive feel more sacred—because it’s freely given, not coerced or owed.

      I think you’re right: if more people practiced this kind of love, it would totally redefine what we think love is.

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      1. Poetic, M. I think there is Need Love and Caring Love. Need Love is selfish and destructive. And self-destructive. Though pretty normal. Caring Love, real love, generous, considerate, forgiving, supportive, space-respecting, a love where two hands clasp, both gently and firmly.

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  5. As a young person, I was told at some point that the head-over-heels feeling is infatuation, and real love is something you do. That sounded awful and cold to me at the time. To me it was basically saying love doesn’t exist. And it’s kind of true; what I imagined love to be like at that time was really incorrect. That caused me a lot of grief in early relationships, and I had to go through a phase of disillusionment.

    I think we need to change how we talk about love and infatuation. We shouldn’t be so dismissive of infatuation, but neither should we conflate it with deep, long-term love. The emotions of longing and excitement and so on when we have a crush are real, and we should honor that as a true and nearly universal human experience, and also love is something different.

    In my opinion, romance narratives are a big part of the problem. They give young people unrealistic ideas of what love is and how it works.

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    1. I really appreciate this perspective—especially the idea that disillusionment is part of growing into a fuller understanding of love. That resonates a lot. I agree we shouldn’t dismiss infatuation; it’s real, powerful, and often beautiful. The problem is when it’s sold as the definition of love rather than one part of the experience.

      You’re absolutely right that romance narratives mess with our expectations. They often end at the “falling” part, with a kiss or a wedding, but skip the hard, daily work that comes after. And then when reality doesn’t match the fantasy, it feels like something’s broken—when really, it’s just… normal.

      I think if we could honor both—the spark and the discipline—we’d be better equipped to love well. Not just intensely, but sustainably.

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  7. We need to watch out for our subconscious though. It gifts us dreams of romantic perfection and certainty. The dancing animus and/or anima tantalising us, leaving us in no doubt that we are incomplete without this yearned for other. Its a lie. Yet its so easy to believe it because that’s what the more knowledgeable and talented consciousness tells our woken consciousness.

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