When we think of love — true love, romantic love, passionate love — we tend to think of two people who mean everything to each other, ultimately blocking out the possibility of anyone else entering into the picture.
And if a single person claims to be “in love” with two different people they aren’t currently dating, it’s easy to write that off as just two separate crushes of similar intensity. For many people, the notion of being in love precludes it from being applied to two people at once — to them, love is necessarily a feeling you can only feel for one person at any given time.
But is that accurate? Is it possible to be in love with two people at once, to feel intensely, madly, passionately about more than one person?
It is certainly possible to love several people at once, think of family members, children, dear friends; you hold all of them in your heart at once.
Meanwhile, it’s also possible to be attracted to multiple people at once. But it’s important not to confuse the two, even though they can certainly overlap.
Love is different from chemistry. Chemistry is a short-term chemical reaction inside your body that actually creates an intensely felt drug that makes you lose sight of clarity of thought, and can trick you into thinking you’re in deep love when really, you’re in superficial lust.
Love is not the same as sexual excitement. It develops over time, and will probably wind up being only one person.
Taking the difference between “being in love” or “having a crush on” into account, being in love with two people simultaneously is certainly not the most common thing. It requires a depth of feeling and investment in romantic relationships that can be difficult for most people to maintain for more than one person at a time.
That being said, according to NYC-based dating coach Connell Barrett, it’s far from impossible.
“You can absolutely fall in love with two people at the same time,” he says. “Walt Whitman was right — you contain multitudes. Someone might bring out your confident, sexy side and you’ll love them for it. A second person might make you feel safe, loved, and deeply connected, and you’ll also fall for that person. Suddenly, your brain is cranking out dopamine for both of them because they make you feel special and loved in different ways.”
However, the accidental-seeming aspect of the phrase “fall in love” when it comes to the two-person scenario is still something to call into question.
“You can be in love with one person because of who you see and honor in them, and simultaneously be in love with someone else for their very different yet equally resonant being,” notes House. “That being said, love is a choice. You don’t ‘fall’ in love. Instead, you choose to open your heart and see the beauty, feel the vulnerability, allow your guard to drop and your heart to open, and give yourself permission to feel and be in a state of love. Therefore, if you are in love with one person, it is up to you to choose to turn your red light on and turn yourself off to the possibility of being open to letting someone else in.”
What Does Being in Love with Two People Say About You?
Feeling like you’re in love with two different people at the same time can be nerve-wracking. For starters, our society tends to instill in people that it’s not even possible, let alone a desirable state to be in. Add in the fact that it often takes the form of some form of cheating, along with the possibility that if either person knew about the other, the whole thing would come crashing down, and you’re likely left with a pretty stressed-out person.
“If you’re in love with two people at once, forgive yourself,” says Barrett. “It simply means you’re human — that two people are both meeting desires you have for connection, love, and companionship. Yes, it’s complicated, but there’s no cause for shame.”
Instead of seeing your feelings as a manifestation of something bad within yourself, it might be more useful to see them as a sign that something in your current relationship isn’t satisfying you. Then, you can interrogate the relationship on that basis, rather than making it about the other person specifically.
For instance, if you feel like you’re in love with two people, it might be a sign that you don’t do intimacy well, you don’t know how to negotiate the deeper parts of a relationship, so instead, you get distracted by someone else. It’s really a way to avoid intimacy and bonding.
Basically, if you have enough free time and emotional openness that you start falling for someone else, it implies that you’re not fully invested in the person you’re currently with.
Rather than being in love with two different people, really, you’re likely not actually in love with either. You might feel love for your original partner and you might be in lust with the new person, but neither of those meets the criteria for being in love.