How Do You Know You Really Love Someone?
Humans are incredibly emotional animals. When we start developing a crush on another person, it’s really easy to get in way over our heads and start interpreting the intense feelings we are experiencing as true love. “They’re the one,” we think to ourselves.
We start to feel all sorts of powerful desires. We start to miss them after only a short time of being away; we get anxious when they don’t respond to a text message right away, and even worse when it drags on the whole day; we interpret every action they take in terms of how much they like us back…and so it goes on.
Acting on this quickly attained information, we are prone to making lapses in judgment and maybe behave in ways we later come to regret. In today’s blog, we want to share some insight into the real signs that what you are feeling is a more genuine sense of love, and not just a passing infatuation.
Ways to Know That It’s Real Love
There are several classic signs that indicate strongly that what you are feeling right now is more than just a super-crush or pure sexual attraction. The ones we will cover in today’s blog include the following:
1. You Care About How They Feel, Not Just What They Think
It’s natural to always have on your mind what your new interest thinks of what you say and do. You will undoubtedly value their opinion, and receiving positive affirmation and feedback on just about anything from them can feel truly electrifying. It could be something absolutely mundane like they compliment you on your toast in the morning, to something more meaningful like when they say they like your smile.
The difference between infatuation and love, however, is that when you are infatuated you in fact only care more about their opinions on relatively trivial things. You actually think very little on how they genuinely feel about things. If it’s their superficial opinion, and not their deeper feelings that you really care about, then it might not be love.
2. Everything in the Relationship Feels Easy
A real-love connection is one in which you feel no obstacle in your communication, no obstruction in your understanding of the other person. In movie parlance, you might say “they get me.” When your new love interest makes every little moment feel relaxed and simple, when they seem to understand what you’re saying even before you’ve finished saying it, and when you feel they can always read between the lines, there’s a good chance that what you have there is real love.
There’s a more physical dimension to this, as well. When it’s love, you never feel like you are putting in all the effort and strain to make things work. For instance, you aren’t the one who has to plan activities, make arrangements, choose restaurants for dinner and even order the food there. Your new partner will also be invested in making life easier for you, creating that sense of partnership, of doing things as a team. That’s real love.
3. The Butterflies, the Butterflies
Getting butterflies in your stomach is one of the hardest signs to read accurately because it’s a feature of both infatuation and real love. The “love butterflies” are the ones that seem to endure much longer than those of an infatuation, which will tend to diminish, possibly devolving into pure sexual or lustful excitement for someone you are excited to sleep with on occasion. That’s not love, though.
You’ll know it’s love when you just feel that sense of nervousness before seeing them, a sense that melts into “warm and fuzzy” feelings when you actually connect with them. The nervousness of the early days evolves into more of a sense of lasting excitement because you just want to see them, talk to them, hug them or kiss them and feel that same affection in return. These are the “love butterflies.”
4. Your New Interest is Constantly on Your Mind
Never being able to truly shed the image of your new partner from your mind is another classic sign that you are falling for someone in a very genuine way. Once again, this is a feeling that transcends pure lust. It’s also not referring to you actively thinking about that person 24/7. It’s more the case that no matter what you’re doing, who you’re with or what you’re seeing around you, you suddenly find ways to connect that person to it.
You might be always thinking, “oh, he’d love this,” or “I wish she was here with me seeing this right now.” Whenever you think to share new information, this person will be the first person you think of, and you will often regard media content, funny situations in life and other things always in the context of how you want to share it with that special someone.
5. You Can’t Wait to Introduce Them to Family and Friends
You’ve likely heard of the common idea of a love so strong and real that you want “to shout it from the rooftops.” This refers to that feeling you get when you just want to share your joy with everyone around you. It doesn’t always happen in romantic relationships, but it’s certainly a prominent feature of the minds of two people in love.
If you are in a relatively new relationship and you’re wondering if what you’re feeling is love or just a passing fancy, then ask yourself this key question: “Would I like this person to meet my friends and family?” If the answer is no, then somewhere subconsciously you know that this connection isn’t built to last, and that’s why you don’t want to invest in it too much by connecting this person with your social circle.
If the answer is yes, then on a deeper level you also know that this is someone you want to invest in emotionally. Integrating that person into your circle of friends and family is a clear sign that you want that person to be around for a long time.
6. You’re a Happier Person in General
When you’re in love, you will generally feel happier and a lot more positive about things in general. Have you noticed that you have a lot more patience than you did before? Have you felt a lot less nervous or agitated by things? Do things that you used to get on your nerves before annoy you less now? When was the last time you were critical about something? Are you laughing and smiling more?
A bit of happiness is a powerful thing. It can lead to more positive behaviours and outcomes in life, which we will talk more about in the next section. If you have generally noticed a spring in your step, a tune in your heart, and a greater sense of positivity and optimism for the future, then you might just be in love.
7. You’re a Better Person in General
As we mentioned above, happiness is a powerful thing. Since love breeds happiness, it should also be noted that happiness breeds better behaviour in life. If you are finding that previously held feeling of self-loathing, regret and shame about things in your life disappearing, then love might be the cause of that.
Being alone for a long time can lead to some negative habits developing. We might stop exercising, for example, resulting in weight gain or bad skin. We might let our personal hygiene slip, or start becoming lazy and ordering in unhealthy junk food and fast food instead of taking care of ourselves properly. Unhappiness and depression will do that to you. It is a path to the darker side of life.
When you’re with someone new, those feelings can start to disappear. If you find yourself trying to better yourself and living in a better way, then true love is very often the power behind it.
8. You Start to Picture the Longer Term
Finally, a good way to know whether what you’re feeling is real love or just an infatuation is to reflect on the long term. Do you find yourself picturing a future with this person? It might not be a wedding that’s immediately popped into your head, but it could be taking trips together, plans for a future holiday or even just summer next year. If you can picture months or years into the future with someone and get excited about that, then love might just be in your heart.
Look for the Love, Skip Past the Infatuation
You can’t just will something to be true love, unfortunately, no matter how hard you try. True love is a force of nature that is both the most powerful sense of ecstasy but also a tremendous potential source of pain if you get it wrong or try to make it do things that it shouldn’t.
Sometimes what you sense with an exciting new person is just an infatuation. It bears some of the same signs of love but is much shorter lived. If it is regarded and handled like love it can have disastrous results for both parties involved. Reflect on the signs above and always ask yourself if that feeling is love. It’s better to be patient and figure out if it is love than to hastily assume and regret that decision later on.
Ready to Find Love?
If you’re not already in love it might be because you haven’t found that special someone just yet. There are plenty of ways to search for your soulmate but if you need help you might want to have a look at our article about how to get a girlfriend or, if you’re ready to begin searching, have a look at our comparison of the best UK dating sites.
