If you have been spending time with someone and starting to want to take it to the next level, you may start having doubts. How do you know you love someone? You feel like you need to be sure before you take any drastic measures.
Divorce rates are high, and maybe you have seen some horrible relationships in your time. This article will help to reassure what love is and, more importantly, what love is not. A lot of people think they have love, but what they more have is an infatuation. Infatuations don't create loving marriages that last a lifetime.
Real love is less glamorous. It's less about the show and more about the work. Less about the feel and much more about the daily choice.
The giving of love is an education in itself. - Eleanor Roosevelt
What You Will Learn
How Do You Know You Love Someone?
Love is hard to put a finger on because there are so many feelings and emotions that can come with it. Love often starts as strong feelings in a romantic relationship.
What makes it's tricky is that feelings are very fleeting. What happens when that feeling goes away? Does that mean that love is gone? That would most likely mean we would have a divorce rate of 100%.
Love is a choice to adopt a specific set of emotional and behavioral standards that make another person feel warmth, protection, respected and cared for in every way.
The other problem with the feeling of love can be something that you try to compare to other people's feelings. You will hear people say that they never felt this strongly before or that a relationship does not feel as strong as the last one.
Love is when someone has made enough of an impression that you are willing to choose to keep loving them. Each day you wake up, you decide that it will be another day that you love them. Even if they made you mad, or let you down.
In the Bible 1 Corinthians 13: 4-7 States it like this:
4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;[6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
The above text is one of the most read scriptures at weddings. The scripture does not talk about feeling at all. Instead, it focuses on character traits and choices.
Lust and Infatuation
One of the problems with believing that love is a feeling is that your logic would tell you that the stronger that feeling is, the more you're in love. If you are obsessed with someone and thinking about them all the time and willing to do anything to make them happy, suddenly it must mean that you're crazy in love, right? Wrong!
You have to understand what lust and infatuation is all about as well.
Lust Woes
Lust is the easiest to fall into. Its merely having a strong sexual desire for someone. You don't even have to know one thing about a person to lust for them. When people watch porn, they are lusting. You can see a cute person walk by you and begin to lust for them immediately.
When people have quick hookups where they don't know each other, mutual lust is often the cause. Lust is very physical, and it can also wear off quickly. The only way for lust to become more is if an attraction grows and becomes based on more than the physical.
Infatuation Woes
Infatuation on the other is all about the physical, but there does not need to be a psychical component. When someone is infatuated, they are obsessive, and their emotional connection is so strong that they can't think about much other than that person.
Love can stem from infatuation, lust, intellectual attract, and many other things. The difference is that its mutual. The other difference with love is that it's not about fulfilling your desires. Love is not a selfish thing. When you love someone, their needs become more important than your own.
The Fake Stuff
There are things that people can associate with love, but they don't lead to the love you really want. There is a difference between a temporary love or a fling that gets old and built to stand the test of time.
The things listed below are not bad. If you experience them, it can just mean you're in the early stages of love, but it's foolish to expect these things to last forever to stay in love.
That High Feeling
When you get that high feeling, its why people feel like they are walking on the clouds when they are in love, you are getting hits from different hormones that make you feel like nothing else in life matters as much as what you think for this person.
The problem with this feeling is no one can stay there forever. That is why after marriage, they say you're in the "Honey Moon Stage." This means that you're still riding high, but there comes a day when the clouds clear up, and there is nothing to walk on anymore.
Can't Stop Thinking About Them
When you can't stop thinking about someone you're infatuated with them. Infatuation can be a great thing because it gives you the motivation and emotional connection to want to get to know them better. You can't get to the next stage without knowing them better.
The issue with this is that you will not always be this interested. You can be in a relationship and be in love, and if you follow this feeling, it may not be long before you're infatuated with someone else. Use this feeling to move forward but never lean on it long-term.
You Want the Best for Them
Wanting the best for others should be a given. It would not be well advised to get in a relationship with someone you want the worst for. You can care about a lot of people and want the best for them. If you confuse this with love, you will think you love a lot of people.
You'll Try Different Things for Them
Sometimes when you want to impress someone really bad, it can make you get way outside of your comfort zone. You begin doing things that you would not normally do. You feel a sense of rush, and you also may be building confidence because they like you more. You start to think that if someone can make you act this different, it must be love.
The problem is that there will come a time when you don't feel the need to impress someone anymore. That does not last forever. Eventually, you they know you, and you know them, and there is no more surprises or reason to impress. The real you comes out, and they show you who they are.
You Think They Are So Attractive
Though there is nothing wrong with being physically attracted to the person you love, there needs to be more depth than just that. A physical attraction can kick start everything, though. It can be the drive to want to know more and lead you down the path to love.
Even after being love, physical attraction can help to remind you of why you're in love.
Physical attractions can fade over time. People change, their bodies change, people get ill. Outside of old age, there are so many reasons that attractiveness can fade. When they do, what will you be left with? If there is no more, then you will have a broken relationship.
Real Stuff
To have a real love that will last, you need to build it on things that you can count on. The list below can be counted on to be true time and time again. It's less about things outside of your control and more about things you can take action on.
Love is a Choice
If you have not figured this out yet, the most important thing is that love is something you choose to do. Its an action word. Anyone can say they are in love, but actions will always tell the real story.
You have the power to get up on any day and decide you love someone. You can love someone who hates you, and you can love someone who adores you. It's a choice that you make that is dressed in the actions that you take. The following points are the actions.
Love is Peace and Harmony
Love is always headed in the direction of peace and harmony. Anytime you have strife, hate, or any form of drama, you are not dealing with love. You can't control what anyone else does, but you can choose to forgive and get back to love. You can choose that you want harmony or getting your way.
The action comes from realizing that anytime you're moving away from peace and harmony, love is not there like it should be. It's an opportunity to choose to love again.
Love Has the Correct Foundation
Love needs a foundation that is much bigger than the relationship. From a Christian perspective, Jesus is the perfect example of love. Jesus gave his life for the sins of the world when he lived a perfect life and did not deserve to die.
By doing so, he sacrificed his life and comfort to make the people he loves to be in a relationship with God. He showed that true love is sacrificial, and the entire Bible provides a foundation for love. When there are disagreements, there is a foundation one can turn to for answers.
Love is Positive
Don't confuse the word positive with easy. There is nothing easy about finding the answer to How Do You Know You Love Someone?
Similar to how love is moving toward peace and harmony, it should also move towards positive. People can do some real negative things and say that its love. People will abuse others, cheat, lie, and steal and claim that its love. Those things are all negative, though.
Life is hard and can be filled with negative events. Love ensures that your relationship continues to move towards positive. This is why a couple can have their whole life fall apart but still keep their love strong.
Love is Not Selfish
One of the biggest choices you have to make when you're in love is not being selfish. True love is when you can put another person's needs above your own needs when you are willing to give up life itself to make sure that another person can thrive.
It's easy to not be selfish when the relationship is good, and you're walking on cloud nine, but can you do it when things are not going well? That is when you need to lean into the choice of love even more.
5 Habits of Lasting Love
1. You Talk It Out Quickly
One of the best relationship habits that you can have is wanting to resolve conflict as quickly as possible. No hiding from it or acting like it did not happen in hopes that time makes it disappear.
People with strong relationship habits, sit down, and have tough conversations with each other, and the goal is never to be right. The goal is not to beat the other person up to say that you won.
The purpose of the conversation is reconciliation, peace, and harmony. You're always focusing on moving things in a positive direction.
2. You Respect Each Other
Respect shows up in two different ways. The first is respect for who they are. When you respect who someone is in a romantic relationship, you love them for who they are, not who they can be. One of the most important aspects of finding the answer to How Do You Know You Love Someone? Is respecting your partner.
Loving someone's potential is a form of disrespect because there are no guarantees in life that they will get there. You end up enjoying a false version and spend all your time hoping that they become that.
The second form of respect is having respect for where they are going. If you're reading this, it means you want to be better or improve in some way. How can you do that if the love of your life refuses to allow you to change?
Respect in a relationship means you love them for who they are, but you also love them for where they are trying to go.
3. You Love Them How They Need To Be Loved
Love Languages is one book that every couple should read together. The book breaks down 5 different love languages and how we all have a primary one.
The problem is we try to love others with our language. Here are the five:
- Physical Touch
- Words of Affirmation
- Quality Time
- Gifts
- Service
Healthy relationships consist of people who do everything in their power to give their partner what they need.
Being in love means you make a habit of thinking of them first. A large part of that is figuring out their love language.
4. You Get Back to The Foundation
As a couple you have to have a rock. Something that you build your relationship on. Its the thing that keeps you grounded and you are in the habit of going back to this on a regular basis.
For my Wife and I that rock is our faith in Jesus. We read the bible together, go to church, listen to podcast and reaad books to help us learn more about how God wants us to live out marriage.
You may not be a christian but you need some common ground with the person you love or there will be nothing to keep you both grounded.
5. You Keep Choosing Each Other
I started this talking about how love is a choice, and I will end this the same way. One of the best love habits you can have is choosing to love your partner daily.
The same way that there are days where you don't want to workout, or go to work, there will be days where you don't want to love. People who become great at anything do it even when they don't want to.
No matter what comes up in life, love can plow through it when two people choose to love each other every day. If you can do this easily you should have your answer to "How Do You Know You Love Someone?"
How Do You Know You Love Someone?
You know you love someone when choosing to enjoy them every day for the rest of your life is exciting. Even though you know it will be hard to do, it will be worth it for them.
You know you love someone when the feelings of love disappear, and you can get up and still keep sacrificing and pursing them with all of your heart.
