Tell-tale Signs that It’s Love, Love, Love

You’ve got butterflies, good conversation, maybe even great sex, but sometimes it can be difficult to be sure if it’s love. How do you decipher whether the feeling in the pit of your stomach is the nervous quivering of anticipation or yesterday's lunch? Luckily, Lovingyou.com knows that “fools in love” are easy to spot. Here are some tell-tale signs that it just be might be love, love, love.

You are best friends. You laugh with them more than anyone else. The feelings of anticipation, passion, and connection are mutual. You remember little things about each other like their favorite foods, the places they want to visit and why, their views on everything from politics to fashion, and what they love about their closest buddies, but is it enough? Take a look at these signs to be sure.

What he’ll do:

• Put you on his “A” list (pay attention -- You'll know if you're not on it)
  
• Introduce you to his family
  
• Make plans for the future (near and far)
  
• Do things outside of his “box” with you
  
• Share his secrets and his dreams for the future with you
  
• Worry about impressing your friends
  
• Come right over when you ask him to
  
• Try to do things that comfort you or relieve some of your stress (like surprise you with dinner on a night you are working, rub your feet, or ask about your day)
  
• Appreciate and reciprocate your feelings and your actions like giving you a massage after he gets one from you, doing the dishes after dinner, or sending you a gift

What she’ll do:

• Share her embarrassing moments and fantasies with you
  
• Little things all throughout the day that let you know she’s thinking about you
  
• Fantasize about her life with you, getting married, having kids, growing old, traveling the world, etc.
  
• Tease you
  
• Hang out with your mother or talk to her on the phone
  
• Appreciate and reciprocate your feelings and your actions, like offering to pay for dinner, getting tickets to a game or event she knows you’ll love, or cooking for you
  
• Ask questions about your life -- past, present, and future
  
• Flirt with you

How you’ll feel:

• Excited, yet relaxed
  
• Vulnerable, yet strong
  
• Comfortable enough to be yourself in front of them
  
• Like you want to include them in everything (but you won't desert your usual crowd to be in a relationship with them)
  
• You’ll miss them when they’re not around
  
• You can’t wait to see them, talk to them, play with them, and kiss them
  
• You’ll find yourself wanting to make plans to have them all to yourself
  
• You’ll have urges to do romantic things (maybe on the verge of stalker-like things) that you never thought you’d never do

Signs that it’s not love:

• They blow you off or cancel dates
  
• Talking about commitment makes either of you uneasy or nervous
  
• Either of you are seeing other people
  
• Things are moving too quickly for one of you
  
• You find your partner lacking when compared to other people
  
• You watch a love scene in a movie or hear a love song and you feel a strong longing or desire for what you don’t have

Is This Love? A Closer Look
How do you know when you've found your soulmate?

One of the most common questions we get asked at Lovingyou.com is "How do you know if it is really love?" Well, as you can imagine, this also happens to be one of the most difficult questions to answer! Love is such a strange, wonderful thing that nobody really has codified what it is yet. And to further complicate matters, there are so many different kinds of love: the love you feel for a friend, a family member, a sport or even a pet. This is such a crazy emotion that there is absolutely no way that I can definitively answer how you know it is love… but I am going to give it a try!

Now, in order to find out if you love someone, the basic place to start would be to ask yourself, do you want to be with them? If the answer to that question is no, then it really can't be love. When you love someone, you want to be with them. Not just be with them, but share everything with them. You have a great day at work and want to rush home and tell them every wonderful thing that has happened. You feel excited at the prospect of just being in their company, just being close to them isn't enough, you want to be a part of them, a part of their life forever. You can't stand the thought of being away from them yet, when you are, you still feel that ever-present bond that ties you together wherever you go. You can almost feel what they are feeling. You feel like, with a little bit of effort, you can see what they are seeing and think what they are thinking. It is almost as if you both can occupy each other's bodies with complete trust and harmony. That to me is love.

Now, on the other side of the spectrum, there are a host of emotions that people confuse with love. One of the most common is lust. There is a difference between wanting to sleep with someone and wanting to spend the rest of your life with someone.

Being overly dependent on the other person is also not a part of love. Some people fall into the trap of thinking they love someone just because they are afraid to be alone. They have become dependent on the other person for so much that they don't know how to make it on their own, or they would much rather be with someone than no-one.

This leads to the old cliché, in order to love someone else, you must first learn to love yourself. Well, we've all heard that before, but what does it really mean? It means that you have to be confident in your own ability and your own judgement. You really have to like yourself and know what you have to offer another person. There is no way that you can love another person if you are so stuck in your own hang-ups that you bow down and propitiate to the other person. That is, you do anything they ask and agree with everything they say out of fear that they will love you less because you don't do those things.

Basically, the question of whether or not you are in love with someone is pretty cut and dry: you either are or you aren't… and deep down, you know the answer. You just have to trust yourself to recognize it.