How to Know You’re in Love

Love may be wonderful, but it is also slippery to define and difficult to identify with any assurance. A man can feel like he’s fallen in love with a woman the moment he sees her, and then not want to spend any time with her just a single week later.

Men can feel very sure three months into a relationship that he’s with the woman of his dreams, only to realize six months into the relationship that the love wasn’t true. And likewise, men can date a woman casually for a year before realizing that the emotions he feels are deeper than he originally believed.

With all of these false signals, how is a man to know when he’s truly, deeply and meaningfully in love?

It’s natural to feel a rush of emotions when you first meet a woman you find yourself highly attracted to. It’s natural to feel extremely nervous right before your first date with one of these highly desirable women, and it’s even more natural to feel an incredible level of care and affection for a beautiful, charming woman the first time you sleep with her.

The contact high you will receive from this woman for the first few weeks or months will often be enough to convince you that you’ve found a significant relationship.

In fact, if you really like a woman, then just about everything you feel for her during your first weeks and months together will feel a whole lot like love. But that doesn’t mean it actually is love. Chances are, these great feelings will alternate with feelings of total doubt and of all-encompassing insecurity, both about yourself and your woman.

You will worry she will end up leaving you. You will worry she isn’t actually as great or as trustworthy as you imagine. You will worry that you don’t actually want to be in love or in a serious relationship right now. You will fear making the “wrong” decision and either losing out on something significant or attaching yourself to something you don’t really desire.

Caught in these conflicting currents of emotion, it’s impossible to determine whether you even really like this woman of yours, let alone whether you’re actually in love with her.

“You will find yourself in a

position to know you’re in love.”

It’s clear you have no way of determining whether you’re actually in love with a woman during your first couple of months together, so you shouldn’t try and answer the “love” question at all.

When you meet a promising new woman, don’t try to define anything. Don’t rush into a relationship. Don’t rush into spending every waking hour together. Take your time. Date her casually, and keep her at a bit of a distance.

Give yourself room to not only evaluate how you feel about her, but also to evaluate what sort of woman she appears to be, whether she’s the sort of woman you want to make an important part of your life or not, regardless of how you may or may not feel about her in the moment.

Staying away from a woman that makes you feel a wild swinging range of emotions won’t be easy. You will want to dive in. You will want to figure out what’s going on between you and her. You may often feel uncomfortable by your connection’s ambiguity.

But by giving you and your woman at least six months of getting to know each other, without any expectations, you will find yourself in a position to know, with certainty, whether you’re actually in love with her, or whether you’re simply infatuated with ups and downs of early romance.