Love is one of the most amazing emotions that a human can experience. Love can also be complicated, partially because nobody can truly describe the emotion of love. Many poets, writers and people of all types have tried, but love is something that is indescribable.
Although I would struggle to find a brilliant description of love, I can help with providing signs that you may be in love. But first, let’s discuss signs that you might not be in love. And before I do, remember that’s not a bad thing if you realize you aren’t in love.
Love is a bit like baking. You need the right ingredients and give something the right amount of time and care before you create something great.
Even if you realize you aren’t yet in love or aren’t sure, give yourself time. There’s no rule book saying you must be in love in a certain amount of time.
Some people fall in love quickly. Others can be friends for years before developing the emotion of love. Sometimes love can hit you suddenly, with no explanation of why. Even if your feelings aren’t there yet, that doesn’t mean you won’t love this person one day.
On the other hand, life is short. It’s important to be honest with yourself and the other person if you don’t feel you love this person. You can’t force feelings or compatibility. If it’s been a few months, give yourself time to develop feelings. However, if it’s been over a year, then it’s important to be honest with yourself about whether this relationship is right for the both of you.
Sometimes you care about someone. You respect them. Find yourself attracted to them and even really like them. You enjoy being around this person and sharing new experiences with then. Maybe this person seems perfect for you. But for some unknown reason, you don’t feel love for this person.
Other times you might crave a relationship and really want to be in love. As a result, you try to force feelings that aren’t there.
Yes, love can happen unexpectedly but this doesn’t mean you should wait years to figure it out. Be respectful to the other person and be ready to let them go, if you don’t believe you can return their feelings.
And again, this isn’t a bad thing. Realizing you don’t love someone can help you let this other person go so that they can find a person who loves them. Then you can open yourself up to the opportunity of meeting the right person for you.
If you are using the below as a main indicator that you might be in love, then you probably aren’t.
Thinking about them all the time or not at all. Sure, when you love someone, you will naturally think of them often. However, when you are infatuated with someone you might spend countless time checking your phone, emails and social media to see if this person has messaged you.
You might obsess over the things this person tells you, sometimes to an unhealthy degree.
You might even worry about how everything you say will come across, to the point where you feel anxiety.
This emotion is most likely infatuation and not love. When you love someone, you do think of them but don’t obsess. You do think about them frequently but this feeling is calming and peaceful.
In the past, I’d realized I was infatuated by the amount I would stress and worry about whether I would hear from someone after a date or message. That type of anxiety would even continue into the relationship. When I met the right person, I looked forward to receiving a message, call or seeing them. I knew I’d hear from them soon so there wasn’t any anxiety, just the peaceful knowledge that we would be in touch soon.
If you don’t think about them much, then you definitely aren’t in love. One of the most clear signs you don’t love someone, or barely even like them, is if you can go days without thinking about this person.
Feeling like you always want them around or feeling like you don’t want to see them most of the time. It doesn’t matter how introverted or extroverted you are, everyone wants some me time.
Knowing if you are in love might be confusing because you believe you must want to talk, see and be with your significant other all the time.
It’s natural and healthy to want to spend the majority of your time with your significant other. Even if you are the type who needs a larger amount of alone time, you will naturally want to spend more time than normal with a person you love.
Love doesn’t mean you are locked into doing everything with your partner. You can be very much in love, but need some personal space, the occasional night alone or even take holidays without them. You will still want time to see your family, close friends and partake in your own hobbies.
However, needing too much space from your partner is also a sign that you probably aren’t in love. You should want to share new experiences with your loved one, see them regularly and be an active part of each other’s live.
Don’t judge if you are in love just because you don’t have this overwhelming need to see this person 24/7. However, keep in mind that you should be wanting to spend a significant portion of your time with your loved one.
You focus more on how they make you feel, than on how to make them feel good.
In the past, I had dated a couple of guys who weren’t very thoughtful but claimed they were falling for me. These guys wouldn’t really ask much about my personal life, rarely went out of their way to do something kind for me and could go days without speaking to me because it didn’t cross their minds that maintaining consistent contact was important to me. If I asked for something small, it would feel like a chore to them rather than something kind they could do.
I doubt these guys were falling for me. Sure, they felt amazing around me, probably loved the feeling of having someone make them feel good and to share their life with. But those feelings were all about them and had little to do with me as a person.
If you find yourself feeling like you love someone because you feel amazing around them. Well that’s definitely something you should feel when you are in love, but you should be focused on how much you care about doing something thoughtful to show your love.
Do you give gifts to your loved one? Take care of them when they are sick? Share photos or funny things that make you think of the other person? Do you like to wish your partner good morning every day just to let them know you are thinking of them? Do you make time to show them how much they mean to you?
Being focused on your partner is more of a sign that you are in love, than being focused on how this person makes you feel about yourself.
You feel the need to impress them. The best kinds of relationships are the ones where you can feel perfect just being yourself.
It’s natural to want to look nice on a date or to have those days where you feel like making more of an effort. However, you should be comfortable being yourself.
In other words, you shouldn’t feel nervous about having this person see you in sweaty gym clothes, an unattractive hairstyle or any time where you feel like you don’t look good.
You shouldn’t feel nervous that this person will break up with you if they find out what you do for a job, meet your family, how much money you have or that you enjoy a hobby that is a bit quirky.
The great thing about love is feeling comfortable just being yourself. Looking attractive shouldn’t really be something you are worried about when you are in love. And if you feel that the person you are with would walk away if they saw you looking unattractive, then this is probably not a sign of a healthy and long-lasting relationship.
If you are in a relationship where you feel looks matter or you think your partner would think differently of you if you look a certain way, then that’s probably a sign that this isn’t love.
If you feel like you can’t be yourself around this person, then you definitely aren’t in love. The right person for you will be someone who you feel comfortable being yourself around.
You compromise your wants and needs to keep your partner happy, even though you feel unhappy. A healthy and lasting relationship needs a fair bit of compromise. Compromise is important.
However, you shouldn’t feel like your happiness isn’t important in a relationship. you should also feel that the compromise is a two-way street.
Someone once told me how excited he was because his partner was going on holiday for 2 months and he’d be alone at home. He was counting the weeks till she returned from her vacation, not because he missed her, but because he was enjoying having the time to play video games because she didn’t allow him to play video games.
She also didn’t allow him to do fishing on a lake nearby. Fishing has always been a hobby in his life, and he felt like he had to give that up to be with her. She demanded he give up his hobby to be with her.
He also was a vegetarian and had to start eating meat to be with her.
This type of relationship is one where the other person’s happiness is valued far more highly than your own. It’s normal to compromise to have a healthy relationship, but these compromises shouldn’t feel like a sacrifice where you give up on the things you value or enjoy doing regularly.
Giving up something that brings happiness or value into your life, probably isn’t a sign of love. Instead, this may be a sign that you don’t value your own happiness or may struggle with feelings of low self-worth.
You feel jealous. When you are attached to someone, you naturally feel a little jealous when other people display signs of interest.
However, jealousy is not a healthy emotion in a relationship. Feeling like your partner can’t have friends or spend time with other people, is probably a sign of insecurity than genuine love.
You are afraid. When dating, I encountered many people who had fears. There are people who fear commitment, falling in love or the connection growing between them. Although that might seem to come across as love, it’s not.
When I met my boyfriend, I knew he was a little afraid of falling in love. Yet, that was never an issue or even a talking point in our relationship. Once love hits you, you embrace it.
There are times when the feeling of love can be overwhelming and you push it away. But love is one of those emotions where you push through those fears and embrace it eventually.
If you feel too afraid to embrace love, then it’s a sign that you care and are attached to this person, but love allows you to embrace those emotions and allow yourself to be close with that person.
Being fearful of what’s happening between you and this other person is definitely a sign of attachment but not love. If you can push past those fears and happily be with this person in a relationship, without your fears being in the way, then you are most likely in love.
You don’t make an effort. All healthy relationships require both partners to make an effort. If you struggle to put in any effort than you probably aren’t in love.
Even if you are inexperienced with relationships, you would still put in an effort to make more of an effort. I have a friend who is horrible at getting back to people. In his first relationship, he struggled to text back at a decent time or call regularly. He’d go days without speaking to her, even though she was on his mind. He just didn’t realize that he should be in touch more.
Eventually this led to a discussion about how they communicate with each other. He realized he had to make an effort to communicate with her regularly if he wanted to be in a relationship with her. So that’s exactly what he did.
Even though he’s bad at communicating with his friends or family, he makes the effort to stay in touch with his girlfriend because he loves her.
If you are making excuses to not make an effort in a relationship, then you probably aren’t in love. If you feel like this person does so much for you, and you simply can’t be bothered to return the gesture even a little bit, then you definitely aren’t in love.
You don’t respect your partner. Respect is the foundation of a healthy relationship and definitely something you need to be in love.
How do you feel about your partner? Do you judge them? Are you embarrassed to be around them? Do you feel you are smarter than them? Are you critical of things they say and do and are actively working to try and change them into a different person? Do you feel constantly annoyed with them?
Love is accepting someone for exactly who they are. Sure, everyone has flaws and quirks, just like you do. It’s natural to be annoyed with your partner every so often, but not all the time. Yes, there may be things your partner is working on within themselves, but you should feel like you respect the person you are with.
You feel pressured. Love shouldn’t be something that is forced. This situation often happens when you are in a relationship and your partner has strong feelings for you but you don’t feel those feelings yet.
So instead of allowing those feelings to happen naturally, you feel like you have to force those feelings. You feel like you must tell your partner you love them or act a certain way that doesn’t reflect how you feel, to make them happy.
Falling in love is one of the easiest feelings in the world. If you feel unnecessary pressure to be in love with someone, then you probably aren’t in love.
Hopefully these signs that you aren’t in love can help you work through your feelings and figure out how you feel.