Saying and hearing the phrase “I love you” is a major milestone in any relationship, but does your partner really understand the weight of those words? Before you start hearing wedding bells, make sure your boyfriend is doing these things to prove that his love is the real deal:
- He supports your goals and dreams no matter what. When a guy’s in love with you, he’ll want the very best for you. Sure, it may be a cliche, but we all have goals that we hope to achieve at some point. You may push them to the back of your mind, but they’ll never go away. A guy who doesn’t give a damn about you will let those dreams fade into regrets, but one who loves you will encourage you to chase them no matter what.
- He makes you feel like you’re beautiful inside and out. Words mean nothing without the real life actions to back them up. Any man can tell you that you’re beautiful — it’s easily said and so rarely meant. If your guy’s in love with your very being, though, you’ll feel it. Everything from the way he looks at you to how he brushes back your hair will tell you that he thinks you’re amazing.
- He never takes you for granted or treats you like an option. A loser who treats you like an option is no more in love with you than he is any other chick out there. If your special someone acts like you’re always second best, you need to kick him to the curb before it’s too late.
- When he talks about you, he’s proud of who you are. As sickeningly sweet as it may sound, when a guy is feeling loved up, he can’t help but gush about it. He might not go around literally shouting “I LOVE HER” from the rooftops, because frankly, that would be weird AF. But he’s still going to have a hard time keeping quiet about it. When he chats with other people about you, he won’t be able to hide how much you light up his life.
- He trusts you and finds ways to show it. Is this dude checking your phone when you leave the room or snooping on your social media accounts? If so, he’s not the one for you. Being suspicious of you doesn’t show that he’s in love — it shows that he sees you as an object that no one else can have or touch. He’s just checking that no one is messing with his “property”: you.
- He respects your opinion and actually listens to it. Make no mistake: some people are just plain pig-headed. They think that the only opinion that really matters is theirs and there’s nothing you can do to change that. Don’t bother being with a guy who doesn’t respect and listen to what you have to say. He’s incapable of loving anyone else because he uses up all his love on himself.
- He doesn’t mind giving you space when you need it. The fact that you need to be alone for a few hours now and then is no reflection on how you feel about your partner. Any guy who internalizes this and makes it about him is a loser, pure and simple. If your guy is being needy AF, it might not be love he’s feeling, but the overwhelming fear of being alone.
- When you’re down, here’s there for you 100 percent. Getting down now and then is part of the human condition. While we’d all like to avoid that dark cloud, sometimes it follows us around no matter what. A man who loves you won’t be scared by the fact that you actually have emotions. He’ll support you through the dark times and the light.
- He treats you like his priority all the time. You can’t expect a guy to drop all his plans when you want to see him. That’s unrealistic AF. Still, when a guy really loves you, you’ll always be his priority. That means that he’ll go out of his way to make time for you even when he’s busy.
- He’s already planning your future together. Have you guys talked about the future yet? If not, then why the hell is this guy dropping the L-bomb on you? When a guy feels that way about you, he shows it by planning a future with you very firmly in it. If he isn’t doing that, he isn’t in it for the long haul.
