How Do You Know When You Love Someone? 10 Tale Tell Signs

You might feel like you’re head over heels for someone one day then turned off by them the next. It can be tricky deciphering if you’re actually feeling something real or if you just have an intense crush on the person you’re dating, so how do you know the difference? Here are a few signs that what you’re feeling is actually love.

  1. You wonder how you got through life before them. When you truly fall in love with someone, it can often feel like you’ve known them your entire life. You might start to wonder how you made it this far without them because it feels like they add so much happiness and light to your life. If you feel like they’ve always been around, it could mean that you really love them.
  2. The thought of losing them is unbearable. When you really like someone, you don’t want to be without them and don’t want to think about the idea of losing them but when you truly love someone, the thought of not having them suddenly can be physically painful. If you don’t even want to imagine a life without your partner, it’s a pretty good sign that you’re really in love with them.
  3. You instantly feel better when you see them. The people that we love typically have an effect of calmness or relief on us. You might be having a terrible day. You might feel stressed, scared, worried, anxious, or any other terrible emotion but when they walk into the room and you lay eyes on them, you instantly feel so much better. Sure, it’s impossible for them to magically fix all of the problems you may be having and honestly, it’s unfair to place that kind of expectation on someone but, if you feel safe or more secure whenever you see them, it’s a pretty tale-tell sign that you’re in love with them.
  4. You’re excited about the little things. When you really love someone, everything seems like a fun and exciting experience, even the simple things that might ordinarily be mundane or boring to you. Everyone loves to go on adventures with their significant other but if you find yourself getting excited over small outings like grocery shopping and quiet walks around the neighborhood, simply because you look forward to seeing that person, it’s a good sign that you’re falling in love with them or that you already love them.
  5. You’ve forgotten all about your ex. When you go through a breakup that was particularly painful, it can feel like you’ll never move on or that you’ll never be able to forget about your ex but you might’ve heard someone say before that once you fall in love again, you’ll forget all about them. It might be hard to believe at the moment but when you truly do fall in love with someone, you really will forget about your ex and finally be able to move on without all of the emotional pain you were feeling before.
  6. You care about their happiness just as much as your own. Another tale-tell sign of love is when you are ready and willing to put someone else’s needs before you’re own. When you really love someone, you will always want them to be happy and will constantly be thinking about their safety and their health. It’s important to realize that this doesn’t mean that you should disregard your own needs and your own happiness but the desire to sacrifice or go above and beyond to make someone happy is definitely a sign that you love them.
  7. You start to think about them in terms of the future. When you fall in love with someone, it’s only natural that you’ll start to fantasize about a future with them and all of the places that your relationship could go. If you see them with kids and it makes you think about what kind of parent they would be or if they’re really handy and great at fixing things and it makes you think about how nice it would be to build a home with them, it’s a definite sign that you might really love them.
  8. Their pain affects you in a crazy way. When you love someone, the last thing that you want to see is them in pain, heartbroken, or sad. If your partner is going through something that is really difficult on them and it feels like it’s happening to you too, there’s a good chance that you really love them. It’s sometimes a difficult burden to carry when you love someone so much, that you feel everything that they feel but it’s also an incredibly rewarding experience because while you might share in their sadness and pain, you’ll also get to experience all of their victories and happiness.
  9. You see them for everything that they are rather than who they aren’t. When you love someone, that love is pretty unconditional. We tend to be hard on ourselves when it comes to our flaws and things about ourselves that we’d like to change or improve. When you love someone though, it’s hard to see their faults sometimes and even when we do see their faults, we tend to instantly forgive them for them or brush them aside because we love and appreciate them for who they truly are and not what they wish they could be. If you look at your person and know that you wouldn’t change a thing about them, that’s a sign of true love for a person.
  10. You’re not afraid to say it. Uttering that four-letter word can sometimes be so terrifying! We don’t know how the other person will react or if they’ll say it back to us. Maybe they’ve already said it to us but we didn’t feel ready to say it back yet. There are a million reasons why you might feel nervous to say it the first time but once you say it out loud, it suddenly becomes way less scary and easy to say over and over again. If you find yourself looking forward to using the “L” word every day, you are definitely in love.
Shelby is a journalist and fiction writer raised in the South but built for the big city. She's a book nerd (well, an overall nerd, honestly) and coffee addict and obsessed with all things leather and lacy.

She has a bachelor’s degree in Mass Communication and Media Studies from Sam Houston State University and worked for her university newspaper, The Houstonian, as well as serving as a producer and part-time entertainment anchor for Cable 7 Huntsville. You can follow her on Twitter @shelby777.
close-link
close-link
close-link
close-link