How to Know if You are in Love

One thing you really want to be sure of is whether you are truly in love. You can be in love with love or lust, rather than another person. You can mistakenly believe your longed for ideal is incarnated in someone. Yet ideal persons, like false gods, are destined to fail.

I remember a verbal exchange between my mother and me. I was a teenager beginning to date. “Mom, how will I know when I’m in love?” “You’ll know.” “Mom, I’m serious: how will I know?” “You’ll know!” “Mom, tell me more!” “If you have any doubts, you’re not in love.”

That was her final answer. She was saying romantic love is somewhat like Kenneth Clark defined civilization: “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.”

I have seen enough to accept my mother’s answer. Doubts about being in love do not go away after the wedding. Every time someone has come to me to help determine whether they were in love, it turned out they were not in love.

I offer a twenty-five-point checklist based on research, expert opinion and personal experience. There is not the space to adequately flesh out this points, nor do all of them apply to everyone. How people respond to falling in love differs. But many or most points will apply:

1. Your normal patterns are disrupted. You must accommodate this new relationship.

2. You experience “free-floating” joy and pleasure. Being in love brings its own joy.

3. You constantly think about the other person. It’s almost like an obsession.

4. You want to please the other even more than being pleased. Pleasing gives you pleasure.

5. You want to be with the other all the time. Time together is greater than time apart.

6. You feel vulnerable and need reassurance. You want assurance the other is where you are.

7. There is a strong drive for reciprocity. Sharing is the heart of love.

8. You experience a release of great energy. The relationship is energy-producing.

9. There is a spiraling sensuality.

10. You feel good about yourself around the other.

11.You are tempted to put the other on a pedestal.

12. You love who the other is, more than what the other offers.

13. The love is greater in person than in imagination. The love is vaster together than apart.

14. The love endures over time.

15. You have no desire to change the other. You love the other in his or her uniqueness.

16. The love does not center on you, but on the other and the relationship.

17. Your internal systems are all on “go.” You are not plagued with doubts about being in love.

18. You want to be completely honest with the other. Love requires the oxygen of honesty.

19. You discover rather than create the love between you.

20. There is one love that is shared.

21. You feel like a “new being.” Regardless of your history, you get to begin again.

22. You see each other as no one else ever has before.

23. There is an active hunger to know and be known.

24. You feel freed, permitted and empowered to be who you are.

25. You experience an unmistakable sense that “this is the one.”