How to Know Whether You Love Someone
You may think love so obvious that you might immediately recognize it. That is true for many people, but for some it is not always that easy. Especially this is true for people who have had difficulty finding love in the past and people who have had little experience with love as a child or an adult.
Though love is probably one of the subjects most often written, sung, and told about, every love experience is unique to the person or persons who have it. The love you want to feel for another person must be discovered and felt by yourself. In this case it is not a general or universal love for all mankind, or a religious love. It is instead a powerful love feeling accompanied by caring behavior, the willingness to take risks and commit.
Love vs. Fear
There are two basic emotional positions you can take when it comes to knowing about love. One is love and the other fear, the opposite of love. Fear motivates a desire for security, self protection, avoidance of people and responsibility. Fear is shown in emotional inhibition, limited willingness to tell about yourself, and restricting your exposure to people. At the beginning of it, love requires that you take a few risks. This may include asking someone for a date, revealing something about yourself, asking questions about the other person, and the willingness to be physically close to another person. Love requires courage, investment, and a willingness to become better at it. To have the greatest romantic love of all you must be willing to risk a total commitment which you gradually give over time, but it is virtually total nevertheless.
Feelings and Actions
Love feels pleasurable and is persistent. It is accompanied by thoughts of the other person. It stimulates a desire to give something, do something for, and generally care about the well being of another person. It fluctuates. Sometimes you may feel it very strongly during times of emotional and physical intimacy. Other times, you may feel it less strongly and worry about whether it is, therefore, very real. Some change of intensity is to be expected where love is concerned.
Love is not infatuation where one becomes obsessed with the other person. Neither is love demonstrated by a total loss of appetite, loss of sleep, and such preoccupation that you cannot work effectively. Instead, love is more calm, more constructive, but highly satisfying and fulfilling.
Love and Stress
There are some times in a relationship that are more stressful than others. These include decisions, times when you are giving more than the other person, and times when the other person is not doing a good job of communicating his or her love to you. When stress increases, the sensation of love diminishes. That is why the prospect of imminent marriage (a stressful time) is often accompanied by a decline or worry about a decline in the feelings of love. Resolve the stress and love reappears.
Three Compelling Signs
If you have the feelings you think are love and you are motivated to care for the other person, what else is required to know for certain that you love someone? There are three subtle, but very significant signs that true love exists.
1. Autonomy. Love exists if you have a sense of individuality, with the absence of control and possessiveness, when you are with the other person. This includes feeling your own feelings instead of feeling like you have to feel what the other person is feeling.
2. Responsibility. If you demonstrate a sense of responsibility to create some of what you feel. Many think their feelings are caused by what another person does or says. Emotional responsibility is the acceptance that some of what you feel is caused by what you do and say.
3. A search for the positive. Love exists if you find yourself focusing on positive things. Cheerfulness, gratitude, happiness, warmth, kindness, tenderness, optimism, appreciation, and etc. are examples."