Have you ever thought, Is it really love?
Love can be strong, disorienting, and transformational in one way. It is not the passion or the excitement; it is the bond that cements you in times when life feels unsure. True love is found in the silent support, in giving up something you don’t regret, and in having a vision of a life that instinctively involves someone else. It is not only about the big gestures but rather the everyday decision to honor, love, and develop someone despite difficulties.
I am an American citizen, Anna Welch, who spent several years thinking about relationships, feelings, and love. My personal life and my wise observations taught me how to judge this difference between momentary emotions and something more. I want to be able to explain that knowledge to you plainly and frankly.
In this blog, you will learn the emotional, behavioural, and internal indications of true love, and the red flags that can guide you in realizing that it is not true love.
Read Also: How To Show Someone You Love Them
The Confusing Beauty Of Love
Love is one such event, and it is one of the most perplexing things that you and I will ever encounter. It does not always fit into a box, as it manifests in the case of each individual and each life period. Love is sometimes like fireworks, passionate, intense, and exciting. On other days, it appears to be a whisper, a continuous calm, where you can safely and easily be. The fact is that love is both poles at the same time, and this is the reason why it is so hard to understand.
One minute you are overwhelmed, and the other is so down-to-earth. You might feel like smiling on your side when they are around, only to be hit by fear when you consider the extent to which they are dear to you. That combination of happiness and exposure can have you wondering if what you are experiencing is real or just a mere infatuation.
Check Also: Who’s More Annoying?
What True Love Is
And you must know what it is to love before you can know whether you really love, or not. People confuse love to be passion, attraction, or comfort, but love is more than all those. It is not only a storm of emotions, but also a decision, a habit, and a relationship that only gets stronger with time. True love is where you value a person as an individual, and yet you are willing to walk through life with them.
Key Qualities Of True Love
- Respect: You admire their voice, their choices, and their ambitions that are not similar to yours.
- Commitment: You are there when we need you.
- Care: You naturally care about their welfare and nurture it.
- Growth: You motivate one another to be better people without losing yourself.
- Balance: It does not exhaust, it refreshes even in the case of difficulties.
Read Also: Is True Love Real? 5 Signs It Actually Exists
Love Vs. Lust Vs. Infatuation
Among the greatest problems of individuals is how to distinguish between love, lust, and infatuation. All these may be powerful, yet not all of them are identical, and this distinction is a key to realizing your own emotions.
Love
True love is not conditional, exhaustive, and eternal. It is based on trust, respect, and actual interest in the welfare of another individual. Love is not leaving very soon because it is not only about the feelings; it is about commitment, patience, and a choice, even when the spark is not so great as in previous times.
Lust
Lust is strong and not enduring. It is mostly physical attraction and desire. You might be attracted to the appearance, the chemistry, or zeal of the other person; however, without the emotional richness, it tends to wane as swiftly as it began. Lust is not wicked; it is natural. However, this is not true love.
Take Quiz: Are You Really Over Your Ex?
Infatuation
Love is like a haste. It is that crazy excitement at the start of knowing someone that you have of imagining them as an ideal person who cannot do anything wrong. Infatuation, however, is hardly respectful of reality. When things start to go wrong, the flames are likely to burn out, and all is disappointing.
Key Differences To Keep In Mind
- Love strengthens over time, whereas lust and infatuation tend to weaken.
- Love involves giving and taking, whereas lust and infatuation tend to be selfish.
- Love will make you desire to create a future, lust is now, and infatuation is fantasy.
Read Also: 7 Qualities Of A Healthy Relationship
Emotional Signs Of Real Love
Love is experienced in the heart, then displayed in action. When you actually love another person, it is not attraction or excitement; it becomes an understanding of a connection, security, and care. Such feelings manifest themselves in more enduring ways than infatuation.
You Care Beyond Yourself
When you truly love a person, his/her happiness is attached to yours. You rejoice when they succeed in their endeavors, and when they suffer, you feel it as well. It is not compassion, it is empathy, which makes you desire them to have the best of things without asking anything in return.
Take Quiz: Are You Falling in Love With the Wrong Person?
Vulnerability Feels Natural
Love lets you forget the mask that you wear in front of the rest of the world. You could open up fears, weaknesses, and dreams without the fear of being rejected. When you can open up and be yourself in their presence, then you know that love has taken hold in the trust.
A Sense Of Peace And Belonging
Butterflies may come and go; however, true love will leave you with peace of mind and safety. It is your home, where you do not have to do anything or have to prove anything. You rest in their presence, even without any sound.
Their Pain Echoes In You
Love links your heart in such a way that you experience their hardships. When you watch them suffering, it is not only worry, it is a tug in you that you want to stand and be with them, help them, and take some of the burden off.
Read Also: What Does Love Feel Like For A Man?
Behavioral Signs Of Real Love
It is not about what you feel but what you do. Feelings may be deceitful, but behavior tells all. When you really like someone, you find yourself actually acting in a way that cannot be explained by words. You begin demonstrating dedication, concern, and steadfastness without coercing it.
When love is unmistakable, it is important to put it into words beautifully and this list of romantic love messages to your wife could be used to show her what your heart really means.
You Make Sacrifices Willingly
True love isn’t selfish. When you are ready to compromise your comfort or schedule to please the other person and you do not score, then that is love. And it is not losing yourself, but it is putting their needs just as high as yours.
You Include Them In Your Future
As you daydream about the future, your career, your travels, even little things, they are in the picture. Love does not exist in here and now but extends to tomorrow. When you can never imagine your life without them in it, then you are in love.
Test: Who Loves More?
You Respect Their Space
True love is not possessive. Rather, it appreciates individuality. When you love someone, you have enough trust to leave them free. You rejoice in their autonomy since you are sure it bonds your relationship closer.
You Support Their Growth
Love does not mean to keep a person at bay but to lift him or her up. You are helping them chase their aspirations, rejoice in their wins and losses, and be with them in their tribulations; this is how you are showing them that your love is not domineering, but loving.
You Stay Consistent In Tough Times
It is easy to love, but when life becomes a mess, it is then that one finds true love. Stay patient, understanding, and committed, even when argumentative and struggling, and what you are doing is actually speaking louder than any I love you can.
Read Also: How Long Can It Take To Fall In Love?
The Feeling Inside
It is sometimes in what is going on inside that you know whether you are in true love. Not merely what you are doing to somebody, but whether you are in your own heart and mind when you are with them, or even when you are away. True love can bring balance to you.
Signs Within Yourself
- Peace and Excitement Together: You are cool and exalted, as you imagine them, as safe and adventurous combined.
- Stability Emotionally: You are not highly emotional. Love builds up and never disappears even after quarrels.
- Inner Security: You are not always interested in trying to prove to them your value; you are appreciated for being what you are.
- Energy and Motivation: Love empowers you to meet challenges, not always stress or fear.
Check Also: Love Compatibility Calculator
Love That Deepens Over Time
This is what some people think love is that it is a spark that strikes you upon meeting someone. However, in practice, real love tends to develop gradually, step by step, when two individuals experience and develop trust.
And when love is too sore to keep ahold, how to release that which you loved is none the less important than how to love. This can be useful: How To Get Over First Love.
How Love Strengthens With Time
- Shared experiences: Becoming strong through mutual happy and hard experiences.
- Patience and Understanding: You know what is wrong and bad in each other, and you stand together.
- Minor daily decisions: Love does not merely grow stronger by such big things, but also by such minor ones as being nice, helpful, and trustworthy.
- Difficult times as teachers: A fight, space, or difficulty does not ruin true love but only moulds it and makes it even stronger when its management is respectful.
Read Also: How Soon Is Too Soon To Say I Love You
Self-Love And Real Love
Among the biggest things I have learnt is that you cannot give what you have not. Self-love is not egoistic, but it is the main secret of a healthy relationship. And you cannot love another human being unless you respect, value, and care about yourself. You create balance in your relations when you practice self-love. You have fewer reasons to cling to it out of fear, and more to select your partner out of strength rather than necessity.
When you are confident in the feelings, you need to know how to make the boyfriend understand that you love him in a manner that you need.
It implies that you can love without feeling obligated to get any validation every day. Healthy boundaries are also possible and will keep you and your relationship out of unhealthy patterns. Self-love also changes the manner in which you handle struggles. You do not lose yourself in the process of loving someone, but you retain your sense of identity and still grow with them.
Read Also: What To Do When Wife Refuses Intimacy
Red Flags It’s Not Love
Not all of your powerful emotions are love. What may appear to be intense in the beginning may be lust, obsession, or bad attachment. It is good to know the difference so that you would not be investing your heart in something that would not last.
It’s Only About Physical Attraction
When the relationship flourishes with just a physical bond, yet fades away when issues or problems come up, that is not love; it is lust. Love is more than passion; it is about the attachment of emotion and mind.
You Feel Controlled Or Trapped
Love never cages you. When you always feel that you are being followed, criticized, or playing around, then that is control and not care. The love of a partner who really loves you will be respectful of your independence and freedom.
Take Quiz: Do You Know Your Relationship Red Flags?
Trust Is Always Missing
The doubts and suspicions are tiresome. When you do not feel safe in what they say or what they do, then the basis of love is poor. Trust is not an addition; it is the foundation of true love.
You Lose Yourself Completely
It is fine to compromise, not to lose yourself. When you start compromising on dreams, personality, and values to save the relationship, then you are not in love; you are in dependency.
Your Well-Being Suffers
True love can make your brain, your heart, and even your body expand. As long as the relationship causes you to feel anxious, tired, or insecure every time, then it is not love; it is abuse and disguised as love.
Read Also: Unhealthy Conflict In Relationships
FAQs:
Is true love calm or exciting?
It’s both, true love gives you peace, but it still brings moments of excitement.
Does true love last?
Yes, true love gets stronger over time instead of getting weaker.
Can love exist without trust?
No, trust is the foundation. Without it, it’s not real love.
What is my reaction to true love?
You are comfortable, honored, and content when you are yourself.
Take Quiz: Relationship Quiz: Are You Truly Compatible?
Final Words:
It is not about whether or not you are actually in love with someone at the end of the day, but whether or not you share some patterns of caring, trust, and respect. True love does not only exist in those moments of grandeur, the ideal gestures, but in those simple things you do, how you support them, in that togetherness one feels when with them. Not only does true love make you feel good, but it also gives you the room to develop and does not force you to lose yourself.
You do not think that you are in love, and that is one indicator of you treasuring clarity and being emotionally honest. See what is the effect of this relation, and how it influences your life, and makes you stronger or weaker. Love is an emotion and a choice; it must be truthful, patient, and balanced. The fact of it is, when you discover what kind of love makes you your best and helps another person.
