Knowing When You’re In Love
Monday, October 8th, 2007
People have been asking for many years how you know you’re in love, and the answer is no clearer today than it was hundreds of years ago. Love is not a feeling you can describe to someone and say that is how you feel if you’re in love. You can’t touch it, you can’t see it, and you can’t describe it because each person who feels it may not feel the same way. The best answer anyone has ever been able to give is “you’ll just know.” As open-ended as that answer is, there is no other way to answer that question.
There are some things that you can use to define the difference between love and infatuation, with the two most obvious ones being:
- Love allows you to accept someone with their faults and still love them vs. infatuation where you see someone as faultless.
- When you love someone you are happy even if you are not together because you hold on to the memories of good times and know you will see your loved one again but with infatuation you have a constant need to be with the person you “love” and feel sad and insecure when you are not together.
That doesn’t mean that if you miss your loved one, you are not in love because there will be times you will be unhappy away from them. Likewise, it doesn’t mean you can’t transition from infatuation to love nor does it mean if fault manifest themselves you will stop caring for your loved one. You are the only one who knows by what you feel if you are in love. What about if you’re only a teenager? It depends on you though most adults will tell you that you’re too young to be in love. In most cases, you probably are, but you’re too young to concern yourself with that. Live for the moment and only concern yourself with those issues if you’re still with the same person when you are 20, 21, or 22 years old, are out of college, and established in a career.