How did you know that it was "love"?

Honestly, it just happens. If you have to wonder if you love someone you don’t love them.

I’m not going to give you several incidents because i fell in love with her so many times.. But i did realize it was ” love ” when my heart kept beating fast when I think about her. You know, I get this biggest smile ever when I see I get to see her name on my cell calling me. I realized it was love when even the girls in my university get complete 0 attention from me because she’s on my mind. I realized I’m in love when she’s the last person on my mind when i fall asleep.

@johnpowell I added some detail to the question. I realize it was too vague.

It was when things suddenly changed, we went from being friends for years to dating but just before we began dating everytime I saw him it was like my heart would skip a beat. It didn’t take but a couple of weeks before he told me he loved me and I was able to truly respond that I loved him back. The love I felt for him I never questioned or wondered if he loved me back, I knew he did just how he was and talked to me. He always made me feel really special. Too bad he was sick even at the time we started dating and passed away a little over 3 yrs ago.

Wish I could find something like that again, knowing its possible to have true love is the only thing that keeps me looking.

@creative1 I’m sorry. That’s a horrible thing to happen.

My definition of being “in love” is totally different from most people I’ve met. So, there’s that. It has nothing to do with butterflies or my heart fluttering or warm and fuzzy feelings. It’s more like… I know the jingle of his keys, I recognize his scent and it smells like home, he know that I hate it when company drops by unannounced, and I know he hates it when I don’t come to bed. To me, that is being in love. We complement each other, he is my family, a part of me. The butterflies and warm fuzzies, to me, are infatuation. Not that I am trying to discredit anyone that considers that to be love, I just don’t find that to be true for me.

@ANef_is_Enuf – d’awwwwwwwwww!

Wow, I was really not expecting that reaction.

@Jellie, rather than give examples, can I express an insight? It could be one of two aspects of love you are discovering. I don’t know your age but there is love that is meant the way you love a friend or family member and it is a deep care in the heart which is called loving someone and known as phileo love. Eros love is romantic love but it deepens as well and feels like brotherly at times. In the truest sense of the word love is much more than feelings. Eros love can be so intense during a strong season that when it balances out in depth we think it left

Modern society makes love out to be some magic feeling. Love is deciding to commit to a person after the feelings and butterflies are gone. Making a decision to commit to hard work and overcoming obstacles for the sake of the relationship.
I love the scene in Fiddler on the Roof, where the parents, who were the product of an arranged marriage, realize they love each other. Love was the result of 25 years of commitment, not the cause of it.

@Judi yes! I agree so very much with that answer!

I am in love right now. I knew after a few week together. As well as the obvious butterflies, I just knew I had to be with him. He consumed my entire thoughts, I wanted to make him happy, give him everything I could. If he hurt, I hurt. He was my world and he still is.

Well it’s been nigh nine years, I can think rationally about it, I’m not stalking her, I can’t go a day without thinking about her, I am able to do the whole if-you-love-her-let-her-go but deal with the heartache everyday, so maybe it’s an infatuation but I think it’s more along the lines of love.

I think the biggest factor that shows you are in love is the absence of doubt. I have dated girls before and felt doubtful about the viability of the relationship, but now that I am in love with the perfect woman for me, I have absolutely no question in my mind that she is the only woman made for me!

Oh no, hon. Love is more than butterflies in your stomach. To be in love one must also have a certain measure of disdain for the person, uncertainty, doubt about the future. To be in love one must also be out of it. One must be tempted, torn asunder by emotion. Love is a journey like that of Ulysses’ back to Ithaca—one must go through perils in order to return to it.

@Schroedes13 Wish I could have worded my answer like that, that is just perfect.

@Aspire Thanks, it’s from the heart, so it’s perfect!!

I knew it was love because it happened very suddenly, on the same night that we met, and I already knew I’d be spending my life with him. It was a strange feeling, because it was mixed in with lust, but it was this instant bond, tying me to him and him to me, with an eerie sensation that everything had changed and there was a little whisper in my head saying, “This one.”

If anyone on this thread has read the Twilight novels, try to remember how they described the way the Quileute wolves “imprinted”. That’s kind of what it felt like the night I met my husband.

It was really intense, and a little scary, to say the least. He informally proposed two weeks later and we’re still together, married for over 11 years now.

A friend of mine once wrote a line in a poem that said, “I believe in life with you”. That line came to mind during my first weekend away with my bf. We would walk hand in hand, just looking over at each other constantly, eyes twinkling, happy as if that day was what we’d each been waiting to experience for so long. We talk it about it now, that trip even though at the time we were only newly dating.

It was a strange feeling of contentment and we both remarked seeing an elderly couple walking hand in hand, talking to each other with happy faces and thinking to ourselves we’d like to be like that. It took a few years for us to get to where we are right now but each of us looks back on that early trip as when we felt we were the one for each other.

I knew it was love when I first started thinking about her before me. Was the only person that came before me. I never thought about someone else like this, not even my mother had priority when it came about thinking of me.

Nice for you that you are in love ^^

I think I believe in love at first impression. Not sight, but impression. It might take a little while to form that impression, but usually not more than a month. I am pretty sure that we know very quickly. And it’s a knowing. Yeah, there are butterflies and looks and hands in hand and finishing each others sentences and all the usual suspects.

But I think it’s something so complex that you can really understand it. You just know. You have this idea that this is who you want to be with for the foreseeable future. You care about the person. You have empathy. You want the best for them. You want to do for them—anything and everything you can. You trust them. You believe these feelings are reciprocated. You have faith in them.

You can love people without the love being returned. If it’s not returned, then I’d say it was an infatuation or an obsession. Love takes two people, so until you both feel the same way about each other, it isn’t really romantic love.

I knew I was in love because I didn’t feel awkward or scared in certain situations and the idea of living without him became the worst feeling in the world.

@WillWorkForChocolate I didn’t really get that intense of a feeling of ‘the one’ when I met my bf.. I kind of had the completely opposite reaction, and yet I was pretty cheesed when he hadn’t called the next day. Some days I can’t believe we’re still together. This may be a good or bad thing.

@Leanne1986 Why don’t I feel that way? To me the idea of living without my family is the worst feeling in the world.. I’d certainly feel a very profound void without him there and maybe suffer through some minor depression or something, but I know it would pass and I’d have all of the other wonderful things in my life to keep me going. Is this bad?

@thesparrow I don’t think it is bad. Some people are closer to their families than others and maybe, if you are closer to yours than I am to mine, that would explain why you feel that you can cope with anything as long as you have them. Actually, I wish I felt that way.