Today I am going to answer the age old question, how do I know if it is really love?
The sad truth to that question is that there are as many answers to that question as there are people on this planet, so, give or take 6 billion ways to determine whether or not he loves you. There is no one bottom line answer to this question, and there never will be.
The dating advice I can provide to help you determine whether or not you are with Mr. Right or Mr. Right-Now starts with an age old song that answered this question fairly well. Ladies, if you wanna know if he loves you so, it’s in his kiss.
Translation: It’s not just in his charming face, his warm embrace, or even in the sweet nothings he purrs to you at precisely the right moment, it’s in what he does to back it up. The kiss is a good start, but this website and all of the problems and situations that come in here wouldn’t exist if the kiss was the only thing that mattered.
If it was just the kiss, none of us would ever have any romantic issues, because that’s pretty easy to get, actually. Anybody can get that. But love though….wow. Even Oprah Winfrey can’t figure it out sometimes. How DO you know?
The kiss is a good start because the kiss is the backup to the words that came out of the mouth just prior. You really can tell by the way a man kisses you whether or not he means it. But beyond that, the actions that follow even the kiss will be your biggest determining factor in whether or not he loves you. And by the way, he is checking out your actions just as much as you are.
Believe it or not ladies, contrary to some of the problems you might hear about here or elsewhere, not every man is out to play you. It is easy to feel that way sometimes, the dating world has definitely changed, but not every man has. Most men are actually normal human beings who want love just as badly as we do. Finding them is tougher than it used to be yes, but that doesn’t mean they have dropped off the planet. If you are looking for the best relationship advice for women that will actually improve your love life, the first thing you need to accept is that men are humans, with actual feelings, and when they love you, it really isn’t that hard to tell.
The Truth
Accepting truth is very difficult for women, we want what is happening in our life to match what we are feeling inside. But it doesn’t always work out that way. And going into your love life not willing to embrace reality is going to lead to a very bad love life. So, the first thing you need to do to determine if it is really love, is to understand that there are two people in every relationship. If he isn’t giving back what you are putting out, there’s a reason for that. It’s probably not love. If it’s love, two people are doing the work and putting in the effort, not just one.
I have this saying that I say to some of the younger girls that I coach in a pre-teen self esteem group. When it comes to choosing what guys to date, and what guys to keep around, I tell them the only dating advice they ever need is to go by one rule only. Stay with the man that doesn’t make promises he can’t keep, and keeps the promises he makes.
And ladies, it doesn’t matter if you are 13 or 30….or 60….that’s just the best way to tell. The guy that loves you wants to and will promise you the world, and he will even try to go out and get it for you. And if he loves you, he won’t promise something he won’t at least try to pull through for you, for fear of disappointing the woman that he loves.
The Player? That’s a different story.
He will chime in with promises, whispers, sweet nothings, big extravagant plans that will make you blush, and giggle, and feel great because nobody’s EVER promised you such things before, or for a very long time. But he won’t return your texts in a timely fashion, because he’ll be annoyed that you are texting him when he’s trying to have a fun, unchained life. He won’t be calling you just to say hey, because he doesn’t care which is why he also won’t be asking how your niece has been doing since her tonsillitis operation. He won’t drop off stuff just because he overheard you saying you needed it but didn’t have the time to pick it up yourself, because that would look like boyfriend material and he definitely doesn’t want that. He won’t bring you soup when you are sick, because he might catch something and that would interfere with his game time, and so on…and so on…and so on.
He WILL kiss you, and it will probably be great, and right after one of his big empty promises, but it will be on his time, his turf, and at his convenience. The guy that loves you won’t mind when you text him at 3 AM when you are with the girls, he will think it’s cute and secretly love that you are thinking of him when there are a thousand other guys around you in that moment. That guy will even text you back right away if he isn’t sleeping, to laugh at your silly drunky girlishness, that he finds adorable.
I can already hear some of you protesting
“But my guy’s different! He really can’t text me back right away or the beeping will wake up his sick grandmother who he’s taking care of right now!”
“But he can’t call me back, he just got shipped out and they aren’t allowed to call very much!!”
“But he has a compromised immune system so I never can see him when I’m sick!”
Really? Never? He definitely has a compromised something, and he probably has a grandmother, but one who doesn’t care a rats behind how much his phone beep. And he may have even been shipped out, but you would be surprised how many times that simply means, to the next girl’s house. But we make excuses for them because we aren’t ready to accept the truth, because we want what is happening on the outside to match what we are feeling on the inside.
Guess what? So does he
He meaning, the man that loves you. The man that will love you or does love you wants the same thing. Which is why, the way that he kisses will be magical, and so will every other thing he does in your life. The man that loves you will find ways to inject himself in your life because he wants to be a part of it as much as possible. The man that doesn’t, won’t.
Even IF, he is just doing it to impress you to “get the girl”….he still loves you. Or is pretty darn close. The guy that doesn’t, won’t invest himself enough to even impress you to the point of injecting himself in your life that way. He may come close, but he will stop himself just short of the boundary of boyfriend material, for fear you will read too much into it.
Which you will. Because you are human. If you’ve been duped by a player don’t beat yourself up about it. If he acted like a boyfriend, that was just one of his tools. He isn’t smarter than you, he’s just better at the game. You may not be very good at it because you are looking for something honest and real, and honestly expected him to behave accordingly.
It’s okay to believe in people, in fact, if you want true love in your life, it is a must. If they dupe you with the love game, they are only fooling themselves and selling themselves short. But you keep on believing in people until you find the one that really means it and behaves accordingly. The man that truly loves you will act in a way that doesn’t make you question it, because he won’t want you to question it.
Of course there are bona fide buts to this rule. Some men are shyer than others, some men show their love in different ways, some men have serious baggage themselves and are just as terrified of this whole love thing as you are. Like I said, there are 6 billion different answers to the question, “How do I know if it is really love?” I’ve given you the simplest answer in today’s dating advice question, with the toughest challenge….accept the truth when you see it. But this challenge comes with the blessing of also being able to embrace the truth when you see it as true love.
You know it, you feel it, your instinct is sharper than you think, especially when it comes to feeling the unconditional feeling of love. If you are trying to force it, it isn’t there. Finding it is tough, feeling it is not once you have. The same goes for men too.
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