How Do You Know You're Really In Love?

How do you know you're in love?

I feel fairly comfortable, at least more confident, in saying that I now know the meaning of true love. I now know the meaning of truly being IN love, not merely infatuated with a friendly love. Love is amazing, and I feel sorry to say that I have not previously known what it meant to be IN love, romantically, with another person. I know infatuation very well. Infatuation is very simple and easy to pinpoint. It's easy to figure out. It's frightening. It is alarming. Infatuation causes anxiety, distrust, love is not blind, but infatuation certainly is. Infatuation hides all of someone's faults so that when the chemical infatuation feeling wears off, the person's faults are completely annoying. The person falling "in love" is falling in love with the idea of being in love, with the idea of being loved, of being in a relationship, of having another person by their side that they can proclaim is "theirs". Since everything is riding on that one person and the idea of them "belonging" to you, it is very scary to think about losing that person because you are holding onto them so dearly. Your life seemingly has no meaning without them. You "can't live without them". You want them to be happy, but more so you need them to be with you for your sake, not for theirs. You want the best for them as long as it stays within the realm of satisfying your needs as well.

Love though is so different. Love wants the best for another person. Love endures. Love does not leave at the sight of a problem. Love grows and remains strong, whereas infatuation withers and dies away. Sometimes, after infatuation disappears, there IS love and that is when you can continue on to grow in love with the other person. But if there was and is no love there to begin with, then what you "have" with that person disappears completely. Love remembers the positive traits about that person. Love recognizes the negative traits about the person and you love them anyway. Love is about trust and acceptance. Love is not blind, it is accepting. If a blind person encounters a person that is unattractive, they may never know any better but should they ever see, they may run the other way. Infatuation works like that. Love recognizes the inner beauty of the person, the goodness of that person, and recognizes that shortcomings are to be expected and everyone has them. No normal human being is perfect. Love does not expect perfection as infatuation does.

These are only a few of the key differences that I have come to discover between love and infatuation. And I have not taken the time to lay them out properly and organize my thoughts, not that I ever do. But I can at least now say that I know, I am positively certain, of the difference that true love, being truly in love, really makes.