Here’s something that most people will be too afraid to tell you:
A man who is in love will commit immediately, and without hesitation. The only way you can tell that you are “meant to be” with someone is whether or not you are actually with them right here, right now.
The person you are meant to be with will not put you on hold.
This is not an easy thing to accept because a man who doesn’t love you completely will do this dance where they bait you in, weave you through a forest of excuses, and leave you lost, unable to decipher whether you’re supposed to hold on for a little longer, or finally let it go.
Some dating experts say if your goal is to get married and you’re in a relationship with someone who doesn’t know for sure that they want to marry you within 90 days of seeing one another, you’re with the wrong person.
It’s not that they are walking down the aisle on day 89, it’s that by that time they know you are the person they could see spending their life with, and they’re comfortable enough with that to continue to pursue a relationship with you.
Anything else is a waste of your f*cking time.
The problem isn’t that people can’t recognize a bad relationship when they’re in it.
The problem is that the “bad” is always muddled out with the good –– all the “signs” that you’re meant to be together, that heart-thumping ecstasy that you swear you’ve never felt with another living soul, the connection that you are convinced is a once-in-a-lifetime, never-going-to-find-this-again kind of thing.
But people who know they’re meant to be with someone don’t need to justify it. They don’t look for “signs.” They don’t list reasons. They don’t need to talk at length about their other-worldly connection.
They just are.
This is really brutal to accept only when you don’t realize what’s at stake, and that’s your time.
Kyle Cease says that the only thing that’s scary about change is that you can measure what you’re losing, but you cannot yet see what you’re going to gain. It’s not easy to muster up the faith to believe that your on-again-off-again, “maybe someday when it’s the ‘right’ time” relationship is going to be replaced with your goddamn soulmate, so I’m not going to try to convince you that it is.
But what you need to know is that someone who is truly in love with you will fear nothing more than losing you.
Someone who truly wants to be with you will do whatever they can, however they can, to make your relationship happen. They will defy any odd, resist any temptation, and disregard bullshit like timing and age and distance. That’s what real love does. It rearranges reality around it.
And so if you’re wasting your precious days and youth with someone who doesn’t love you enough to commit in the way you know your soulmate would leave.
Leaving will open a door in which anything is possible.
It might mean you’re by yourself for a while.
It might mean you cycle through a dozen more lukewarm partners.
You cannot know what’s next. You cannot peek around the corner. You cannot rest assured that the love of your life is weeks or months or even years away.
All you can know is that the person who doesn’t want to be with you immediately is not the person who wants to be with you, and leaving will do one of two things: it will smack them awake, or it will show you how easily they were willing to let you go. It will show you just how much of that relationship you were single-handedly sustaining.
There are no promises for any of us in a life, but this we can know for sure: taking up time and space with the wrong person wastes your time and theirs. It holds you back from what could be.
Relationships are complex, but this is straightforward: the person who you need to be with will be with you when they meet you. They will know, and so will you.
People often think that the opposite of being sure you want to be with someone is being sure you do not, but really, the opposite of that certainty is doubt.
Indecision is just a decision you just aren’t ready to come to terms with.
By Brianna Wiest for ThoughtCatalog