There is more than one way to answer this.
My best friend sits across from me with an invisible notepad and imaginary pen in hand. “So out of curiosity,” she begins, “How do you know you’re in love with someone, like you know, for future reference?”.
A few seconds pass and I do not respond, trying to dust the cobwebs off my heart and remove the spiders from my veins, trying to feel again what I once before felt for someone else.
“There is no simple answer to describe it,” I tell her. “Being in love is a collection of poetry, written by unalike authors. Everyone experiences it differently.”
Instead, I have made a compiled list of answers, for you, my best friend, from various ages to explain to you that there is more than one way to know.
“Honestly, there was just something in me that knew he was the person I would be with for the rest of my life. Although both of us didn’t talk to each other for a few months after we first met, I knew that I did not want to be without him. Because of that, I reached out to him again (We’ve been dating for seven years now and will be getting married next November), all because I knew.” -Female, 32
“When you love someone, you are completely comfortable with them. You can turn to them for anything and you will never feel like a burden.” -Female, 21
“When you love someone, you just know. Love isn’t butterflies, love isn’t obsession, love isn’t possession or protection. Love is when you realize you can’t bare a day without them in your life. Love is the thought of losing them that makes your heart physically ache. Love is the willingness to drop anything and everything for that person. When you realize these things, you love them.” -Female, 22
“There are many different forms of love. It goes from small acts like sharing your food and watching TV with a certain person, all the way to getting married or starting a family. There’s familial love, friendly love, complicated love, lustful love, and innocent love. The list goes on and on, but the important part is being able to differentiate between.” -Male, 22
“Being in love is like a switch that once it’s on, good luck. You wake up one day to an encouraging note left on your dresser from your significant other to help you take on the day. Falling in love with someone isn’t about romance. It’s smaller things than that. Like “Hey. I know you worked late and are tired, so I made you your favorite dinner”. Falling in love is about self-less acts for your significant other, or keeping them grounded when they need it. Or just because things – “Like hey, I bought you a new key lanyard to match your car”. If you choose to go through life with a person, these small things will (more than likely) continue to happen, and then one day, whether it’s you just waking up, watching TV, brushing your teeth or even perhaps washing the dishes – it hits you and you just say to yourself “Wow. I’m in love with this person”. -Female, 28
“You know you’re in love when you can care about the other person more than yourself.” -Male, 36
“What it comes down to is you enjoy being around them. When you’re in love with someone, you love everything about them, including their imperfections. You would not have them any other way. Nothing, out of a severe circumstance, can separate two people that are in love with each other.” -Male, 34
“Being in love is being determined to make a relationship work with someone else. Today, society easily gives up when relationships become challenging. If I would have given up, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to spend the last 56 years with my best friend by my side. In the last 56 years, we have spent our time together, doing the things we love. God has truly blessed us.” -Female, 74
“When you are happy together, you know you’re in love.” -Male, 80
“When someone else’s happiness is more important than your own.” -Male, 60
“I remember the exact moment I knew. He took me to a restaurant when we were only dating and we sat talking about general things. In this simplicity, I remember sitting there thinking ‘This is the person. This is my guy’ and I have been in love with him ever since that day.” – Female, 55
“I remember being in love would be waking up and falling asleep with her on my mind. She always made me happy.” -Male, 21
“There are people I think I’ll always care about and if that’s love, then I’ve had it. But to me, being in love is so much more than just love. I’ve loved some people more than others, but I’ve never really been in love. I think of that as super passionate and something that never really ends and doesn’t really lose its intensity, though it might change in some ways. To me, relationships and flings I’ve had were great, but all of them went from feeling a connection with a person to feeling nothing different than I feel for everyone else in my life and I don’t think that’s what being in love is.” -Female, 19
“After sending each other letters back and forth for two years, I knew I was in love with him when he officially came home from the service. When we met for the first time in person, there was a feeling inside of knowing, perhaps knowing we were meant to be together. I never thought about where we would end up, I just knew that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. This then lead to three boys, a bunch of grandkids and 60 wedding anniversaries. The funny thing is, despite the fact that we communicated solely through letters for two years, he knew he was in love with me right away too. I guess you know when you know and that in itself is magical.” -Female, 86
“With varying definitions of what ‘being in love’ means, there is no textbook definition or poem that could compare to how I have only once before felt. While some automatically know that they’re in love, I can honestly say that I did not. The only way for me to truly tell was to be forced to fall out of love, which was one of the saddest lessons I have ever had to learn. It is a pity really, to not really know what you have until it’s gone. I often find myself now trying to remember what it feels like, trying to remember what he felt like, but due to the amount of time that has passed, the feeling of being in love is absent and so is he. However, my loss recognizes a detail of love that no one seems to mention: sacrifice; the art of loving someone and having to let things go, sometimes having to let them go. While I know love is unworldly and sacred, I have learned that it is not meant to be held captive or caged within one’s chest. It is meant to be given, received and understood fully, even when it departs and there is not a specific reason for why it has to leave. But it will and despite the universe’s pleas to beg it to stay, you cannot. Even if the universe threatens that you may never feel the same way for someone else again, they must go and because you love them, you must let them and there is no sadder explanation.” – Female, 19
“Wow…” My best friend stares at me in awe. “So what one are you?” she asks.
I pause for a moment, reflecting. “Well you see,” I begin.
“There’s a little bit of me in every one of them. There is no answer I disagree with. I have felt what others have felt to varying degrees. But know that if love dares to return to me someday again, it may return with welcoming arms and the same bright-eyed smile, perhaps with a different emotion or perhaps with another definition of being in love all over again.”
By Hannah Marie Cole for TheOdyssey