The first months of a new relationship can feel like when a rip tide takes you under during a surf session. We are never taught about being in love growing up, it's mind-blowing, the water tumbles you around for some unknown amount of time where you don't know which direction is up, and then it eventually spits you out, gasping for air.Once the infatuation phase is over, you can see with clearer eyes as to whether or not you want to continue on in the relationship.Here are the three biggest things you should be looking for in order to tell the difference between being in love and actually loving someone.:Advertisements1. Wanting them vs. wanting the absolute best for themWhen you're in love with someone, and you're being hit by wave after wave of all of the dizzyingly addictive happy brain chemicals, you sometimes feel dependent on their presence in order to feel extra-super-happy. You want to be around them as much as possible. Your entire being lights up when you see them in your vicinity.When you truly love someone in a clean, unattached way, there is an overwhelming sense of wanting the absolute best for them.If you are in partnership with them, it becomes part of your personal mission to help them to grow and expand to the greatest possible fullness of who they are. And if you aren't in a relationship with them (because you never were or because you no longer are), you still cheer them on from afar and want them to be as free and expansive asthey can be.RELATED For The Ladies!! 12 Steps To Deal With Heartbreak The Right WayTrue love is wanting the absolute best for someone, even if what is best for them is to not bein a relationship with you. True love wants them to soar and not be weighed down by anything thatdoesn't fully serve them. True love is unselfish. True love serves the person being loved on every level.So if you find yourself thinking, "I have never wanted better things for a person than I do for them… ever," then there's a very good chance that you have a clean, authentic love for this person. And if you're lucky enough for them to also want to be with you, then you have found something beautiful and resilient.2. Peak and valley vs. slow growth over timeDoes your love slowly grow with time or does it slowly fade away with time?Research has shown that over a sixty year period of time, "passionate love" spikes in the first 6 to 12 months of a relationship and then peters off rapidly, whereas "companionate love" only grows with time. I wrote about this particular phenomenon in my article, "Kindling vs. Coal: How To Know If Your Relationship Will Last."3. You fall out of love with them when the chemical rush is over vs. you never stop loving them and cheering them on whether you're with them or notPut simply, your feelings of being in love either ends or it doesn't. In order to have a long-term relationship work, you and your partner need to have physical, emotional, and intellectual compatibility. If you have one or two out of the three, your intimate partnership will undoubtedly always feel like something is lacking or unfulfilling.RELATED 11 Types Of Relationships. Which Are You In?So if you find your love feelings fading away rapidly after you get spit out the other end of the initial infatuation phase, then you were probably only "in love." But if you feel a more grounded, resilient kind of love for them that will always be present, regardless of whether or not you are fighting, in the same room as each other, or even in a relationship with one another, then you're more likely to be actually loving them.Remember, true love doesn't grasp. It doesn't say, "I will only love you if you are mine/if you 'make' me feel loved 100 percent of the time/if you act inthis specific way that I need you to." True love liberates. It makes the person that you love more themselves than they've ever been. It helps them move towards their authentic selves and away from their masks, should-thinking, and compromising.
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