How Can I Tell I'm In Love

It is a very common question, "How can I tell I'm in love?", but it is not an easy question to answer. What feels like love to one person may be nothing more than attraction to another. Some people fall in and out of love quickly and often while others are never really in love as much as they are in lust. This can get confusing when you are a teen because romantic love is a relatively new concept for you and you don't know what to expect. You are overwhelmed with all sorts of new feelings and social pressures. They are confusing. What is love? What makes you want a romantic relationship with one person and not another? How does your heart choose a partner? Why does love end? These questions can't be easily answered.

One of the most confusing quasi-love feelings is lust. Lust is a very powerful, very intense feeling of physical attraction toward another person. Lust is mainly sexual in nature - the attraction is superficial based on instant chemistry rather than genuine caring. Usually we lust after people we do not know well, people we still feel comfortable fantasizing about. It is very common for people to confuse lust for love. But why? What is it about lust and love that make them so easy to mix up? If lust is all about sex, how can a relationship without sex be about lust? Teens struggle with this because they see lust in the Biblical sense, but lust isn't that sinister. Lust is about physical attraction and acting ONLY on physical attraction. Love is about much more than that. Yet many teens (and to be fair, many adults) confuse an intense attraction for some sort if divine love. For teens, since feelings of attraction are still new and since pop-culture sells sex and love as one package, it is very easy to get the two mixed up.

Lust is clearly not love. Love is based on more than just physical attraction. Sure, attraction is a factor, but love goes deeper than that. Love is based on caring, friendship, commitment and trust. When you are in love it is as if you have your best most trusted friend at your side AND you feel physically attracted to them. It is the best of both worlds! Love is a shared feeling between two people who have a vested interest in one anothers happiness. Love is not about jealousy. It is not about conflict. It is not about testing. Love is a positive feeling. If it is tainted by mistrust, jealousy, insecurity or spitefulness it is not really love but merely a pale copy. Love is the total surrender of your heart to another person with the security of knowing they will treat it better than you will. Love should feel good. It should not feel bad. Love should make you want to be a better person, it should not lead you to do something self destructive. Love is not demanding of your spirit but lifts it and makes it glow. Love is a good thing. Anything less is lust, deep friendship or attraction. So the sappiness aside, the question remains, how can you tell you are in love?

There is no easy way to find the truth behind your feelings or the feelings of another person but there are some tell-tale signs that love is blooming (or growing deeper). If you agree with 7 of the following 9 statements you are probably in love.

1. You know, because you have been told by your significant other, that your deep feelings are returned in kind.
   
2. The object of your affections makes you feel special and good about yourself.
   
3. If/when you feel jealous it is always fleeting; you trust your partner not to betray you or hurt your relationship.
   
4. Nothing makes you feel as serene as when you and your partner are together.
   
5. When you fight with your partner you usually make up within a few hours and you always agree that nothing is more important than you both being able to express your true feelings (even if they sometimes cause conflict).
   
6. Your partner never asks you to choose between him/her and your loyalties to your family and friends - if you do choose him/her over them, you always have a good reason and it is always YOUR decision, and your decision alone.
   
7. Neither you or your partner feel the need to test the other's loyalties or feelings.
   
8. You are more yourself when with your partner than you are with anybody else.
   
9. If sex is part of your relationship it is by mutual desire and agreement without the slightest hint of commitment testing or persuasion.

Top 10 Fact On Love

Love

1. Love does not hurt. Physical and/or emotional abuse are not a part of love.


2. Love is not manipulative, it should not be used to get others to do what you want. You should never give in to demands
   based on the, "You would do it if you loved me!" tactic.


3. Love is an intense feeling of caring for another person. It can take many different forms (romantic, friendly, familial) but
   it is always about caring.


4. Although it is true that a big part of love is putting another person's happiness ahead of your own this never
   includes compromising your values or being untrue to yourself.



5. If somebody asks you to do something that you don't want to do in order to "prove" your love they do not love you the way
   you might think they do. When you love another person you don't ask them to sacrifice a part of themselves in the name of that love.


6. It is very easy to confuse lust for love. The true measure of romantic love is commitment and trust not
   physical attraction.


7. It is possible to feel romantic love for more than one person at a given time. Just think, if it is possible for you to love
   both of your parents at the same time why would it be impossible to feel romantic love for two people at once? Don't beat
   yourself up emotionally if you find yourself in this unhappy situation. But be sure to remain single and be open and honest
   with all parties about your feelings and confusion.


8. Sex is NOT love. Love is NOT sex. Sex can be a part of romantic love but it is never mandatory.


9. Romantic love can (and often does) fade. When it goes there is not always a reason. When somebody falls out of love
   with you it does not reflect upon your value as a person or your desirability.



10. Love should make you feel happy, secure and appreciated.

How Do I Make Him Love Me?

Question:

I have a big crush on this guy in a grade higher than me. We don't have any classes together but we are both in band and on the school paper. I know I love him because I just can't get him off of my mind. At a party I confessed my true feelings and he told me he liked me too - as a friend. He said he just wanted us to be friends right now. I really, really want to be with him, how do I make him love me?

Answer:

You are suffering from a killer one-sided crush, also known as "unrequited love", and there really isn't much you can do to change it into a relationship. I'll be blunt. You can not make somebody love you. You can't even make them like you. There are no magic spells or secret tricks that will make a person suddenly feel for you the way you feel for them. Love doesn't work like that (and thank the sweet stars above that it doesn't!). Love, when it is real and returned, is one of the most amazing feelings you will ever experience. Although it is hard to accept that this person doesn't return your feelings, it may help you to know that the pain you now feel will be erased from your heart when you find someone who does love you back.

Now back to the issue at hand, coping with your current crush. Since he has made his feelings for you clear, namely that he wants to be friends, you really only have one choice. You have to honor his feelings and wishes. You do however have options as to exactly how you handle the "friendship situation". You can swallow your feelings, move on and work on having "just a friendship" with this guy or, you can harbour your feelings and hope that the future will see your friendship turn romantic. Either way, the one thing you should do is actively take him up on his offer of friendship in spite of your deeper feelings.

Take heart, all is not lost! Friendship is always a good place to start. Right now he only knows a "one dimensional" you, as your friendship progresses he will come to see your many sides. With time, his feelings may even deepen into romatic interest. You say that the two of you are not in any classes together so it is entirely possible that his "Let's be friends!" comment is not a mere brush off, but a bonafide offer. He may want to start as friends because he doesn't know you well enough to have any deeper feelings (a sign that he is a good guy BTW), or he may be using the "friendship line" as a brush off (a sign that he is NOT a good guy BTW). You can't be certain which of these is true until you make a go of the friendship. Work from the premise that he really wants a friendship with you until he indicates otherwise.

By becoming his friend you get the opportunity let him see a new side of you, and you get to see a new side of him. In getting closer you may even fall into a relationship. Of course, the opposite is also true. As you get to know him better your crush, which is built on a fantasy not a reality, may disappear and you may lose interest in him. There are no guarantees that your feelings will stay the same through your burgeoning friendship. There are also no guarantees that his current feelings will change into love. After you become friends you may end up exactly where you are right now, in a one-sided love affair. But at this point in time, what have you got to lose? At the very least you gain a closer acquaintance and at the most you'll get your man!

Love Quotations

"Attention is the most basic form of love; through it we bless and are blessed." - John Tarrant

"We love because it's the only true adventure." - Nikki Giovanni

"Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it, and it darts away." - Dorothy Parker

"Love is friendship set on fire." - unknown

"Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing." - Goethe

"To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia." - H.L. Mencken

"Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it...It really is worth fighting for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk everything, you risk even more." - Erica Jong

"Sometimes love is stronger than a man's convictions." - Isaac Bashevis Singer

"Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness." - Oliver Wendell Holmes

"Maybe love is like luck. You have to go all the way to find it." - Robert Mitchum

"Love stretches your heart and makes you big inside." - Margaret Walker

"Love has no awareness of merit or demerit; it has no scale... Love loves; this is its nature."

- Howard Thurman

"Love is like war: Easy to begin but hard to end." - Anonymous

"Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other."

- Rainer Maria Rilke

"Where love is, no room is too small." - Talmud

"Loves makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place." - Zora Neale Hurston

"Love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired." - Mark Twain

"To love is to receive a glimpse of heaven." - Karen Sunde

"A love song is just a caress set to music." - Sigmund Romberg

"Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit." - Peter Ustinov

"Love is like a violin. The music may stop now and then, but the strings remain forever."

- unknown

"Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence."

- Erich Fromm

"In the final analysis, love is the only reflection of man's worth."

- Bill Wundram, Iowa Quad Cities Times

"Love doesn't make the world go round, love is what makes the ride worthwhile."

- Elizabeth Browning

"Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song, A medley of extemporanea; And love is a thing that can never go wrong; And I am Marie of Roumania." - Dorothy Parker

"To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer. To suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy then is to suffer. But suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness. I hope you're getting this down." - Woody Allen

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Loving A Person And Loving God

What is LOVE?


Loving another person is not separate from loving God.

One is a single wave, the other is the ocean.


Contemplate love every day. Loving reflections
make the heart grow.

Surrender to love as a guiding force.


Love never forces. Love is intelligent and brings only what you need.

The awakening of true love lies in finding peace within passion and
passion within peace.


To feel beauty is to know that truth. To know the truth is to be in love.


Your marriage is a play of the divine.

Two souls pretend to be separate for the sheer joy of coming together in love.

The highest expression of love is creativity.

Love doesn't need reason. It speaks from the irrational wisdom of the heart.

A heart that has learned to trust can be at rest in the world.

Love is attention without judgement.
In its natural state, attention
only appreciates.

Love is the beginning of the journey, its end and the journey itself.

Love is like water. If it doesn't flow, it stagnates.

The mind judges what is good or bad. Love brings only good.


True love is here and now.

Whatever you can remember or anticipate is only a shadow of love.