By Books Author Denise Turney
Love always involves a relationship. It could be a relationship with yourself, a relationship with a relative, or a relationship with a friend. However (and you know this from personal experience), the most emotionally charged relationship is the one that you have with an intimate partner.
How Love Signs Appear Within a Strong Romance
This bond fuels your brain with dopamine, filling you with excitement, expectation, happiness, arousal, and hope. Ignoring these rising, rocking emotions is near impossible, if not outright impossible. There’s so much to gain; there’s so much you could seemingly lose. Fortunately, early on there are signs that you could look for to potentially know if the relationship you’re in is built on real love, imagination, or falsehood.
Mutual Respect and Care – Both you and your beau should show genuine respect and care for one another. This means that neither of you cuts the other off mid-sentence, preferring to be interested enough to listen to each other fully. Afterall, you want to know what your lover is feeling and experiencing, something that can strengthen your connection. More examples of mutual respect and care include seeing yourself on the same level that you see your lover on, each of you holding one another in high regard, and being gracious and gentle with yourselves and each other.
Patience – Reasons for impatience range from eagerness to reduce fear, disrespect for others, and demand for situations to turn out in a certain way. Even if there are instances when you or your partner become impatient with the other because you’re afraid that an unwanted event might happen if you don’t hurry (e.g., fleeing a fire, removing a sharp object from a child), those occurrences should not happen often. And during these situations, you both should respect and care for one another.
Important Relationship Love Signs
Personal Responsibility – In a healthy relationship, you and your beau take full responsibility for your own lives. Blaming one another for how you feel, think, or behave is not what you do. You also don’t perceive the other person as your “savior” or as someone who can or should make you behave, think, or feel a certain way. Looking to another person to “save you” could be evidence that you’re infatuated. Psychology Today shares, “Generally speaking, infatuation doesn’t bode well for long-lasting relationships—think of a bright flame that burns hot, but burns out quickly. Why? Because when the object of our infatuation inevitably does something that pops the bubble of perfection in which we’ve placed them, the violation of our unrealistic expectations hits us hard.”1
Celebration of Life – Although you love each other, you’re busy celebrating life by engaging in activities that you enjoy, find rewarding, value, and appreciate. And you don’t pummel your beau with guilt, making them feel poorly if they don’t join you every time you go out. In other words, you might attend book club discussions, hiking trips, visit museums, and spend time with friends without your beau being present and vice versa. Celebrating your own life fills you with as much joy as sharing your life with your lover.
Safety and Freedom are True Love Signs
Safety – When you’re together, both of you feel safe. Threatening, injuring, or belittling each other is a no-no. Neither of you engage in these destructive, harmful, and unsafe behaviors. Even more, you hold each other in loving thoughts, not harming one another with attacking thoughts. Revisiting “celebration of life”, the real love that your partner and you share frees you both to feel empowered to speak openly and honestly without fear of reprimand or attack. About safety, Healthline shares, “Safety is a cornerstone of loving relationships. A partner who loves you won’t physically hurt you or damage your possessions. They also won’t threaten or pressure you into doing things you don’t want to do, make decisions for you, or cut you off from your social support.” Furthermore, “Feeling safe also means feeling free to make your own decisions and express yourself without fearing their response. When you share opinions and goals, you receive encouragement, not putdowns or criticism.”
Special Days – More than on special days like holidays and anniversaries, you express genuine love and affection toward each other. In fact, one or more times a day, without becoming obsessive, you perform small acts of care for each other (e.g., leaving your beau a “thank you” note, kissing the side of the other’s face, giving a flower, preparing a meal).
Freedom – Throughout the relationship both have the freedom to be authentic. Additionally, you both have the freedom to shift your life, including bringing the relationship to an end or changing the focus of the relationship. As an example, instead of continuing as a romantic couple, you might choose to become solely friends.
Rewarding Romantic Relationships
Romantic relationships are incredibly rewarding, sending you reeling with excitement and tremendous emotion. Yet if you’re not careful, what started out as a seemingly blissful experience could turn into disappointment, filling you with anger, disillusionment, and a lack of hope.
By looking for love signs you can become aware of what your romantic relationship is based on. Steer clear of trying to convince yourself that a bad relationship is actually a good relationship. After all, the last decision that you want to make while entering or continuing a romantic relationship is the decision to lie to yourself.
And you don’t need to lie to yourself. Doing so only blinds you to the truth. Letting go of the wrong relationship, regardless of how good it feels, is best. Releasing the wrong relationship because you choose to love yourself also opens you up to real love from a healthy partner.
Resources:
- True Signs of True Love | Psychology Today
- 12 Signs That Show Someone Loves You (healthline.com)
- Author Denise Turney’s Official Website – https://www.chistell.com
