How did you know it was love?

My heart would skip a bit when I saw her or heard her voice. I’d walk around with a perpetual goofy grin. I’d wonder what she was up to, when I was going about my day. I’d think about holding her at night, when I was by my lonesome. Her and I could just be lounging on the sofa, I’d be playing with her, not having to say anything—and I’d be in heaven.

The sex was amazing. (It always better when you feel something for the other person)

I couldn’t think about anyone (or anything) else but him. I was excited to see calls and texts from him when I woke up, during class, when I was on my way home, before bed, etc. I couldn’t wait until the next time I was with him and wanted to spend more time with him than I did. I wanted to talk about him all the time and tell everyone how amazing he was. My heart would race when I was around him (or even thinking of him). The kisses were just… perfect.

After spending 3 hours together, I never wanted to be away form her. I knew that it was not a typical attraction.

The first time we kissed my body flamed, and I realized I had never felt such an attraction and such a need.

But I knew it was truly love, a love that would last forever, when she stood by me during a very difficult situation, and I let her take care of me—something I had never allowed to happen before.

I thought it was love but now I am beginning to think I was wrong.

At the end of the night I didn’t have to pay her.

Aww, exactly what @Allie said. To a T. It’s hard to even explain because it’s just a feeling you get…or at least, a feeling I got in my stomach and I just knew it was right. It’s a beautiful thing!

I felt comfortable being myself in front of my bloke and didn’t mind him being himself either!

@jmah – sounds surreal.

@Allie – but… what about the bad times?

@jackm – you’ll find it one day. (:

@gashgai – D: first of all, I doubt I’d hire a prostitute. second, do they make guy ones? xD

@sakura – was it forever?

@troubleinharlem You figure it out and get through it. Just because you two hit a rough patch doesn’t mean you don’t love them. Quite the opposite, if you love them you do anything you can to get back to the good times (as opposed to giving up and leaving).

@Allie – (: Thanks.

He met my family and still wanted to be with me :)

When I started dating my wife Belinda, I really wanted to date someone else, but she was involved. After about 6 months, the other girl became available, we went out a few times (it is very unlike me to date 2 women at once). I decided I had to break up with Belinda, and subsequentially realized I couldn’t, that I felt too strongly about her. Shocked me to realize I was in love with her.

I first thought it was love when I got that giddy feeling when I saw him – when he’d come up to where I was working, purposely buying some stupid thing so I’d ring him up. I thought it was love when I got the courage to tell him I had a crush on him, and when he worked up the courage to ask me out. I thought it was love when, on our first date, we didn’t want to go home so we went on Part II, making the date last hours longer than it was supposed to. (No, we didn’t have sex, silly.) I thought it was love the first time we kissed goodnight. I thought it was love when I couldn’t think about anyone else, no matter what I was doing.

I was wrong.

Those are just crazy hormones.

I knew it was love when we went out for our second “date anniversary” and he found some sly way to ask for my ring size. I knew it was love when he started walking down the aisle before me and kept trying to sneak looks backwards so he could see me following him. I knew it was love when he changed the flat tire in the rain and didn’t ask for help. I know it’s love when he licks the plate after dinner and tells me it was good, even when it wasn’t. I know it’s love when he manages our 401K and takes the trash out and farts in his sleep.

That giddy stuff? That’s swirling hormones playing havoc with the brain chemistry. That’s horniness and the novelty of the new. I’d had that before with every boy- or girlfriend when it was new. And then it wears off and we come back to earth and someone leaves a wet towel on the bathroom floor and you fight about it and you realize they’re not the one so you dump ‘em and go for the next giddy lay.

No, it’s love when they leave the wet towel on the floor and you don’t mind because that’s small potatoes in the grand scheme and you know you’ll be spending your life together anyway. It’s love when they remember you hate a wet towel on the floor and don’t put it there in the first place because your wishes and needs are important to them. It’s when they do the crap jobs right next to you, like when he helped me plant the garden last Spring because he knew I could use the help with heavy lifting and he likes what I grow too. It’s when we make plans for the future knowing it’s not going to fall through before then. It’s when I feel more complete with him, but not incomplete without him. It’s when we lay on the bed, naked in the summer, our hair tangled up together, sweating in the godawful heat and laughing and miserable and glad to be together more than anything else. Yeah, that’s love.

@filmfann – awee. break out the tissues.

@erikaVT – I’m sure they’re fine.

@laureth – exactly what I wanted to hear. or read. perfect.

@laureth – can I great answer your answer more than once? xD

@laureth I completely agree. I think it’s great love when you lose all sense of time and space.

I think it’s love when you have your first fight, and you both still would rather be fighting each other than doing anything else. It’s love when you know you can fight and you will get through it, because you’re both committed to the relationship.

Other things are romantic. Other things might be hormones. Sure, you might be obsessed with the object of your affection. All that is easy until you have your first serious disagreement. If you get through that, then you know the relationship has legs.

All I have to do is think about him and I feel giddy. To this day (nearly two years after we met), whenever I see him, I catch my breath. I knew the minute I laid eyes on him, he was the one I was waiting for. I knew we would be together forever when I realized that together, we are more of the sum of our parts. But mostly I could tell by the smell. I love being close enough to smell him, he is the best smell in the entire world. You can tell true love by the smell.

I felt as if I finally woke up, as if the kinds of things I dreamt about in a partner didn’t exist in my then husband but existed in this person whom I’ve never met in person and only spoke to on the internet…

When I realized that love wasn’t a passive thing that happened to me, beyond my ability to control it, that’s when I knew I was in love.

In other words, I knew it was love, when I chose to love her. And I continue to choose.

Most days that choice is simple—she’s fantastic. Beautiful, smart, hilarious, etc. I wonder how I ever lived without her.

Other days, it’s not so easy. Especially since we live so far apart (separate hemispheres). Relationships are tough. Long, long, long-distance relationships even more so. Realizing that we have the power to control our relationships is incredibly liberating. No longer am I controlled by the wishy-washiness of my feelings. I’m in control. I choose to love or not. Love is not the butterflies. Love is leaving my computer on all night so she can skype me when she gets home, even though I have to go to work at 4 a.m.

Love is not over when I stop feeling the way I felt when we first started dating. Love is a continual choice I make to do the best for her. Like I said, most days that choice is easy. Love starts when I make the choice, even when my feelings tell me not to bother.

@troubleinharlem we are still together, 13 years this time!!

@Poser – You’re right, love is a choice and going against your feelings. What about your heart and your mind?

I knew it was love the first time we had a conversation. I stood out in a parking lot until 2 in the morning without a coat just to hear what he had to say. I knew it was love the first time we had a major fight, and he stuck around afterward. I really knew when he agreed to take a road trip with my parents and spent 50 hours in a car listening to Disney songs.

I know when I’m trying to tell myself it isn’t, when I am finding myself making conscious efforts to guard my feelings from the loved person until I become comfortable my feelings are genuine rather than infatuation. In the past I’ve been accused of not speaking up quickly enough when the other person has said, “The Words” but I like to give them the most respect and most honor by really trusting my feelings first and not playing with anyone elses feelings lightly.

@troubleinharlem—I didn’t mean to say that I was going against my feelings. I still have very strong feelings for her, even after almost three years. But they aren’t the same feelings I had when we first met and started dating. They aren’t the same feelings I’m going to have when I’m 70. The feelings change, but the love remains. Mistaking love for feelings invites the idea that you can fall out of love. I just don’t buy that.

My intellect says that being with her, marrying her, staying with her despite a seemingly insurmountable distance is the right thing to do. I think she is the most amazing woman I’ve ever met—and I can say that completely objectively. Even if I wasn’t in love with her, I’d still believe it. That is why, even when my feelings change, or those times when she acts completely batshit insane, I still love her. Because I know, in my mind, that she is “the one.”

My “heart” is fine. It beats strongly in my chest. I cut way down on eating red meat about two years ago, so that’s gotta make it feel good. And I stay pretty active, so I think my heart will be okay for some time to come. I do need to take care of it, though, as heart disease runs in both sides of my family.

(That’s a smart-assed way of saying that I don’t really know what people mean when they refer to their “heart” as if it serves some purpose other than supplying blood flow to all parts of one’s body. There are two basic parts to one’s decision-making process, feelings and reason, and both reside in your mind. Well, I’m not sure some people are rational, but they are at least capable of rational thought. I think).

It must’ve been love, but it’s over now.