This Is How You Know You're Completely In Love, Not Just Lust
Here's how to know it's the real thing.
When you're really into someone physically, the way you really feel can get confusing pretty fast. The pure attraction is completely overwhelming. How do you tell the physical and the truly emotional apart? Here's some advice.
We asked: "How do you know when it's really love and not lust?", and you guys answered.
This is how you know you're completely in love, not lust:
1. You smile like an idiot
"When you smile like an idiot just thinking about them."
2. Two very different feelings
"When you truly never want to live without them. And just miss their presence instead of their body."
3. You don't always need to be intimate to have a good time
"When you don't care whether you are intimate with that person, all you want to do is spend time with them."
4. Being in love with someone makes them the most beautiful person in the world
"When they become perfect in your eyes ... but they really didn't change at all ... you did."
5. Their happiness is your happiness
"When what you want more than anything is for them to be happy, and everything else is just a bonus."
6. Intimacy without touching is possible
"When you sleep next to them totally naked but have no desire to be intimate."
7. Even doing nothing with them makes you happy
"When you can just sit next to each other, not even touching or talking, and feel completely happy and whole."
8. We have a higher patience for those we love
"It's love when they do stuff that would normally annoy the heck out of you but instead you think it's adorable."
9. You love their mind
"When you can just sit and talk for hours without feeling it needs the physical accent."
10. Push each other to be your best
"When you know all their faults and still love them when you want a future with them and want to help them become better individuals."
11. You feel calm
"When it's not a bunch of emotional fireworks and it's just true unconditional caring and sacrifice as if the person was a friend."
12. You still think about them
"Touch yourself. If you think about the after in the same way, it's more than lust."
13. A connection on a deeper level
"When you still can't stop thinking about them even after intimacy."
14. You can't wait to see them
"Love is when you can wait to see them naked. Lust is you do everything you can to get them naked."
15. You still love them after a haircut
"When a bad haircut doesn't change a thing."
16. Sometimes you just automatically know the difference
"That moment when you tell someone you're catching feelings ... it's lust, not love. But my body doesn't get it."
17. Open relationships are a way to learn how to differentiate
"I've learned from being in an open relationship, I only love my primary gf but I lust after many others. I lust my FWBs."
18. Even if you're unsure if it's love or lust, just enjoy the ride
"I may not know the difference between love and lust but what we have right now feels good and I don't want it to stop."
Sloane Solomon is a professional writer, editor, and former contributor to YourTango. She has had her work published on Yahoo, MSN, and other outlets.