Does He Really Love You? Does It Matter?

How much time do you spend trying to figure out whether he really, really loves you?

However much, it is too much.

Even if our greatest scientists got together and fashioned a foolproof emotional thermometer, one that would tell you exactly how much he loves you, it would still not answer the real questions.

Like: will he marry you? Will he honor his commitment to you? Will he be loyal to you for better or for worse?

If you want to answer these questions, stop worrying about how intensely he loves you. Start asking yourself if he has good character.

A man who is madly in love will provide you with any one of a number of spontaneous thrills, but when push comes to shove, when the time comes to hunker down and domesticate and socialize that love, he will not be there for you.

Let’s assume that your man loves you. The only thing is: he loves you in his way not your way.

He does not need to be crazy about you, madly in love with you, and consumed with passion. He has to be trustworthy, reliable, responsible, and loyal.

You do not approach relationships the same way. You could not marry a man you did not really love. You may not love him to the point of insanity, but you will spend a considerable amount of time deciphering your own feelings. Is it love or lust or infatuation?

Sorry to have to break it to you, but he won’t be wondering about how deeply he loves you.

Whether he stays or goes does not depend on the intensity of his passion. It depends on his character and his ability to honor commitments. For you true love is where you live. For him, it is not. If you press the point, he will not know how to respond. You will take it personally and believe that he doesn’t love you.

You would be wrong. You were just knocking on the wrong door.

A man does not identify himself in a relationship as one who is giving love. He might see himself as your protector and provider; he might see himself as “the dude.” If all he can give you is love, he will feel that he is derelict in his more manly duties.

If he feels like he is madly in love, crazy about you, or driven to distraction by your charms, his mind will wake up one day and tell him that he is acting like a madman, like a crazy man, and that he had better start focusing on what matters in life: his job, his golf game, his buddies.

When he hangs out with the guys or is on the job, he is not going to be talking about how much he does or does not love you. In the world of men, confessing love is not legal tender.

Psychologists Lara Kammarath and Johanna Peetz have probed this question and discovered that there is a marked difference between a man who shows his true love by spontaneously sweeping you off for a weekend in Paris and a man who shows his love by maintaining household routines.

They explain that a man who remembers to do what he said three weeks ago is a much better bet than a man who forgets what he promised and then begs for forgiveness.

Of course, you want him to love you, but you really, really want him to mean it when he says it. Not only that, you want it to be a commitment, not an expression of a fleeting flight of fancy.

If you have to confirm every appointment because you are worried that he might have forgotten, then you have a problem... no matter how much he says he loves you. If you know he’ll be there, no matter what, you have found a man who is trustworthy and responsible, whose love is more likely to be real and to last.

You want to know how important you are to him and whether or not he is going to commit. Even more, you want to know whether he will stick with his commitment. Knowing how much he loves you will not answer those questions.

If he has made you an integral part of his life; if the two of you think and function as a team; if he is utterly reliable and trustworthy… then, you have found a love that is real, not mad or crazy, and that will have the best chance of enduring.