People Who Are With Someone Genuinely Meant For Them Will Notice These 17 Signs Right Off The Bat
When you're with the right person, you won't have to guess.
Shayna Douglas | Unsplash If you've asked yourself if you're really in love, you're far from alone. Trying to identify clear signs you're falling in love with your person, or solid proof that this person you're dating is your genuine, true soulmate, is one of the most complicated aspects of romantic relationships.
The key to understanding your own love life, however, lies in finding the space to simply allow yourself the freedom to be, feel, and experience. Genuine love is about expanding our personal sphere to include others, and we do that by making more room to love ourselves. By allowing all of our feelings to exist without wishing away those that make us uncomfortable, we allow others to love us in return.
People who are with someone genuinely meant for them will notice these 17 signs right off the bat:
1. You care more about having a relationship than you do about being right
I have done informal research for many years on couples who have not just long-lasting relationships, but fulfilling ones. One of the best pieces of wisdom I got was from a woman who had been married for over 60 years. When asked what her secret was, she replied, “I let him think he was in charge.”
Relationships deteriorate when they become a battle of wills. Your relationship should be a haven of safety and support, not a battleground in enemy territory. And the fact that you put your relationship before needing to be correct all the time shows that you've found a keeper.
2. You love your partner because of their imperfections, not despite
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There are varying degrees of perfectionism, though we all have at least a bit of it. It’s important to strive for greatness and not settle on a partner just because you want to be with someone. Settling always comes back to bite you and erodes your self-esteem over time.
Yet even when you find the person you want to spend your life with, you will be exposed to their imperfections, which can be hard to handle at times. And let’s face it, some people’s imperfections are just not for you, and that’s okay!
But with your current partner, you accept all their "flaws" and see them for who they truly are deep down. Studies show that self-compassionate individuals who accept their own imperfections also demonstrate greater acceptance of their romantic partner's flaws, suggesting that the ability to embrace both your own and your partner's humanity creates a deeper connection.
3. You patiently allow the relationship to unfold
You have realized that forcing things would only harm the love developing between the two of you. Forcing and grasping are signs of fear and desperation. The Law of Attraction brings to you the same energy you carry, so operating from a negative state brings you more negativity.
Forcing implies a lack of trust and gratitude, the two highest and most abundant spiritual states. What’s yours will come to you if you allow it, but it can’t get in when your fists are clenched and clinging. Being open and patient with the way your relationship unfolds is a sign that you feel genuine love.
4. You realize you're the one who needs to change when the going gets tough
It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking other people need to change — that if only they behaved better, your life would be easier — but the journey is about changing yourself, not others. Research found that when people acknowledged the need to change, they experienced significant improvements in their relationship skills, but changes only occurred after this crucial recognition.
If you can find in yourself what you dislike in others and make the change in yourself you wish to see in them, you change the relationship indirectly by changing the way they react to you. They will feel your earnest efforts to create harmonious relations. Most of all, you will evolve to a higher level within yourself, which is one of the main purposes of love and partnership.
5. You prioritize 'emotional attunement' with your partner
Relationships are largely based on subtle communication between two people. When you fall in love, you want to get to know all the nuances of your partner and provide them with what they need to feel safe and secure.
The way you establish safety and security is to be emotionally attuned to them. Gottman's decades of research show that emotional attunement allows couples to process and move on from negative emotional events, creating stronger relationships.
Understanding their inner world and reflecting it to them, along with being sensitive to their needs and trigger points, is how you establish attunement. When you fall in love, you're motivated to make this process a priority.
6. You value growing your relationship more than you do staying busy
Relationships are different from those endeavors that involve a start and completion date. Rather than moving through tasks, falling in love requires that you slow down and enjoy each moment and process.
When you take things one day at a time, you allow yourself to live in each loving moment with your partner. And because you value your relationship, you become okay with getting off task, as well as taking time to listen to the messages and signs around and within you.
7. You allow cooperation and mutual respect to take the lead
Love is a two-way street. Anytime there is a number greater than one, there can be harmony or discord, depending on how things mix. Almost everything in the universe operates in a harmonious rhythm, including the human body. When the body is out of balance, it becomes diseased, and the same is true in relationships.
When you’re falling in love, you seek harmony with your partner. This doesn't mean conflicts never arise. That would be unreal, and it would keep you stagnant.
But when strife does occur, you're highly motivated to find what it has to teach you, and to learn and grow accordingly, thereby creating harmony once again. Each time, the harmony becomes fuller because both partners expand their capacity to love through the process.
8. Something feels like family about them
You have similar interests and backgrounds, and the person you share a bed with feels like family to you when you're in love. It may even feel like you've known each other your entire lives. But with them, you know you feel at "home."
Being somehow connected by tribe, generation, or another part of your identity allows you to merge into a feeling of oneness and familiarity more easily. Young adults raised in positive family climates tend to replicate these patterns in romantic relationships, research has found, with the family relationship serving as the first intimate relationship that shapes how people approach later connections.
9. You want to grow old together
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When you're genuinely in love, you merge with your partner. While you still have your independent life, thoughts, and soul, part of you is changed forever, in a way similar to when you become a parent.
You can never go back to who you were before them, nor do you want to, and you never want to be without them. It means you're at a point in your life and your relationship where you need them to be part of every aspect of your life.
It's not that you want to be literally joined at the hip, but you do want to stay together even when you make the transition of leaving this life.
10. You realize they don't create your happiness — they add to it
You're past the stage of thinking someone is going to make you happy. And you know that your happiness isn't defined by whether or not you're in a relationship. You know that you are the one who has to make yourself happy, and you take ultimate responsibility for this accordingly.
When you're with someone genuinely meant for you, you've moved beyond this unrealistic expectation. This autonomy actually facilitates both happiness and wellness in relationships, because you're bringing your whole, self-determined self to the partnership rather than looking to your partner to complete you, research has concluded.
11. You forgive each other
Close, long-term relationships require a lot of forgiveness, as we all have evil within us. Not the kind of evil that comes from a demonic source, but evil caused by ignorance, self-absorption, prejudice, past baggage, and projections. Everyone will hurt you, and the closer you are to someone and the longer your relationship with them lasts, the quantity and depth of hurt will increase.
When you're able to forgive your partner, you're genuinely falling in love with them. We each have a different threshold of what’s forgivable and what isn't. Ultimately, you're the authority on your own life and must decide what is and is not forgivable.
12. Your intimacy is a deeply spiritual and emotional
When you merge into a connection beyond the physical, you're falling in love. When you're intimate with one another, it's more than just a physical connection; you're moving beyond that realm and into something way deeper.
You're uniting with another person in invisible ways, which is what love is — invisible, but very real. Studies show that spiritual intimacy continues to predict relationship satisfaction and commitment even after controlling for emotional intimacy, suggesting it captures elements of romantic relationships that may otherwise go unnoticed by typical measures of communication or emotional closeness.
13. You exist in an atmosphere of trust
Any betrayal, no matter how small, is repaired as soon as possible. You can love someone you don’t trust, but the love will be impaired because you will be living in fear. Likewise, it will be very difficult for you to feel loved by someone you don’t trust.
Trust serves as the essential foundation for genuine intimacy and lasting love. Research confirms that trust is essential for establishing stable and fulfilling romantic relationships between partners.
Betrayal happens in all sorts of subtle ways between partners and erodes the level of love between them. When you're genuinely falling in love with someone, you both do everything possible to create and sustain trust.
14. You have shared values and plans for the future
Without shared values and a shared vision for what's to come, your relationship has nowhere to go. When your values align and you see a future together, it creates space for you to fall in love.
Research shows that couples who share similar values experience greater interpersonal attraction and enhanced relationship satisfaction. Goal-oriented couples report thirty percent greater satisfaction in their relationships compared to those without shared goals.
You're falling in love with your soulmate because you can envision a future together. No matter where life takes you, you know that you will get through ups and downs with this person by your side.
15. You laugh about their annoying qualities, rather than feel repulsed
If you get annoyed about anything in life, you will get annoyed by some of your partner’s traits. Wherever you go, there you are, so all the feelings that arise in you when you're single will still arise in you with a partner.
When you genuinely fall in love with someone, you can laugh at their annoying qualities, or at least brush them off a good deal of the time. If they are so repulsive that you can’t tolerate them, you’re probably not really in love with them (and you may even have some repressed self-repulsion associated with the specific behavior that bothers you).
16. You feel more sensitive than you did before meeting them
Similar to being a parent, when you're in love, you feel more vulnerable and tender overall. Your sensitivity has become heightened because you're in genuine, true love with your soulmate. And it's a good feeling.
You're responsible to someone else, and you're vulnerable to them. Your heart is exposed, and that is a normal part of falling in love. Romantic love doesn't increase general sensitivity across the board, but instead generates a heightened awareness of your specific partner, one study explained, which in turn increases your sensitivity to them and anything related to them.
17. You invest time, emotion, and energy into the relationship
We put energy into what we want to see you grow. When you put energy into a relationship, it's a sign of your hope that the love will continue.
According to one study, as investment size increases, commitment to the relationship deepens, making partners more likely to work through challenges rather than considering dissolution. When one partner invests their resources into the relationship, the other partner tends to appreciate that person more and subsequently feels more willing to stay in that relationship.
Heather Hans, LCSW, MBA, is a Public Speaker, Licensed Psychotherapist, Intuitive Coach, Holistic Healer, and author of The Heart of Self-Love. Dr. Hans has appeared on multiple news stations and has been featured in Forbes, Fast Company, and PopSugar.
