Love isn’t always clear-cut. Sometimes, it’s confusing and downright blinding!
I know I’ve had my fair share of being blinded in relationships.
Clarity usually only comes when you’re on the other side of it all, when all is said and done and it’s over for good.
Thankfully, you don’t have to wait for hindsight to know if someone is right for you.
Relationship experts have studied the “love is blind” phenomenon time and time again. In their research, they’ve found that when a relationship is truly right for you, there will be signs.
Just like there will be when a person ISN’T right for you.
When you’re with someone who’s genuinely “the one”, watch out for these things:
1) You feel content around them
When someone is truly right for you, the first sign is pretty obvious. You’ll feel happy.
There won’t be crazy highs or depressive lows when you’re around them. You’ll simply feel content in their presence, like you were always supposed to be together.
Contentment is hard to define unless you’ve felt it. Some experts say there’s a fine line between contentment and complacent.
Contentment feels like an underlying respect for each other, an awareness of when things change, an understanding of the other person, and a commitment to continuously invest in the relationship.
Complacent is when you feel so comfortable that you don’t have to try or make any effort with your partner. Which is, of course, very different and not a good sign…
2) You feel relaxed when you’re not with them
Ever heard of the anxious-avoidant trap? Everyone has different attachment styles. Some people are anxious in relationships while others are avoidants.
In very loose terms, avoidants fear intimacy. They have moments of closeness and moments of withdrawal. Anxious people fear abandonment, so they crave closeness.
When someone withdraws after showing love, it can trigger anxiousness in someone with an anxious or even secure attachment style.
Feeling this way is the first sign that someone isn’t right for you.
Some experts believe that you can work through the anxious-avoidant trap, but it isn’t easy. You both trigger each other, which is why it’s called the “trap”.
Whereas if your attachment styles are compatible, you won’t feel anxious when you’re not with them. You’ll feel relaxed when they’re around and when they’re not.
3) You don’t get anxious about how they feel
Surely we’ve all dated someone who we’ve worried about how they really feel? Even if it was just a high school boyfriend or girlfriend.
You’ll worry that something’s off about the compliments they give you. When they tell you they love you, you still don’t believe it.
Many experts say that you should trust gut feelings in love, especially when you’re concerned about how your partner really feels about you.
Personally, I’m a huge believer in this, too! Countless times, I had a gut feeling that something wasn’t right with someone I was dating and it turned out to be true.
Which is why if you NEVER worry about how they really feel about you, you aren’t just naïve. Things are definitely more secure than you realize!
4) You don’t obsess over them
Speaking of high school, didn’t we all have a secret crush that we slightly obsessed over? This kind of behavior fizzles down the older we get, but it can still be pretty prevalent in adult relationships!
Obsession in relationships looks like constantly checking their last seen, always counting the minutes between their last replies, and letting them occupy ALL your brain space so there’s no room left for anything else!
Sure, experts say it’s normal to think about the person you love a LOT. But true love shouldn’t be so intoxicating that it takes over your entire life.
If it does, it might be lust, not love. And this person really might not be right for you…
5) You open up freely
It isn’t easy to open up to people, especially when you’re a guarded person. But even when you’ve been burned before, I bet there are still SOME people you just naturally talk to more than others, right?
This is because you have a connection with these people. You trust them for one reason or another. It might be because of how they make you feel or because of how you feel about them.
When it’s true love, it’s both. Which is exactly why you feel comfortable opening up and talking freely about your life, your past, and even your traumas with this person.
6) You feel connected on a deeper, emotional level
Speaking of deep conversations, this isn’t the only ingredient you need to build an emotional connection with someone.
Experts say that in relationships, you BOTH need to talk deeply and communicate more to create such an intimate connection.
This is hard to decipher. I’ve dated people who I’ve felt I could open up to, but never felt like THEY truly opened up to me. While I felt connected to them, I never felt a deep, emotional connection between the two of us – together.
If you know what I mean by that, you’ve probably felt this way before. In these instances, something might not be truly right with the relationship.
But if you’ve got no clue what I’m talking about when it comes to your relationship, and you couldn’t feel more connected emotionally, they’re probably the one!
7) You don’t fear the future
What about the idea of marriage? Kids? Or just growing old together? Does the idea of these things fill you with absolute dread? Does it make you want to run away and end it all right now?
Does it make you feel sad? Like you can’t really see it happening with this person?
You guessed it – those are all bad signs. Experts say it doesn’t necessarily mean the relationship is doomed.
If you’ve always felt this way, no matter who you’ve been with or when you’ve been single, you might have commitment issues.
But when these fears have appeared out of nowhere and have never been there before, this might be because something isn’t right between the two of you.
Your brain is just trying to tell you that before you get any further into things…
8) You know exactly what you want with them
Speaking of the future, when the relationship is truly right, you know what you want – and it’s them.
Sure, you may have very small moments of doubt at certain times of your life. Like when you’re going through a big change or if someone else in your life does something drastic that you’ve always wanted to do.
But these moments are incredibly rare and usually very fleeting. Day to day, you know that you want to be with them and you want it for the long run.
The opposite of this is feeling unsure, never truly wanting to commit, or even convincing yourself it’s the “right person, wrong time”. When really, they just aren’t right for you – not now, not ever.
9) You work through issues
Every relationship has its issues. No relationship is perfect – argument or hiccup-free. You have to commit to working through challenges, differences of opinion, and even love languages in any relationship.
When you’re with the right person, you actually work through issues that crop up.
When misunderstandings happen or someone gets upset, you both care about each other and want to make things work.
You both are OK with apologizing when you need to and feel willing to make changes when it’s for the good of the relationship.
You don’t feel like you’re always the one making changes or trying to progress things, while they do nothing at all…
10) You feel respected
No good relationship can exist without respect. When someone is truly right for you, they’ll respect you and you’ll feel it.
Sometimes it’s hard to know what respect looks like. Defining disrespect is sometimes a lot easier.
When your partner doesn’t respect you, experts say they’ll lie, stonewall, put you down, pressure you, threaten you, try to control you, behave disloyally, or criticize the person you are.
Respect is harder to notice, but you should feel it when you have it in your relationship.
You’ll feel supported when it comes to your goals and listened to in daily life. You’ll feel like you can say no and they’ll honor it. Most importantly, you’ll feel valued – like you really, really mean something in their life.
Final thoughts
Like I said earlier, love is downright confusing sometimes. I know when I finally met the right person for me, I still had my doubts.
I knew how content and connected I felt when it came to our relationship, but past traumas niggled away at me from time to time.
Separating the triggers from the gut feelings isn’t always easy, which is why the view of the experts can always help.
When you recognize these signs in your relationship, your worries might just be coming from the past, not the present.
When you don’t relate to any of these things, how you feel might be a gut feeling you’re trying not to face. And as hard as it is, it might be time to start facing them!
