Clifton Kopp
If you’re lucky enough to be in love, congratulations – you’ve found your forever person and half the world’s population is jealous of you.
What you might not realize, though, is that being in love can change the way you act. And I’m not just talking about how it can convince you to part with your hard-earned money for bouquets of flowers.
When we fall in love, everything changes. We start to adopt the mannerisms of our significant other and to change the way we see the world. We also start to pick up all sorts of little habits that we’re often not even aware of.
And that brings us to the theme of today’s article. Let’s take a look at ten things that you don’t realize you’re doing because you’re in love.
1) Smiling all the time
When you’re in love, you tend to smile a lot. And that’s only natural.
The interesting thing about smiling is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Even if we’re sad, if we smile then it can lift our mood and make us happier. And given that people who are in love tend to be happy already, you can imagine the effect that this has upon them.
When my girlfriend and I first started dating, her family could tell whether she was messaging me based upon whether she was smiling or not. Even today, her face lights up when she sees me, especially when we haven’t been together for a while.
And so if your face is starting to hurt because you’ve been smiling so much, it could well be a sign that you’re in love.
2) Making sacrifices and compromises
When we’re single, we tend to put ourselves first, especially if we don’t have any children or pets that are relying upon us.
But that all changes when we enter a relationship. Suddenly, we’re responsible for the happiness of someone else, and when we’re in love with them, we take that responsibility seriously. We go out of our way to make sure that we’re making our partner as happy as we can.
This often means making sacrifices and compromises. This can range in scale from watching their choice of movie instead of your own to moving to a new country if they’re offered a big promotion. The key here is communication – the two of you need to talk about these sacrifices and compromises to make sure that you’re both on the same page.
No relationship can go the distance without compromise.
3) Daydreaming about them
When you’re in love and you’re away from your significant other, don’t be surprised if you find yourself thinking about them during the quieter moments in your day.
For example, you might find yourself thinking about them as you stare out of the window during your commute. You’ll likely start to imagine what you’re going to do the next time the two of you are together, and you might even start to make plans for the future.
When you daydream about them, you’ll probably start smiling, and that will lead to all of those physiological and mental benefits that we just talked about. Perhaps that’s the evolutionary reason why we daydream so much. But that’s just a theory.
Regardless, daydreaming about your significant other is always a sure sign that you’re in love.
4) Planning for a future together
When you and your partner are planning a future together, it’s a sure sign that you see each other as forever partners.
Planning a future starts with daydreaming and builds from there, because a daydream is just that – a dream. When you start planning a future, you make concrete plans and start looking at things like prices and availability.
For example, if two people are daydreaming about having kids, they’ll just fantasize about what that would be like when they have a little downtime. When two people are planning kids for their future, they’ll start to save money, shortlist names and look at ovulation cycles.
And so if you and your partner find yourselves planning a future together, there’s a good chance that the two of you are in love.
5) Feeling calm and self-assured
In the early days of a relationship, it’s pretty natural for you to feel tense around the other person. It’s not that you don’t trust them, but rather that you want them to think the best of you.
After that initial honeymoon period is over, you and your partner will start to feel more at ease in each other’s company. You’ll feel calm and self-assured, able to take on the world because you know that no matter what happens, your partner has got your back.
This feeling is hard to describe to someone who’s never experienced it. Just know that when you do feel it, it’s like having liquid serenity poured down your throat and you’ll feel like a superhuman. People will notice the difference in you.
And of course, if you do feel that sense of serenity and self-assurance, it’s a clear sign that you’re deeply in love.
6) Becoming interested in their hobbies
When you love someone, you tend to take a deep interest in everything they do. That covers everything from their professional life to the hobbies they have.
It’s the hobbies in particular that we want to talk about here. In my experience, when two partners are interested in the same hobby, there’s one of the two of them that’s driving the passion and the interest. And that’s okay.
The important thing is that one partner is demonstrating an interest in the other partner’s interests purely because the other partner is interested in it. For example, I’ve ended up playing a bunch of online games that I wouldn’t normally have bothered with because my girlfriend plays them and I want to play them with her.
And all because I’m in love with her.
7) Becoming more sentimental
Phew, that last point got me feeling sentimental, and that leads nicely to this one.
People who are in love tend to get sentimental about pretty much everything. For example, they’ll look back nostalgically at the beginning of their relationship or they’ll celebrate all of the little anniversaries.
They’ll often keep little souvenirs and trinkets, too. For example, my partner and I save receipts from our dates and days out and add them all to a scrapbook, where we scribble down a few notes about what we got up to.
Different people get sentimental in different ways, and it’s not for me to list them all out here. Just rest assured that if you’re sentimental about your relationship, you’re not alone – and you’re probably in love.
8) Feeling protective towards the other person
When you’re in love, you’ll naturally feel protective towards the other person in your relationship.
This protectiveness is one of the reasons why people feel so safe when they’re with their significant other. There’s a very good reason for this, because when you’re in a relationship with someone, the two of you are a team. You’re duty-bound to protect each other.
Of course, we’re also protective towards our children and towards our pets, and the interesting thing about that is that it’s another form of love. True, it’s not romantic love, but love is love and this is just further proof that if you love someone, you’ll try to protect them.
In fact, the same is even true of how we feel about our possessions.
9) Noticing and remembering little details
When we’re in love, we notice every little detail. Interestingly, we notice details about the other person, as well as more general details about the world around us.
But noticing these details is only part of the story. We all notice things, but the people in love tend to remember them, and they often give them more weight than they otherwise might have due to that leaning towards sentimentality.
It’s all about the little things. What we might normally see as a coincidence will take on new importance to us, purely because we’re in love. When we say the same thing as our partner at the same time, it becomes confirmation that we’re soul-mates, rather than a funny little coincidence.
Logically, it makes no sense. But we’re human beings, and logic goes out the window when we’re in love.
10) Feeling more inspired
I’m not sure if this is true for everyone else and people in other disciplines, but it’s certainly true for me as a writer.
When I’m in love, I feel more inspired to work on my books. I have more ideas and more energy to execute those ideas, and I’m even excited to work for my clients. Everything seems more fun and more appealing, in part because I know when I’ve finished work, I can spend time with the person I love.
Different people experience this inspiration in different ways. You just have to take a look at the classic poets to see what they did with their inspiration – they took it and wrote about the people they loved. But you don’t have to make a sculpture or write an album of music about your partner to be inspired by them.
You just have to take that inspiration and use it to build a better life for the two of you.
