How do you know when you're in love? Perhaps the better question is, “How do I know when I really love someone?” Feeling in love is merely emotional. Loving someone is a choice. According to the tripartite theory, love has three components: passion, intimacy, and commitment. When we consider the role that each of these components plays in our relationships, we can judge whether or not we truly love someone.
Passion is what attracts two people to each other at the beginning of a relationship. The passion of meeting someone new and falling in love fades with time, and if emotion is all you go by, it is easy to fall out of love when things get tough. I argue that love is more than an emotion. It is more than a warm fuzzy feeling you get when you hear a person's voice or see them smile. Love is more than a product of an instinctive and uncontrollable cocktail of neurotransmitters. That is merely attraction, and love goes much deeper than that. It is more than biological. Our ability to reason through our instincts is what makes us human. Let’s not downplay that. Emotions do not rule us.
Love requires conscious effort. This is where intimacy comes in. Intimacy is what forms as two people reveal themselves and accept each other’s confidences. It is a daily struggle of choosing to value another person for who they truly are despite quirks and foibles and the little things they do that annoy you. It is seeing the best in someone even at their worst, and being willing to help them develop their virtues and overcome their vices. Love accepts a person for who they are and treasures their uniqueness. It seeks to know a person deeply and intimately, and wishes for another person to oneself intimately as well.
Love sees the true potential of a person's soul and not the temporary state they are in at the present. Commitment develops over time and is the true indicator of whether a relationship will last. Love is not utterly dependent on how another person makes you feel. There are many days that I have been hurt by someone very close to me, but love means that we work through the pain to understand each other, find forgiveness, and set new boundaries to protect each other in the future. Love takes work. Sometimes you will be angry or jealous or frustrated, but love means that you don't immediately give up on someone when things get tough. It is not easy. If love was easy, everyone would find it .
This is where sacrifice and compromise play in to commitment. Love requires mutual and complete devotion to understanding and meeting the needs between two people. Two people must decide to place each other’s happiness and comfort above their own. They do their best to fulfill each other's wants and dreams. They must be willing to compromise when their desires conflict. I know I love someone when their happiness becomes conditional to my own, and I am willing to make sacrifices for them.
I cannot claim I understand love perfectly. Perfect love seems so far beyond me at times. 1 Corinthians describes love as this: Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but it rejoices at the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. I can only hope that I learn what this means and embody it over time as I find someone who will be patient and kind with me as we figure out how to love together.
