How do I know if it’s love

I often get asked how do I know if it’s love?

Is it the comfort, the spark, the alignment of values, the ease of conversation?

Is it when someone feels familiar, or when they make you feel more like yourself?

We spend so much time trying to identify love that we forget love isn’t always a feeling we recognize at first sight.

Sometimes, love doesn’t arrive as a rush. It arrives as a slow unfolding.

It’s not always intensity that tells you it’s love.

Sometimes, it’s peace.

Sometimes, it’s curiosity.

Sometimes, it’s the quiet realization that you don’t need to protect yourself around them.

*Love isn’t supposed to erase you. It’s supposed to expand you*

You’ll know it’s love when you start _discovering parts of you that had gone quite the softer, braver, more patient ones_

When you can speak your truth without fear of being misunderstood.

When you feel seen not just for who you show, but for who you are when the mask slips.

Love isn’t about finding someone who fills the silence.

It’s about someone who makes the silence feel safe.

We often confuse anxiety for attraction.

That constant wondering - Will they call? Do they like me? Am I enough? is not love. It’s activation.

Love doesn’t create chaos in your nervous system.

It brings calm to it.

When it’s love, you don’t have to chase certainty, you feel it in the small consistencies:

the texts that don’t leave you hanging, the tone that doesn’t make you doubt yourself, the care that doesn’t fluctuate with mood.

Love feels safe enough to be boring sometimes. And that’s okay.

Many of us enter relationships wanting to know to define, predict, and protect.

But love isn’t meant to be known right away. It’s meant to be discovered.

When you meet someone and find yourself curious, not to analyze, but to understand that’s love beginning in its truest form.

You stop asking, “What if they hurt me?”

And start wondering, “Who are they, really?”

You stop managing outcomes and start observing connections.

You stop trying to hold love tightly and start learning how to meet it gently.

Curiosity is what keeps love from becoming projection.

It reminds you that every person is a universe you cannot fully map and that’s the beauty of it.

Love doesn’t arrive to heal your wounds; it arrives to reveal them.

And the right person won’t run when they see your tender spots they’ll meet them with care.

You’ll know it’s love when your defenses soften instead of heighten.

When conflict doesn’t mean collapse.

When you can be wrong without feeling small.

Real love doesn’t fix you it holds space for you to fix yourself.

If you’re unsure whether it’s love, choose curiosity over fear.

But remember curiosity doesn’t mean walking yourself over.

It doesn’t mean ignoring your boundaries or silencing your intuition in the name of understanding.

Curiosity means staying open while staying rooted.

It’s the gentle space between self-protection and self-betrayal - the place where you can ask:

“What is this connection showing me about me?”

It’s not just curiosity about the other person it’s curiosity within yourself, around yourself, with yourself.

Notice how your body responds around them.

Notice who you become in their presence more alive, more small, more grounded, more anxious.

Stay with those sensations. They’re telling you truths about your inner world.

Real curiosity is twofold:

It seeks to understand the other while remaining in deep conversation with yourself.

It asks,

• “What is this dynamic teaching me?”

• “What part of me gets activated here?”

• “Am I listening to understand, or to convince myself?”

So yes, be curious. But stay awake to yourself as you do.

Because curiosity without self-awareness turns into overextension.

And curiosity with self-awareness becomes discernment the kind of awareness that protects without closing off, that loves without losing self.

In the End

You’ll know it’s love not because it feels perfect, but because it feels alive.

It stretches you. It steadies you. It asks you to stay curious when it would be easier to label, to run, to guard.

Maybe that’s all love really is a sacred curiosity about another soul, met with tenderness instead of defense.

And maybe you don’t need to find love at all.

You just need to stay open enough to recognize it when it quietly finds you.