How To Tell If It’s Love Or Lust: How Does Your Partner Really Feel?

‘Show, don’t tell’ is a very sound rule to apply to love, because although it can be easy to speak the words ‘I love you’ and sound as though you mean it the non-verbal signals of authentic love are much more difficult to replicate.

In longterm relationships I often hear: ‘Of course I love you, I’m here aren’t I?’, when one partner yearns for verbal reassurance. At the other end of a very long sliding scale are the people who love very deeply but find it hard to express those emotions is words or writing.

So if you’re feeling it but not hearing it, or if you’re being told but not shown the love, here’s a brief checklist of signs that could show whether they really do love you or not:

IT’S NOT REAL LOVE
•    THEY WHISPER ‘I LOVE YOU’ INTO YOUR EAR DURING SEX
When you genuinely love someone you should want to see and hear their reaction when you tell them you love them. It’s a two-way communication not an announcement for one, so by burrowing their face into your ear rather than checking your response and waiting for a verbal echo they could be signalling it’s not much more than a prompt for hotter sex.

•    THEY SAY ‘LOVE YOU!’ WHEN THEY SIGN OFF ON THE PHONE

This is pretty much a universal sign-off now so you shouldn’t get too excited or think you’re the ‘significant other’ in their life.

•    THEY SIT APART FROM YOU AND USE LOTS OF APPEALING EYE CONTACT WHEN SAYING: ‘I LOVE YOU’
Although this does involve some sort of intimacy the touch-free distance could imply a bit of a performance. Are their eyes round and pleading like a puppy’s? Is Xmas on the horizon or a birthday looming? If so they’re probably into manipulation mode, forcing you to watch their little ‘love’ performance in a bid to get a bigger present.

•    THEY ONLY TELL YOU THEY LOVE YOU IN FRONT OF OTHER PEOPLE
This sounds like an attempt to enhance their own profile by looking and sounding loving to impress the people around them. Some people love to boast about being in love to make their friends envious. If they really loved you they’d tell you in private too. Beware the Narcissist who performs the whole ‘love you’ thing primarily to make others admire them.

•    THEY ONLY TELL YOU WHEN YOU ARE ALONE

Love is such an overwhelmingly strong emotion that it’s quite natural to be wary about singing it from the highest rooftops or admitting it to your best friends. Some people can be genuinely in love but gently dismissive about their feelings in public.

However, if your partner’s behaviour borders on being dismissive of you or even embarrassed by you in public then it might be time to call a halt to the relationship no matter how many times they insist they love the bones of you once you’re alone.

•    THE ‘I SAID I DO, I’M MARRYING YOU, AREN’T I?’ OPTION
This is actually so vile it sends many loved-up people spinning into such a spiral of cognitive confusion that they end up assuming their partner has very deep feelings for them indeed.

Working under the assumption that no-one would say such a thing unless they didn’t mean it and that therefore they must be hiding emotions so deep and profound that they dare not speak them is a notion that usually only lasts until the honeymoon, when the penny starts to drop that they weren’t being ironic after all.

•    THE WRITTEN NOTE
Although not quite the same as a verbal protestation, the written ‘I love you’ should at least have been based on careful thought and also have been planned as a bit of a keepsake or even contract, rather than a more spontaneous verbal blurting-out.

Hand-written is the most romantic version but an e-mail or text will always do. Funnily enough though the most permanent form of the written message, i.e. the tattoo, is rarely a sign of mature, enduring romantic thought, rather a grand gesture from someone who is trying too hard to impress.

THE BODY LANGUAGE OF LOVE

•    SHYNESS SIGNALS
Real love tends to make us shy and giggly in the very earliest stages, no matter how mature we are. We find it hard to use sustained eye-gaze during the early days when we’re not sure the intense feelings are reciprocated, and even when they are we become shy about sharing the strength of those emotions with other people.

A couple in lust will often flirt, touch and even kiss openly and emphatically in public but someone who is deeply in love will usually be more tentative and awkward. When the passion is real it rarely gets shared or displayed to make others envious.

•    EYE CONTACT
The eye-gaze will often be intermittent in genuine love, although when they think you’re not looking they will stare for long periods of time. Once the first stages of the relationship are over though there is often a period of intense eye-to-eye gazing, when a couple in love will sit staring deep into one another’s eyes in a bid to read feelings and thoughts. Dates will tend to be intimate to allow for this, like a meal at a table for two.

When a relationship matures there is often a lessening of eye contact as the couple feel they can read thoughts and emotions without the need to gaze.

This is when the strong bonds of love involve subtle tie-signs, i.e. small glances, pats, touches or looks that form a complex communication of thoughts. This ‘tuning into one another’ is often such a subtle habit that the couple don’t see it as a sign of passionate love. In fact it can show stronger bonds of companionate love though.

•    PUPIL DILATION

A physiological symptom of love that can’t be replicated is pupil dilation when we gaze at the person we are in love with. This sign of very deep affection is impossible to perform.

•    THE LOOK OF LOVE
This is an unmistakable altering of the facial features to form a facial expression that is unique and only occurs when your partner looks at you. The eye expression softens and so do the muscles of the face to produce a warm smile that might be suppressed but which will be obvious to anyone watching. This is nature’s way of making us more attractive to the person we love.

•    MIRRORING
when we love someone we usually tune into their body language and pace of movement to the point where we use subconscious mirroring signals, which is why two people in love will often start to look like one another. This mimicry is a sign of deep rapport. If your partner copies your movements and even your laugh they are probably in love with you.

•    VOCAL PITCH
Just as a person in love will develop a ‘signature’ facial expression of love they will also usually also produce a signature ‘voice’ as well. Their tone and pitch will change when they speak to you and it will be a unique tone that is usually softer, warmer and a few notes lower that they use on other people.

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