Falling In Love

How do you know you are falling in love with someone?

There are actual signs proven by scientists that indicate when someone is falling in love. As a romance writer, I create fictional stories that include some of the symptoms that I’ll share with you later. I will be the first to admit that I have only experienced these feelings once before. I was seventeen and through a friend was introduced to a sophomore in college. He was gorgeous and caused an upset in my brain and body that I had never experienced. The problem was that I was invisible to him. Eventually, I got over my feelings and his lack of them and I moved on with my life.

Over the years that passed, I have had a few relationships and care for others, but none of them game me the feelings close to what I felt for my seventeen-year-old love. At fifty-one I had come to the realization that it wasn’t possible for me to find someone that gave me those feelings. That I was more likely to die alone than to know real romantic love.

I’ve recently met someone via an online dating site. It’s been a little over a week and I’m having those feelings again. I’m a very rational and analytical person. I’ve been feeling sick to my stomach, especially when I don’t speak or text with him for a while. A while for me is more than four hours. That’s partly his fault. He’s been very consistent. He says good morning to me every day. Then he checks in a few times during the day. After work, we chat until bedtime.

I’m certain that I have feelings for him. I decided to see if there was scientific proof that I’m falling in love with this man. What I found is that there are thirteen scientifically proven signs of love.

13 Scientifically Proven Signs of Love

1. When you're in love, you begin to think your beloved is unique. The belief is coupled with an inability to feel romantic passion for anyone else.

2. People who are truly in love tend to focus on the positive qualities of their beloved while overlooking his or her negative traits.

3. As is well known, falling in love often leads to emotional and physiological instability. You bounce between exhilaration, euphoria, increased energy, sleeplessness, loss of appetite, trembling, a racing heart, and accelerated breathing, as well as anxiety, panic, and feelings of despair when your relationship suffers even the smallest setback.

4. Going through some sort of adversity with another person tends to intensify the romantic attraction.

5. People who are in love report that they spend, on average, more than 85 percent of their waking hours musing over their "love object,"

6. People in love regularly exhibit signs of emotional dependency on their relationship, including possessiveness, jealousy, fear of rejection, and separation anxiety. (The italicized is what I’m feeling).

7. They also long for emotional union with their beloved, seeking out ways to get closer and day-dreaming about their future together.

Another love expert, Lucy Brown, a neuroscientist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, says this drive to be with another person is sort of like our drive toward water and other things we need to survive.

1. People who are in love generally feel a powerful sense of empathy toward their beloved, feeling the other person's pain as their own and being willing to sacrifice anything for the other person.

2. Falling in love is marked by a tendency to reorder your daily priorities and/or change your clothing, mannerisms, habits, or values so that they better align with those of your beloved.

3. Those who are deeply in love typically experience sexual desire for their beloved, but there are strong emotional strings attached: The longing for sex is coupled with possessiveness, a desire for sexual exclusivity, and extreme jealousy when the partner is suspected of infidelity. This possessiveness is thought to have evolved so that an in-love person will compel his or her partner to spurn other suitors, thereby ensuring that the couple's courtship is not interrupted until conception has occurred.

4. While the desire for sexual union is important to people in love, the craving for emotional union takes precedence. A study found that 64 percent of people in love (the same percentage for both sexes) disagreed with the statement, "Sex is the most important part of my relationship with [my partner]."

5. Fisher and her colleagues found that individuals who report being "in love" commonly say their passion is involuntary and uncontrollable. (Since we are in different states, I am not experiencing this.)

6. Unfortunately, being in love usually doesn't last forever. It's an impermanent state that either evolves into a long-term, codependent relationship that psychologists call "attachment," or it dissipates, and the relationship dissolves. If there are physical or social barriers inhibiting partners from seeing one another regularly — for example, if the relationship is long-distance — then the "in love" phase generally lasts longer than it would otherwise.

According to science, I’ve fallen in love with this man, and we haven’t met face to face yet. The romantic in me isn’t surprised, but the analytical untrusting part of me wants to know what is wrong with us (me).  

I would love to know about your experiences falling in love.