Personal Journal

 

August 12, 2021

Day 15 – August 12, 2021

I didn’t write in my journal yesterday because I was busy processing what I am feeling. I felt sick to my stomach most of yesterday. Lewis and I didn’t talk much. I assume that he was busy, but of course, my insecurities are raging. Has he decided that being with me isn’t what he wants and he just doesn’t know how to say it? Maybe he’s realized that I’m not as amazing as he thinks. It could be that he’s been playing me all along. After going through all of that, I tell myself to calm down and realize that he’s been upfront with me from the beginning. He is self-employed and unlike me, his business seems to be successful. He is working.

I’m not the kind of person who wants someone to be in their back pocket all the time. I don’t need constant attention to know that everything is okay. So, why am I feeling like this? Me being the analytical freak that I am, I googled and looked for signs that I’m in love with someone. Sure enough, I’m exhibiting nearly all the signs of a person falling in 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 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.

  8. 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.

  9. 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.

  10. 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 insuring that the couple's courtship is not interrupted until conception has occurred.

  11. 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]."

  12. 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.)

  13. 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.

How can that be? It’s only been a week that we’ve been chatting. We’ve had three phone conversations, all lasting less than a few minutes. These feelings and this behavior are why I have avoided getting close to men before now. I don’t think I can handle this.