How to Know a Man Loves You (in That Deep, Soulmatey Sort of Way)
Do you know how I knew I was beginning to fall in love the last time it happened? It was in the way the trees looked more detailed and beautiful to me on the drive home one day. That’s how it happens. It’s not a feeling contained to the woman or anything I directly associate with her. My perception of the world deepens because her influence allows me access to parts of myself that are normally suppressed.
For most attractive young women, it’s not hard to attract at least some, if not most, men in a superficial way. They will initiate innocent conversations in the hopes that the discourse might turn flirtatious. They will throw every cheesy pickup line in the book at them if there’s a chance it might endear them. They will buy them drinks, thinking that it means they now owe them a minute of their attention. Some will even insist that they love them, that they can’t stop thinking about them, or that they’re the most beautiful woman they’ve ever seen.
After a while, women just expect it as a byproduct of their existence. They are valued by men just for being women—women who are just being.
Infatuation like this is easy, and in our superficial world, it is frequently mistaken for love. It’s only a small part of soulmatey love. We get preoccupied with it because this kind of affection is the most visible symptom. This is also why it’s what’s most often shown off in romantic media, like love stories. Horny young men can’t tell the difference between being physically attracted to a woman and genuinely loving her. Men are slaves to visual stimuli and their sexual impulses, at least until they learn to recognize and control them. Women quickly learn this about men and exploit it for social value.
To grow beyond this immature holding pattern between the sexes, it’s imperative that women being courted by men learn to distinguish real, mature love from infatuation and its even cruder cousin, lust.
Ladies, do you see a man become a better, more fully expressed version of himself around you as a direct consequence of your influence? Do you see that he cannot pull his heart away from you because you bring peace to his life and activate his potential? Do you make all the beauty in the universe come alive for him, such that your influence lingers on him like a scent even when you are gone? Are you like the sun to him, the origin of light and warmth that all life on Earth reveres, the source of all his superpowers?
That is how a man who wholly loves you will react to the fact of your existence. It is a holistic type of love, not fixated on how you look or treat him at opportune moments. You could do nothing to change it because it is integral to who you both are, the natural reaction of your mixing.
Of course, you should not fall into the common trap of thinking that romantic love is a one-sided affair and that it is a man’s sole burden to woo you, that you are some kind of prize to be won because you are the fairest maiden around. Romantic love is partnership. There is no room for princess worship and pedestal topping. Though a man might be the one to initially take the risk of pursuing the bond, it requires you to respond and reciprocate equally. And that requires you to be just as mature and self-developed as he is. Romanticism is a burden you bear together.