‘I love you. Those three little words hold a ton of meaning and saying them first in a relationship can be intimidating.
If you want to tell if your man loves you without waiting for him to verbalize it, we can help. We’ll show you some things that all men do when they’re in love.
1. Slowing Down
When you’re spending time with the object of your affection, sometimes it feels like time is flying by but in reality, if a man is in love with you, he is going to slow way down at least when it comes to walking.
Considering that most men are taller and have longer legs than most women, they tend to move along faster than we do. But rather than hoping we catch up with them, men who are in love will slow down to match your pace.
Scientists have studied the way men walk when they’re alone with a friend or with a significant other.
When men walk along with a woman they have platonic feelings toward, they don’t significantly change their pace and walk much the same way they do when they’re alone. However, when they walk with someone they have romantic feelings for they significantly change the pace to keep time with their partner.
From a biological standpoint, this makes total sense the reproductive systems of women are sensitive to energy disturbances, and being overly exhausted can make it difficult to conceive. Therefore, it makes sense that men would have evolved to take on the energetic burden to compensate for their female partners so that they can conserve energy.
2. Words
According to various studies, both men and women say that they believe women fall in love faster than men do. They also believe that women are usually the first to say those three little words, I love you.
These beliefs are pervasive in our books, television shows, and movies, but according to science, they’re also wrong. Studies have shown that men report falling in love faster than their female partners and expressing it sooner.
Again, from a biological perspective, it makes total sense that women would be choosier about their potential partners than men. After all, women have a lot to lose in terms of potential reproduction by committing years of their lives to the wrong men. We have a finite number of eggs and a limited window of fertility, which men don’t have to worry about.
Although they may not like to admit it, men desire close loving relationships with other humans just like women do. So it makes sense that if a man loves you, he’ll tell you. Many women make excuses that the man they like is shy, cautious, or complicated. But in reality, if a man loves you, he will make it clear in no uncertain terms, and he will probably do so before you’re even ready to confess your love.
3. Feeling No Pain
Strangely enough, there are a lot of health benefits to being in love, especially for men. Being in love can give you a pretty cool superpower, feeling less pain.
Researchers at Stanford University study the response of the brain to pain under various conditions. Participants were placed in brain scanners while their hands were heated to various levels using metal rods.
They were exposed to pain while looking at photos of their friends while doing a distracting task and while looking at photos of their beloveds. It turns out that if a man is in love looking at a picture of his loved one can reduce the amount of moderate pain he feels by as much as 40% and when it comes to severe pain, it reduces it by about 10 to 15%.
Interestingly enough, being distracted does help mitigate pain as well, just not as much, and the distraction and the photo of a loved one affect the pain signals traveling through the brain in totally different ways.
We know the popular culture makes it seem that being head over heels in love isn’t manly, but considering it gives men a pretty cool superpower. We think that stereotype needs to change.
4. Grossness Override
If you think about it, human beings are pretty darn gross. Even if you do your best to be clean. You’re walking around covered in germs, you occasionally get smelly and your noses are filled with boogers.
Yet when we meet someone we love, we want to match our germ cover tongues together, which objectively is pretty gross.
You might be wondering why our brains can override all of our natural aversions to germs when we get close to someone, and that’s because of love. No, really. You’re wondering why your boyfriend is cool with being around you at your most disgusting it’s because he’s really into you.
Scientists have done studies in which they intentionally caused a group of people to become aroused and then force them to do disgusting tasks. These include drinking a beverage with a bug in it picking up dirty tissue and more things that most people would never want to do.
The participants who were the most aroused were far less likely to report being disgusted than people who weren’t. Disgust is an emotion just like any other and it turns out that feeling love and arousal towards someone overrides feelings of being grossed out.
Sure for most people, there’s a limit but if a guy is fine picking up your dirty tissues, he’s probably smitten.
5. Symptoms
Our feelings seem so natural to us but behind the scenes, our bodies are undergoing a ton of chemical reactions. The great poets of our time to shop want to compare love to a drug, and that’s honestly pretty accurate.
When a man falls in love, it’s similar to the feeling of being addicted to a drug. It is a surge of euphoria when your brain creates chemicals such as dopamine, oxytocin, and adrenaline. These help you bond with your partner and often increase the more you spend time together.
They also manifest physical symptoms that you may be able to spot.
Common Signs of someone in love are flushed cheeks, dilated pupils, sweaty palms, and a racing heartbeat. Your pupils dilate because of the stimulation in the sympathetic branch of your nervous system, which affects your eyes and it turns out that you really can feel lovesick, it’s not abnormal to feel uneasy or lose your appetite when you’re falling in love.
It’s often the result of the stress hormone cortisol contracting the blood vessels in your stomach. Thankfully, as you become more comfortable with your crush, this generally goes away. It can flare up on emotional occasions, though, and explains why so many grooms just don’t feel hungry on their wedding days.
6. Trouble Sleeping
If you’re lying awake in bed, replaying that great day over and over again in your head. Odds are good that your date is as well.
That’s because being in love can make it extremely difficult to fall asleep. Yes, it sounds strange but a man who is unable to fall asleep at night might just be in love. We know that falling in love can make us feel exhilarated and euphoric.
Those emotions aren’t compatible with getting a sound night of sleep. When men fall in love their energy levels skyrocket and they can concentrate. They also have that addiction response to love, which means that they just want to be with, look at and think about the object of their affection.
If you looked at a scan of the human brain at this time, you would see heightened activity in dopamine-heavy areas. These areas are your brain’s natural reward system and are the reason you feel pleasure in life.
Your brain is so focused on the high of feeling crazy and love that it just can’t change course and concentrate on going to sleep.
Men in love report getting much less sleep than those who are not, although the sleep that they do get is often of superior quality. This could explain why your man sometimes sends you texts at the very odd hours of the night or super early in the morning, boys.
7. Voice Change
By now you know that your body undergoes a lot of changes when you fall in love. But did you know that even your voice can change? Think about a time when you were hanging out with a friend when they got a phone call from their significant other, you probably didn’t think much about it but we bet the voice changed once they started talking to their partner.
Studies are done about the effects of love on voice, and people can tell by listening to only two seconds of audio whether the person is speaking to a friend or a lover.
When a man is in love with you. He will saw consciously change the tone of his voice to mimic yours. If you notice a man is speaking to you in a higher voice than he uses for talking to his friends he’s likely smitten.
As for women, we tend to make our voices lower pitched when we are talking to someone that we are interested in.
Mimicking is a pretty big part of how we express our affection and interest even if it’s subconscious most of the time. It indicates a desire for closeness and intimacy with the person you’re emulating.
8. One-track mind
There’s an old trope that men love dating crazy women. But to men in love, it’s often easy to ignore all of the bright red flags that are obvious to absolutely everyone else.
Have you ever had someone who loves you describe you as perfect even when you know full well you aren’t?
When a man is in love with you he will focus on the positive qualities you possess instead of becoming bogged down with your negative traits.
It turns out that being blinded by love is a real thing because of the elevated levels of dopamine you experience when in love. In addition to that, your brain also gets a spike in central norepinephrine which helps you remember your stimuli better.
We tend to get bogged down by negative opinions about ourselves and to us, our applause can seem overwhelming. But when someone loves you their brains make sure that the flaws that seem so huge, you are minimized.
If you’ve ever wondered why a friend is dating someone with habits you find irritating that’s because they’re in love. In addition to thinking less a man in love will also believe that you’re unique compared to other women.
The dopamine in his brain makes it easy to focus his attention on you and difficult to pay attention to anyone else.
9. Time Management
It seems like all couples go through a phase when they first meet when they just can’t get enough of each other.
When men are in love, it’s like they feel addicted and they want to spend most of their time being with you.
People who are in love, admit to spending as much as 85% of their day thinking or talking about the object of their affection. Sure to avoid coming across as clingy and maintaining order in our lives. Most people know not to 100% Indulge these feelings, but a man in love will want to spend as much time with his partner as possible and that’s because of what is going on inside his brain.
He’s being affected by something known as intrusive thinking and it’s a form of obsessive behavior. With all that dopamine floating around, central serotonin can dip causing him to feel like he’s obsessed with you.
He may even suffer from a mild form of separation anxiety when you’re away.
While this all may be flattering, make sure that it isn’t going too far. Some people use the excuse of love to push people for overly fast involvement and take their jealousy and possessiveness way too far.
1O. Compassionate Love
Being in love is all well and good but there are different types of love that you can experience. Most of us want to have a healthy relationship with a partner who is empathetic to our needs.
For that, you need a type of love that is known as compassionate love. It’s a huge sign of a healthy relationship and it means that your partner has a vested interest in making you happy.
How can you tell if your partner has compassionate love for you?
If they go out of their way to make you happy, even if it isn’t the best option for them, this can even be little things like giving up your last bite of ice cream so that you can enjoy it, or maybe they offer you their coat when you’re cold even if that means they freeze.
When a man is experiencing this type of love, this sacrifice doesn’t seem like much of one to him because he takes joy in pleasing his partner. Romantic love gets a lot of airtime but compassionate love is the hallmark of successful couples and happy long-term relationships.
Have you ever suffered from mixed signals when it comes to love?
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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
What Does Being in Love and Loving Someone Really Mean? | My 9-Year-Old Accidentally Explained Why His Mom Divorced Me | The One Thing Men Want More Than Sex | The Internal Struggle Men Battle in Silence |
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