Why do you need to know if someone you love is in love with you or not?

To you, it may sound like an obvious thing, but to those of you who feel so unselfish that you think whether you’re loved back or not shouldn’t matter, read on. It matters. It matters A LOT. To most normal people, this post is an unnecessary read. Read it anyway, just in case, but don’t be surprised if I say things that should be obvious.

Let me ask you this? Would you want to be in a relationship with someone who you are not in love with? I would be willing to bet, that everyone says no, I would not. Even then, there are a lot of people who think that the person who IS LOVED in a relationship is the one who has it good. They get to be detached while the other person worships the ground they walk on. As fun as it may sound, it is actually not much fun at all. In fact, it’s so much not fun, that a lot of people expect to be PAID for being worshipped like that. Many women, for example, are expecting men to pay for the privilege of loving them, FOR A GOOD REASON. Sex with a person you’re not in love with is abusive. Friendship with a person you don’t love is WORK.

If you further expect loyalty and fidelity from this person, you will CERTAINLY put them in a position they truly don’t want to be, no matter how much you feel your love should compensate for the denial of their right to be with someone they love.

It is NOT TRUE that mutual love doesn’t exist

There are also people who firmly believe that in a relationship there’s always the person who is loved and the person who loves. That is absolute crock shit, people. While that maybe a common arrangement, it is far from a given situation. Everybody should consider it their human right to be in a relationship where they get to love a person, not only to be loved, and vice versa. This means that MUTUAL LOVE must be a requirement in a continued relationship.

People date in their attempt to find out if mutual love exists, and if the love remains one-sided, the relationship must come to an end.

Mutual love changes boundaries

Another reason why you need to know whether someone is in love with you or not, is that when someone is in love with you, they WANT YOU TO behave differently toward them than when they’re NOT in love with you. NOBODY wants people who they don’t love to their intimate zones. This doesn’t mean people don’t often allow it, because they do, but it is not particularly comfortable or nice… Or pleasant. No matter how much the other person loves them.

A person in love can also often push through boundaries that they assume are FINE to cross, when they assume the feelings are mutual. You need to be aware that many things that are normally a no-go in romantic and sexual relationships, when it’s a question of mutual, true love, these boundaries will be automatically altered or they will vanish completely.

How far to push? (without knowing/guessing)

People who are well socialized, as in emotionally intelligent, can tell the difference how far you can go with a fuck buddy, a lover, and a true lover. Those things are different. The better you are at relationships and understanding others, the better you understand how COMPLICATED these matters can be, and how EASILY people convince themselves that their advances are welcome when they truly are not. People who are good at relationships identify signs of mutual feelings, and they are deliberately sharpening their instincts about a person before they move on. The margin error is massive. What could be the best sexual experience a person has ever had in their life if they’re in love with the other person, can easily be regarded as a rape if the active party got things wrong and made advances at a person not in love with them. EVEN if you’re following the same “protocol” that most people accept as normal, to some people, it may be a terrifying situation that they didn’t know how to handle. The same exact actions are a difference between the best sex you ever had and rape charges. (This is why I no longer automatically condemn men who have been charged with rape, the waters are muddy as hell and many of these accusations are completely false to boot.)

My advice is this. If you’re unsure, don’t push too hard. Take the cautionary route, ask for verbal confirmation of consent. Legally speaking, a verbal consent is the only thing that keeps you safe here, but as far as reality goes, very few people actually ask for verbal confirmation and things still work fine. HOWEVER, the more insecure you are, the more you want to make sure you’re not stepping into anyone’s intimate area without invitation. The more this person means to you, the more OBVIOUS it should feel that you don’t want to offend them.

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