Someone asks you, “Are you in love?”  

The typical answer is, “Well, yeah... Uh Huh... No... Well kind of... I mean almost, I don't know... Yes... I love... I don't... You know what, I do? I love him. I do.... I, oh, I don't really know!” Right? Have you noticed that? When you ask most people dating if they are in love with him/her, they hum and hah.. They don’t concurrently answer the question. If you look closely, they fidget, and dart their eyes. Now on occasion, if you ask a newly engaged person how they feel, they would give a YES. I call it a full body yes. Their eyes say yes, their arms say yes and their toes say yes. They are answering yes, with all of their heart and soul. But is this typical? What is the difference when someone is not sure, and how do you know why you are not sure? We have all experienced this inner conflict. The good news is I am going to explain WHY.

Let’s See

Have you ever felt that way? Are you in love? Hmm. Well guess what? I'm going to help you find out for sure If you're in love right now! Oh, it's the "L" word, the four-letter "L" word. What the heck have you ever noticed when you ask someone and say "Well, So you've been dating a while are you in love?" And they go, yeah, and they squint their eyes and they go, Well, kind of. And they tip their head back and forth or "Nooo," and they smile. And Your like, "Really" and they don't know how to answer the question if they're in love, because what is it? What is love?

Well, Webster says it's an intense feeling of deep affection. Okay, well what does that mean? Now, I've got so much to say on this one. Today we're gonna focus on are you in love with that person? I'm going to help you know how to know whether you are or not. We can go into all these definitions, but basically, this is why you don't know if you're in love with that person and write this down because this is soo cool. The problem is you don't know if you're in love because you're not one piece. 

BTW You're not just one piece, you’re a lot of pieces 

The pieces that you have inside your mind are many

There are parts of you that want to read this blog and part of you may think you don’t have time. Right? There may have been a part of you excited to get up today and part of you that wanted to stay in bed. There are parts of most people that want to exercise but part of them wants to just be lazy. Being human, we all experience parts of us that want something different than another part of our minds.

The parts I am going to discuss are: Your head, your heart, your body, your gut feeling, and your spirit.These parts work independent of each other. Most of the time they don’t even talk to each other. In fact they very often want very different things for you.

You have a HEAD that's logical, you have a HEART that feels, that doesn't always agree with the head. You've got a BODY that is attracted or not attracted, which doesn't always correlate with the logic of the head or the heart flipping or they're not flipping. And then you have a SPIRIT. Which is how you feel about the person if you did not have a body, just a sense of your spirit flying around in heaven. How do your spirits connect, how much do they love each other? Kind of different isn’t it? And then we have a GUT feeling. Just that sense of adding everything together. The gut sense about whether the relationship is short or long term, whether the relationship is good for you or not so good. Just that sense that is so deep many times we don’t recognize how we really feel with our gut, on a conscious level.

So most the time all our parts are not talking to each other 

They're not agreeing with one another either. And so that's why you can't come up with one answer of whether you're in love or not. Because your heart may be in love but your mind isn’t. Or your mind is in love but your body isn’t.  

Now the definition of love is an interesting thing. And I will do another podcast/blog on all the definitions and what it is you really define and understand love. But for now, let's just say you really care about the person and you really liked being with them and you have this kind of romantic feeling, but you're not sure if it's just an external lust or is it, really super love.

After you rate each category 

When you talk advantage of the information I am going to share, you will be amazed! You will REALLY know whether you are in lover or if you are just infatuated. Below, I walk you through an exercise that is eye opening. You are going to use a scale from 1-10. You are going to rate how you feel in specific categories and after you rate the categories from 1-10 below, you're going to know if you're in love with this person or not. And what kind of love it is.

Am I in Love? Rate yourself

So the first category, again as I go over this again, is with your

head, 1 to 10 how much do you love him or her? So I want you to think of the person you love and you think about loving them kind of. Well not really. Yes. Tons. No, not sure. So with your head, 1 to 10 how much do you love this person? Logically, no hard feelings yet. Put that over there. No. All that sexual stuff. Put that over there. 1 to 10 with your head. Logically it makes sense. He wants kids. I don't. We do. We want to house. She or he wants this. We're a logical fit or it doesn't make any logical sense to be together. So on a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being the most in love, write that down.

Okay, next one. Your heart. How much do you love your person with your heart? Now, no logic. Not Thinking about logic and how much it makes sense. Just the heart, the feeling where you really care, how they feel. I really care how they feel and I care how I feel when I'm with him. My heart kind of swells. It makes my boobs go out. It makes my ribs expand. It makes my stomach push up and down. It lifts and it's not that bouncy chemistry thing. I'm not talking about that. It's the swelling. You know when you love your baby, your heart swells. So it's the swelling thing. It's caring, how they feel. It's not logical right now. And it's not chemistry right now. 1 to 10, yeah. Do you love it?

Next one is the body. Okay? The body, body, body. Oh god, is he beautiful!!! Oh wow. Or, well, he is kind of attractive, or nope, yuck. Now the body is what you think and feel when you look at them, it is also how you feel next to them. If you are comfortable, you fit. Your hands fit together, you feel comfortable walking together. You fit sexually. You fit when you snuggle. You feel like your bodies look like they go together. You know, the couple that looks good together. Now in contrast, when you don’t feel like you fit, you will fidget. Yep, just like clothes that don’t fit, you fidget. When you have a shirt that is comfortable you are comfortable, just like your partner. You put your partner on like clothes. Do they fit? But what if they are disabled, or they are too tall or short. Well, many times when love grows in other areas, liberties are taken and you may learn to love their differences. You may learn to love their bow legs or their bald head. It starts to look good to you. Rate 1-10 how much you currently love your person with your body.

The next one when you're opening your eyes about whether you're in love or not is the spirit. This one's really cool. What would happen If you just had a phone relationship and you never got to see the person, ever. How much do you love their spirit? Where do you connect? And I say if you had no body and you took your body off and you didn't have a body, you're just a spirit floating around, flying around or vibrating in the spirit world, and you were with your other person, how much do you love that person with your spirit where your spirits are in the same direction, the same movement, the same resonance, 1 to 10 how much do you love that person with the spirit? Your soul's connecting regardless of your body, of logic, of your heart. 1 to 10.

Then the last one is sometimes easy to understand and sometimes it's not for people. It's a gut feeling. Your gut feeling is just a summary of all these human feelings. It's not like a spiritual sense so much. It's more like a human feeling of my gut summary is, I really, really love or am falling in love or being in love or I'm close to this person. It feels right, it feels good or you know, the body's like a 10 logically it's pretty high, but I just have this gut feeling, kind of makes me sick. It's no. I'm getting a no on that one, so I'm going to put a 3 or 4. Or backward like, I don't know. It's not making tons of logical sense right now. My Heart's growing, my spirit that's really growing together. The body's great and I just have this gut feeling. It's an absolute yes. They just feel like it really is for us to be together. So look at your assessment and then let me ask you, are you in love with this person?

Examples

I have to give an example here. The body is chemistry. So let's ask Tiffany, how much do you love Alex? And she says, oh, on a scale from 1 to 10 my body's like a 200 oh my gosh. Like seriously? When he comes near me I, I just melt.

But with my head, I only love him like a 1 cause he's in prison, he did bad things. He like hurt kitties and stuff. So we have a little conflict where the body's 200 and the heads just 2 or 1. And that's low conflict, isn't it now. So as you think about the body, you don't think about the head right now.

I have one more example as we pause on this. Then there's Susie Q who thinks that she's in love with Tommy and logically it's a 20. Like, 1 to 10 it's like oh my gosh, we like love everything the same. We both love books, we both love to do everything together. We like to paint, just like to talk about the sunset. And so I'm like a 10 with my head or more. Now the body, I'm only like a 4 cause he kind of stinks and he has sweaty hands but you know, we don't fit. But yeah. So do I love Tommy. I don't know. Well with your head You love him but you don't love him with your body. So you see where we're going with this. Go ahead and 1 to 10 with the body.

Let’s Look at your Ratings

If you have one area that's low, that will drop everything else. You can very clearly see if you have a romantic, lustful relationship. You can very clearly see, on the other hand, if you have a spiritual relationship and not physical. My recommendation, but who am I, is that you have 8 to 10 in all categories before you commit to a lifetime, long term relationship or marriage. Now, what happens if you're a 10 on all of these and your partner or your person gets hurt and they're in a wheelchair? Do we stay married because they're in a wheelchair and I was a 10 with the body and now they're in a wheelchair? There are times when you shift into the stages of marriage, which I'm going to go over very quickly right now. Where you start out with romance and you're noticing your head, heart, body, gut, and spirit and it grows bigger and bigger and becomes so solid.

In contrast, many times we know we should love someone but we don’t have many feelings for them. Maybe logically we should love someone but the heart is just not there. This maybe because unconsciously we have been hurt, betrayed, and we are scared to open up. The lack of love may be the lack of chemistry. But all in all when we understand the magnitude of the 5 areas, we can see where we rate high and where we rate low. All summed up, we just may not really love or even like the person. But after rating with this exercise, we will know how we feel in what area.

I have coached couples for about two decades. I have coached those in the dating stage and always have them complete the exercise. Each week as they come back the ratings either go up or they go down. They can see the trajectory of their relationship growing or shrinking. And either way is normal but it is nice to know why and in what category we are feeling levels of love or if the relationship is dissolving.

Stages of Love

Backing up So as you, grow in these stages, you're going to start out with number one is romance. The second stage is the awakening. So we're going to kind of step back and kind of go back over these stages. The awakening is, oh my heck, they're not perfect. Then after years, you go into the control, mild suggestions, you start building up walls and want to control them.

The next stage is where these emotions that I'm feeling come. Where you come into acceptance, you accept the differences of each other. You build on your strengths, you build your foundation. I love you. And the last stage sometimes going to happen quickly, but sometimes it won't happen until all of the kids are out of the nest. And you come back to this place where you really have grown together for 40 years and it's pure love/charity, a spiritual connection. The vibrations between your mind, body, and spirit are so connected. I am me with you. I am better because of you. I can be who I am because you lived and I witness your life. So with a lump in my throat, I know who I love. I know I love my man. I know I love my children and let me tell you something right here is that love is the same from a spouse to a husband, a wife, a child to a dog.

Wow. All love is the same, but the Body responds Differently!

The love of a child, a parent or a partner is the same, but the body responds differently. Now think about that one. I still have a spiritual connection with my dog. My heart swells, my head is into it. But my body is different because obviously, it's just a snuggle pet, my dog-kind of body relationship. So as you discover what kind of assessment you can give head, heart, body, gut with the one you're looking at and how much you love them. You can do this with your animals as well, and you have this swelling in your heart for this person or animal you will know. Are you in love? Yes. And I want you to know that I love you and my assessment is a 10 with all of them because my heart loves you. My head loves you. My body wants to shake your hand and give you a hug and my spirit loves you.

"IN LOVE" IS WHEN THE HEAD, HEART, BODY AND SPIRIT are rated high along with physical chemistry.

Deep Love is Emotional, It’s Intense!

When the ratings are high in the 5 categories and love grows from there, the love becomes deeper. The love is secured and it is as thought the two souls melt together. The minds melt, the hearts melt, and the body melts. The spirits synergize on another and bloom and the gut feeling is solid. Love can be so deep it can become almost violent in an interesting way. The violent protection of a mother to her child is not something to mess with. Love becomes the love of service. Love is unshakable. There is trust and adoration. This almost makes me cry because it becomes so solid. That my heart loves you and I love your little weird mole on your leg or your foot or your face and I’d love you in a wheelchair because everything else is so strong and my body's love for you isn't just sexual anymore, because it's grown into something deeper. It's a feeling of caring, so much how you feel and I love you.

In conclusion, my gut feeling is, you're a beautiful, wonderful person who is loved by more people (and animals) than you know. You have spent time reading this blog for a reason. Because you want to know more about love and how to recognize it. It is a word we are all striving to understand more completely. Have fun loving today. It's a beautiful week to be in love, not only with people but with our beautiful planet as well.

Talk soon.