When the thought of not having them in your life is too unbearable to contemplate...and when you think about them you can't help smiling
and when making them happy makes you happier than you have ever been in your life
When you start thinking about them without making a conscious effort to do so. Does not matter where you are or what you are doing, you just find yourself thinking about them.
Not only are there different kids of love as ummmm suggests, any kind of love changes over a period of time... if successful, it matures from the romantic, head over heels can't live without you (usually short lived) by the acceptance of your characteristics, the major part of my life, can always depend on you kind... much more fullfilling in my opinion...
i think there is 'light love' and there is 'deep love' depending on what stage you at. im on love with my boyfriend but i class it as light love cause i wouldnt die for him just yet but would take a moment to consider it.
with my OH now i cant bear the thought of being without him, i feel like the luckiest girl to be with a man like him, hes gorgeous, strong and is a excellent father to our children. Hes my best friend and is always there for me and looks after me. I feel safe and secure around him. and i get nervous still when he comes home from work, i get butterflies everytime. Dont get me wrong, there are many times i want to suffocate him when hes sleeping and that lol but i wouldnt change him. Im impatient and sometimes a little insecure but he ''gets'' me and lets me have my strop and then makes me laugh about it afterwards.
When you realise you want to spend the rest of your life with someone and never look at anyone else.
I only experienced that emotion when I met my wife. Before that, there were several girlfriends I thought I loved - but I wouldn't have dreamed of marrying them! I was happy to live with them or have them staying with me - but marriage, no way! Then I met my future wife and the emotions were completely different. Living together just wasn't enough for either of us and we both wanted nothing less than being married for the rest of our lives. I now look back and realise I didn't really love that string of women I lived with, but I didn't know that at the time. I was actually kidding myself. My wife says the same and when we speak to other people who have successful marriages they say the same.
I see so many people now just living together with those same comments that "I'll never get married" or "We don't want the commitment". That's sad and it's obvious they've never experienced true love where nothing less than marriage is enough. For those people it seems their relationship is based mainly on sex. I just hope one day they do meet that one special individual they want to spend the rest of their life with without looking at anyone else. They'll then look back and realise the others didn't really mean anything and only then will they know what love actually is.