Asking yourself the question 'am I in love?' We've combed through the expert advice and designed an insightful quiz that can help you decide if it's love or infatuation.
Butterflies, passion, and romance are all things synonymous with a new relationship. So is wondering whether it’ll stand the test of time. To ease the upshots of the latter it’s important to set out with a solid foundation so that your newfound love can flourish – which, incidentally, is one of EliteSingles expertise.
Our intelligent matchmaking service is designed to create lasting connections between educated, interesting and like-minded singles, and we’re very confident that dates with us are strong from the outset. If you’re ready for a new relationship then get proactive about your love life and register with us today!
Before you’re completely swept away, it’s important to keep a cool head and ask yourself some honest questions. Is he the one? Can you see yourself committing to her in the long-term? Do you feel entirely comfortable in your new relationship or are there some niggling doubts you’re eschewing? According to therapist Alexandra Redcay, it’s also imperative to get a second opinion in the form of friends and family too.
Love clouds our judgement
Picking a partner with whom you share a high degree of synergy isn’t always uncomplicated. To add another factor into the equation, we’re not actually as in control of the selection process as we’d like to believe. When we embark on a new relationship our capacity for considered reasoning fails us and our brains succumb to the addiction of love. In short, we lose our ability to accurately gauge potential partners.
Presenting her talk Selecting the Right Relationship at a New York TEDx event, Redcay suggests that the act of falling for someone actually happens much quicker than we’re willing to admit – the first few months of getting to know someone to be exact. “We might not say it, we might not admit it, but we know it’s true,” she says.
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Following Redcay’s logic, if love confuses our judgement (and it only takes a mere couple of months to become besotted), we need to be able to analyse a new relationship before our brains go gooey. Redcay’s solution is fairly judicial; we need an impartial opinion of any prospective partner from those around us. As cringe-worthy as it sounds, your friends and family must meet your new love interest… within the first three to five dates. “A lot of people think this is crazy but I stand by it one hundred percent,” claims Redcay.
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Trust your loved ones
The social work PhD goes on to flesh out her uncouth measure. “When we fall in love we’re already hooked. We have to back that up a get another impression from somebody, right from the begging,” she adds. Redcay’s conviction stems from her belief that friends and family members tend to know what’s best for us, they’re au fait with the intricacies of our personalities and they have an uncanny knack for spotting when a potential mate could make for a compatible match.
What’s more, they have a sixth sense for red flags that may arise in the embryonic stage of a new relationship. “You have to trust your community because they are wiser than us when we’re in the midst of love,” Redcay says. Yet asking your nearest and dearest for their opinion is the easy part. For Redcay, the hardest thing is to actually act upon their advice: “Listen to them! If the majority of friends say they aren’t right for you, be brave enough to walk away,”
READ MORE: Find out when the time is right to finally say ‘I love you’
Finding someone compatible… from the start!
Clearly then the trick is to make sure you find a person you’re well-suited to in the first place, and Redcay agrees: “You need to take a step back and figure out what the most important things for you are. You need to really be wise about what you’re looking for.” And this is where EliteSingles’ intuitive profiling system comes into its element. By taking our extensive personality test you’ll be matched with up to seven highly compatible matches per day. Not having to trawl through endless lists of half-hearted pairings means you can all but rule out the ‘hit and miss’ that normally muddies the dating game. Don’t be surprised when your EliteSingles partner gets the stamp of approval from those closest to you!
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Are you eager to start a new relationship minus the red flags? Register with EliteSingles today and start a find yourself well-matched companion!