The question of how long it takes to fall in love is something that comes up pretty often in our one on one coaching sessions.
When a relationship is new, it’s normal that you might be wondering, “Hm, is this love? Is it infatuation? Is it lust? How can I know for sure?” As you know, love is not a topic that we learn much about in school and our education in regards to love is largely based on what we saw growing up in our household, our family dynamic, and the relationships of those around us.
Many of us also subconsciously developed our idea of love through the movies we watched growing up.
The thing is, love is an incredibly complex emotion, and if you’re reading this right now, chances are that you are fully aware of this. It can actually be quite difficult to gauge whether you are in love or not, especially because your emotions can feel different from relationship to relationship.
In today’s article, I am going to explore the answer to “How long does it take to fall in love” and I will give you some pointers on how to tell if you are already in love!
It is a very difficult thing to put a timeline on how love develops because each situation is so unique, but by the time you get to the end of this article, you will have a much better idea of how to tell where you’re at, and what that timeline looks like for you. So, let’s get started!
A lot of people who come to me with this question have been in love before. In fact, most of them have… and this is what they find so confusing. Let me tell you a bit about Ana Rosa. I started working with her not too long ago because she came to me for advice about her budding relationship.
She had been seeing her new guy, Joseph for about two and a half months and things were going well. They had a ton of things in common, they had so much fun together, their dates were exciting, their physical chemistry was great, they had really good communication…
On paper it all looked really good. But Ana Rosa couldn’t tell if she was falling in love with him or if she just appreciated him as a person. This was her first question for me.
She wanted to know how long it takes to fall in love with someone because she couldn’t figure out whether she should be in love with Joseph at this point, or if it was normal that she wasn’t quite sure yet, or if she even felt that way about him…
I completely understood her frustration because this is a common thing that happens in a specific situation. So, I decided to dive deeper. We needed to take a look at her last big relationship.
I wanted to know how she felt about that last man that she was truly in love with, and what the dynamics were in that relationship. Ana Rosa told me about her ex that she dated for four years, and she thought that he was the love of her life. The relationship had ended about three years ago, and it was a very bad breakup.
The relationship started out as something from a fairytale – they fell so hard for one another right off the bat, and it turned into a whirlwind romance that unfortunately did not have the foundation to last.
She had moved to a different country to be with him, and for about two years, their life together was incredible. She explained to me that she never knew that she could feel like that about someone. They were madly in love, and she knew that she loved him with all her heart.
She saw her entire future with him, so when things started to crumble, she fought tooth and nail to save the relationship. The problem was that he couldn’t find a way to combine his love for her with his love of being single, traveling the world alone.
As you can imagine, this was excruciating for Ana Rosa, and despite his love for her, he would push her away and then pull her back in. It became a pattern that became toxic, and once she knew that she had tried everything that she could to save the relationship and still was unable to, she decided to walk.
Then came the long healing process during which she did so much personal development work. She recognized that she loved him more than anything, but there was no sugarcoating it: the relationship was not healthy and it was not sustainable.
So after a few years of casual dating, she was ready to start dating seriously. And that is when Joseph came into the picture. They had met on a dating app and as she explained to me, everything about him was great on paper, but she wasn’t sure what she was feeling for him.
It would make sense for her to fall in love with him because he was such a good guy, but was she falling in love?
So we needed to talk about a very common issue that happens after a painful breakup like the one she experienced. When there are toxic elements to a relationship like there were in her relationship with her ex, a very interesting thing begins to happen on a subconscious level.
A person can start to become addicted to the high highs that follow the low lows. It’s that feeling of making up and coming back together. In severe cases, this becomes cyclical where a couple will subconsciously create tension so that they can then make up and feel that rush of emotions. These emotional ups and downs are very obvious, so it is not uncommon for a person to associate the highs with love.
The problem, of course, is that afterwards, when they find themselves in a more stable relationship, they aren’t sure if it’s love. They wonder if the lack of these emotional spikes signifies that love is not present, and it can be very challenging for them to determine what kind of emotions they are experiencing.
So, all that to say that love is a complex emotion and it comes in different forms – some of which are more sustainable than others! Let’s take a look at how to gauge its timeline.
As we begin to dive into this question, it is important to remember that love means different things to different people. This isn’t something that we talk about very often in our society, but if you really think about it, every person is going to have a different definition of what love truly means for them.
For this reason, it is very important for you to spend some time reflecting on what love really means to you. For example, does it signify emotional stability, financial security, the ability to be completely vulnerable with someone, sharing the same sense of humor, is it all about trust and honesty, great sex? By zeroing in on what love truly means to you, it is going to be easier for you to gauge whether or not you are feeling these things with your current partner. It will also help you to gauge how long it might take you to fall in love.
Sometimes clients ask me things like, “Can it take years to fall in love” or what is the average time to fall in love?” And it’s important to understand that in the vast majority of cases, love isn’t something that happens overnight. It is something that usually takes some time!
People tend to fall in love as they become more comfortable they get, the safer they feel, and the more excited they get at the prospect of spending time with their significant other. So as you can see, it is something that will naturally happen as time goes on. One thing that we need to take into consideration here is the difference between love and lust.
Lust often shows up at passion or infatuation, and while it is a lot of fun, it is often mistaken for real love, which it is not. These are very different things. Some people have very little love and high passion, and some people have the opposite. Passion is that untamable electricity you feel with someone. It’s that spark and you can feel it very instantaneously. It’s that sensation that you can feel when you’re sitting across the table from someone are sparks fly. It’s a very addicting sensation, but it in many cases, when a person is pursuing passion, they might not necessarily be pursuing love. Many people expect this to become love, but that’s because they’re confusing this feeling of passion with love. Love takes time, it tends to evolve gradually and grow over time.
When you see this person and your heart starts to beat faster, your palms get sweaty, or you even start to feel a bit nervous… It’s not love! It’s not a bad thing, but these are emotions that are more associated with infatuation. Love is a feeling of calmness, security, safety, peacefulness, and stability. Love is when you think about a person and you feel at ease and peacefully happy. You appreciate them, you care for them, you cherish them… You aren’t overtaken by an anxious feeling of needing them or a passionate lust for them. Love goes deeper than that.
Now that is not to say that if you feel passion and love for someone, that love cannot grow from that. Each relationship and each couple’s story evolves differently. I have met couples that developed a serious relationship that turned into a happy marriage after having a one night stand. I know couples who were friends with benefits for a long time before they fell deeply in love. I know people that experienced love at first sight. It truly is different for everyone and even if you aren’t feeling deep love at the moment, it doesn’t mean that you won’t get there.
The symptoms of love and passion are quite different. When you’re thinking about whether or not you’ve fallen in love yet, ask yourself questions about how you feel in the relationship. Do you feel safe? Do you feel heard? Respected? Do you feel like you can be vulnerable with your significant other? When you feel these things in your relationship, it means that love is either forming or that it is already present. These also tend to take a lot more time to develop! Don’t panic if you’ve only been dating for a couple months and you aren’t feeling these things quite yet.
I also want to take a moment to mention how important it is that you do NOT compare your relationship and your “love timeline” to that of the people around you. Like I just said, it’s going to be different for everyone. Some people will fall for each other instantaneously and for others, it will take time. What I can tell you that in the majority of cases, it takes time. I worked with another client recently who came to me because she was concerned about her new relationship. She explained to me that her sister was in a relationship that was only about a month older than hers, and her sister was absolutely thriving in passion. My client was concerned that her own relationship was therefore lackluster and that something was wrong. Why wasn’t she experiencing a whirlwind romance like her sister was? Why didn’t her relationship look like what she saw in TV shows and movies?
I had to remind her that just because that’s what you’re seeing other people experience, it doesn’t mean that it’s real love. And when it comes to what you’re seeing in TV and movies, that isn’t how real love works. Again, it is something much more calm and safe. Passionate relationships are often volatile and that physical intimacy is what bonds the two people together; not a deeper mental connection. That is not to say that real love with a deeper connection cannot involve passion. They’re not mutually exclusive, but I just want you to be careful with comparisons.
Think of love as a slow burning candle instead of a firecracker. It’s okay that it takes time. There is no need to panic! Instead, think more about whether or not your significant other bears your definition of love. Does he or she do the things that you associate with love? Are they capable of doing these things? This is why it’s so important to think about what love means for you. if you have a set of values in your relationship, give yourself some time to analyze if those values are going to stick around for good or not. Then gauge how you feel. gauge if you feel love as a result of seeing those values in action. Remember, there is no rush.
The people who pursue the race and the people who rush are the ones who end up pursuing passion. At this stage, why not give yourself 90 days. In 90 days, ask yourself how you feel then compared to now. If you feel the same and almost even neutral about the whole thing, then it is possible that this person isn’t going to be the right one for you. What we are looking for here is a steady increase of emotions in the beginning stages of a new relationship. But if you feel like you’re slowly moving in the right direction, you can add another 90 days to the clock. The point here is that there is no sense in rushing this. There really isn’t. Good things take time!
And I know that you’re probably feeling impatient and you want to know the answer to “How long does it take to love someone,” but you just have to remember that it’s different for everything and it’s okay if it takes time. The most stable relationships take time to develop, so this it not a bad thing. Trust me.
I know how easy it is to compare your situation to other relationships. But remember, while romance movies and romantic comedies are super entertaining, they aren’t accurate depictions of the real world. And don’t worry if the people around you are having extremely passionate relationships and you see them making out all night. Don’t let that make you feel insecure about your own relationship. Passion in and of itself is not a bad thing to have in a relationship, but if that’s the only thing going on, that flame tends to burn out very quickly. That is why my analogy of the slow burning candle is so important to keep in mind.
Instead of fixating on passion, go back to that list of values you have. Is love about integrity? Vulnerability? Sharing your hobbies, passions, and the things you care about? Is it about trust, commitment, and honesty? As you can imagine, it is going to take some time to identify these things and gauge them in your relationship. You can’t determine whether you fully trust someone after a handful of dates. It’s just not logically possible. You can gauge your chemistry, but the deeper stuff is going to take time. I want you to know that it’s fully okay to take your time with this and that it is all part of the process.
As time goes on, deep down, you’ll know whether you are falling in love with this person or not. Try not to fall into the trap of putting pressure on yourself to fall in love. When you pressure yourself or put pressure on the relationship to be something very specific right off the bat, you are going to hinder its chances of naturally developing. This is one the reasons why when people ask me, “How fast do people fall in love,” I always reiterate the importance of letting things develop in their own time.
All too often I see relationships crumble and fall apart before they even reach their full potential simply because one or both people tried to put too much pressure on it without even realizing. This actually happened to one of my clients who was feeling so insecure about not being in love with her new boyfriend yet that she kept pressuring him to take big steps like meet her entire family and move in together. She was inadvertently trying to do the things that she associated with serious relationships to make up for the fact that she was feeling stressed about the fact that she hadn’t developed real love for her partner yet. The more she pushed her partner to do these things, the more he began to pull away. As you can imagine, this began to create a divide in the foundation of this budding relationship. After a few months of this, he decided to end the relationship because he was feeling suffocated by it.
The thing is, in order for love to develop, you have to leave space for it to happen. I cannot stress the importance of not putting pressure on yourself enough. I know that in today’s day and age, it is so easy to succumb to societal pressures, compare yourself to everyone around you and everything you see in the media… I know how easy it is to feel like you aren’t doing enough, your relationship isn’t where it “should be…” But all of these pressures are self-imposed, and when you just let go and let the relationship develop naturally, love follows.
As always, we are here to guide you every step of the way. If you feel like you are unsure of how to make your relationship develop into a deeper connection, I encourage you to check out our new product on attraction that you can access by clicking here. You can also reach out to me or a member of my team for one on one guidance by clicking here and it would be our pleasure to help you lay out a solid foundation for your relationship!
At the end of the day, if there’s anything you take away from this article, let it be that there is no sense in pressuring yourself to fall in love within any type of timeframe. You just need to make sure that you’re enjoying the relationship, that you like where it’s headed, and that it feels like things are headed in the right direction. As I said above, this is something that you can feel intuitively, and the more time you allow you pass, the clearer it becomes.
I sincerely wish you all the very best in life and love,
Your coach when you are wondering “How long does it take to fall in love”
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