1. Your low points are never an annoyance to them.

When you’re upset about something they want to make it better. They don’t necessarily think they can fix all of your problems, but they want to help. They love you when you’re happy, but they will also love you when you’re sad. Your happiness is something that they care about, and when you feel like you can’t find it, they’ll try to make it reappear.

2. They listen.

Not just to what your favorite restaurants or movies are, they listen to the important things. They listen to your beliefs, your passions, they listen to all those thoughts swimming around in your head that you think no one else really cares about. They listen to the things that make you, you because that’s what they love, you are who they love.

3. They let you in.

Maybe they’ve loved and been hurt before, or maybe they’ve never loved at all, but when they’re ready to love you, they’ll let you in. You know you’ve met someone who knows how to love when you feel an openness between the both of you. You’ll never feel like you’re prying or digging for information; when they’re ready to love you, they’ll tell you things you wouldn’t even know to ask about.

4. They understand your flaws are apart of you.

They understand that you get easily frustrated when learning something new, they understand that sometimes you just need to be alone, they understand that most of the time you’re an unorganized mess of a human being. These little things that you’re insecure about, that you think will scare others away, they don’t scare this person. The person who knows how to love you accepts these little things about yourself you like to call flaws. They love the parts of you that you don’t love about yourself.

5. They accept love.

It’s easy to love them because they’re willing to accept it. When you love someone who knows how to love, yes, it might be messy or weird, or full of heated arguments, but it’s not hesitant, there’s no resistance. Someone who knows how to love won’t show you a love that’s reluctant.

6. They talk about you to the people they love most.

They want everyone in their life to know about you, to know how wonderful you are. They can’t help but brag about how lucky they feel to be with someone like you.

7. They bring you around the people they care about.

They’re proud of you, and they’re proud to be with you, and they want the people they care about most to meet you. They don’t have one life with you and another with their family and friends, they share their life with you. There’s one life, and they make you apart of it.

8. They do things they don’t necessarily want to do because they’re doing it for you.

They don’t want to go to your grandmother’s 95th birthday party. They don’t want to dog sit so you can have a weekend with your friends. They don’t want to go dress shopping with you because you need a second opinion. In all brutal honesty, they don’t want to do any of these things, but they do it because they care about you, and because the things they’re doing, even though they don’t want to, mean something to you.

9. They do what they can to be with you.

They’ll never be able to move mountains or grow wings and fly, but when they’re ready to love, they’ll do what they can if it means they get to be with you.

10. They’re capable of being vulnerable.

They might be afraid to show you the parts of themselves they deem as weak, but they do it, whether they’re aware of it or not. Someone who knows how to love won’t be able to hide. The beautiful part about love is that it releases all the things we feel we should keep hidden, and when we release all of that, we’re finally able to see one another for who we truly are, and that’s where love begins.