How To Know If He Thinks You're The One

It’s hard to explain to someone who doesn’t have the connection or understanding of the little intricacies of your relationship, and telling them “you just know” typically makes them so frustrated that they end up not asking for your advice anymore.

Instead, I like to tell them a story.

My husband and I met in college. I was 19, and my sister and I had applied to work at an English pub he happened to work at as a bartender. He was charismatic, handsome, and funny. For the first year that we knew each other, I was in a long-term, long-distance relationship with a guy I thought without a shadow of a doubt I was going to marry. (I laugh about this now because thank God I didn’t marry him!)

My sister liked one of my husband’s roommates, so we would all hang out together in a massive group or get invited to their house for parties. I started noticing a couple of months into our friendship that he had become protective over me. When random guys would come chat me up or offer to buy me drinks at the bar, he would always step in to make sure nothing was happening that shouldn’t.

He was the same age as my sister, so I just assumed he was looking after me like an older brother would his little sister. I was in a relationship, after all, so my naive brain didn’t realize at first that his actions were exposing what was going on in his heart.

I knew from our first date that he’d ask me to marry him.

I like to take a break here because I often find myself having to explain to my younger cohorts of females looking for love that the way my now-husband was acting would often be considered clingy or cringe in modern dating. You have to ignore that manufactured ideal of male protectiveness and see it as the endearing actions of budding love that they are. Also, depending on how you respond to this level of care shows how you feel about him. If you like him, this protectiveness will process as affection. If you don’t, you’ll be annoyed.

The moment it changed for me came one night when we were at a rugby party at his house. He and all of his roommates played rugby for our college, so it quickly became the de facto spot for Saturday nights. I was still dating the other guy and had come over after a long shift to find the house in absolute chaos. The easiest way to describe the scene is a cross between the movies Animal House and Neighbors. I almost went home, but I saw my sister’s car in the driveway and wanted to go in to check on her before I went to bed for the night.

As I walked into the house, my husband and his friends cheered. It was like something out of a movie scene. I immediately thought to myself, WHEN my boyfriend and I break up, I think I’ll start dating him. I could feel the weight of my words hit me like a truck. That was the first time I had ever imagined a possibility that I wouldn’t marry my then-boyfriend, much less admit that I had feelings for my husband.

Women inherently possess a level of intuition that extends beyond what can be explained by logic. We find ourselves in situations where we know that the next moments of our lives will significantly impact our future. Still, I had been pushing away the reality of how his protectiveness formed how I saw my future.

Fast forward two months and the break-up that I knew would happen that night did. It was final. He would try to get me back in several ways, but I knew that my heart had moved on. It didn’t make the pain of losing those years of my life any less difficult.

My sister texted my husband before I had a chance to see him that night at work. I walked in sad and mopey about the loss, and he was hilariously cheery. To him, a whole world of possibilities opened up, but I wasn’t quite there. While I admitted it to myself that night at his house, I had never said it out loud to anyone.

As luck would have it, we were very slow that night at work. So I kept requesting song after song of depressing country ballads. Think old-school country like George Strait, Faith Hill, and Kenny Chesney. Eventually, he came up to me and told me I would have to stop, that I was making what little customers we did have sad and lonely.

Then what he did next changed my life. He told me (not asked) that he had requested the next two nights off for the both of us. He was going to take me on a date. I was stunned. In the time that I had gone to work and word of my break-up spread, he had planned the next three days of my life.

One of the hardest lessons for women to understand is that men may not explicitly tell you their feelings, but they will show it in their actions.

He took me to the restaurant in the Four Seasons for dinner, then a comedy club, and a cute little dessert spot to end the night. He even bought me a little present to open at dinner. I was so nervous, but I remember for the first time in my life thinking this is a different kind of nervousness—not like when you're meeting someone for the first time, but rather when you can see your entire life begin. As if every moment I had experienced before this date was just pretending to live and that this is what it meant to have your heart held and protected by someone.

As we were driving home, he held my hand and looked me in the eyes. “I feel like this changed something between us. Do you feel it too?”

I wanted to play it off. I think I said something like, “yeah.” But what I wanted to say was, “I’ll never be the same. You’ve given me an expectation for how to be loved that will never go away. And I want that kind of love from you.”

So people ask me, “how did you know that he knew you were the one?” And I think, it was in the small moments of that date that no one noticed but me. When he lifted the strap of my dress as it started to slip when I walked, before I had a chance to do it myself. He had planned every moment with me in mind. He wanted me to eat well and laugh because he thought that would make me happy. He held my hand as we crossed the street.

We’ve all heard someone say, “If they wanted to, they would.” One of the hardest lessons for women to understand is that men may not explicitly tell you their feelings, but they will show it in their actions.

Men show you how they feel even if they don’t say it. They protect you and care for you. He never made me question whether or not I had his heart. Fifteen years and four daughters later, there is no one in this world who has shown me the love that he has, and I knew from our first date that he’d ask me to marry him.

If they want to marry you, you’ll know it in the unspoken actions and intentional touches.

Every week, I speak to women in my Good Life newsletter about marriage, motherhood, and how politics connects to culture. My hope is to guide a new generation of women through this wonderful world with real stories and life experiences. 

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