Wedding or warning bells?

By Karen Salmansohn

Throughout the ages, there’s been one question that has consistently stumped even the wisest of prophets and gurus:

“How do you know when it’s love... and how do you know when you should dump the chump?”


I say: Don’t waste precious time-ticking-time with the wrong partner!

Here’s a list of relationship-clarifying questions to better serve daters who are newly head-over-heels... So you can suss out sooner versus later if you’ve found the love of your life—or if you should run for your life!

1. Good looks fade. But a bad personality is forever. If you took away the physical attraction and hot sex, would you still want to be friends with this person?
   

1. Does your new partner tell you outright that he or she is not ready to be in a serious relationship? If so, listen up! What you hear is what you get!
   
2. You need at least one VERY to fall in love. For example, it helps if your honey is VERY smart, or VERY good-looking, VERY caring or VERY funny, etc. Basically, you need to see at least one magical, heart-fluttering quality about this person that makes him or her stand out for true love to spring forth. Does your partner have at least one VERY special thing which makes you all a-flutter?
   
3. Although finding one VERY in your partner is VERY GOOD, finding two VERY aspects can be VERY BAD. For example, if your partner is VERY, VERY GOOD-LOOKING... or VERY, VERY RICH or VERY, VERY FUNNY, this person might be trouble—might have a super-huge ego or be super-annoying due to an extra dosage of that quality. Does your partner have any doubly VERY aspects that you see as being potential relationship-zappers?
   
4. It’s good for your new partner to have a lot of get up and go—but not directly after sex. After NC-17 encounters, does your partner disappear ASAP? If so, your sweetie might have anxiety around intimacy—so be forewarned!
   
5. It’s a positive if your “newbie partner” wants to talk after sex—but not if he or she winds up talking about an ex. In fact, too much talk about an ex in general is a negative sign that your partner still has his or her feet stuck in the sticky-icky past, and might thereby have a hard time moving forward!
   
6. Lust and love are as different as night and day. If your partner only wants to see you in the wee hours of night, it’s lust. If this person wants to spend the more precious daylight hours on weekends with you, you’re heading towards the real-deal love, baby!
   
7. If your new partner complains about how all exes have been CRAZY, you should wonder what your honey did to make them crazy—or if your amour is a Drama Queen or Drama King.
   
8. Does your newbie partner comment on your tales of woe (and the world’s awful news stories) with a sense of empathy and awareness—or is he or she missing, as Jennifer Aniston so pithily called it, “the sensitivity chip”?
   
9. Does being with your sweetie bring out your favorite self, or your most bummed-out self, or most insecure/neurotic/truly CRAZY-in-love self? Because before you get on the road to wedding-ville, you want to make sure the person you’re hooking up with gives you that extra lift... that’s the way you want to be heading into your forever future!