Nothing is wrong. They are kind, they text when they say they will, your evenings together are easy, and the close friends you trust have all come away liking them. And yet on the walk home alone, a question keeps following you, not loudly, but it will not let go either: is this really the person meant for me?
What makes that question so hard is that it has nothing to hold on to. If they had done something hurtful, you would already have your reason. But everything is fine, so you feel a little unreasonable for wondering, and then a little careless for wanting to stop.
If you are the one wondering tonight how to know if someone is right for you, these words were written for you. They will not tell you to stay or to go, because only you can know that. But they might help you hear a little more clearly what that question has been trying to tell you.
Why does this question arrive before the answer does?
Most of us want to know right away. A few months in, sometimes only a few weeks, we already want a certain answer, as if knowing early would save us time, and spare us the hurt if it turns out not to be them.
People in the East long ago had a strange image for the way two people grow close. They described it as a feeling that travels slowly up through the body: at first it only reaches the feet, then the calves, then higher still, and only after passing all of those stages does it finally reach the heart. Then they added a piece of advice that sounds almost backwards: if you are already restless to take the next step while it has only reached the calves, things go wrong, but if you can stay still a little longer, things go well.
So very often we have not chosen the wrong person at all. We are simply asking a question of the heart while things have only reached the calves. When people ask, "How do I know if he's the right one?", what they are usually missing is time, so that the real signs have a chance to show themselves. At this stage, not knowing yet is a perfectly normal answer.
How to know if you are with the right person
There is an everyday image almost everyone has seen: two people walking side by side down a street, in the same direction, at the same pace. The distance between them stays the same the whole way, even though neither of them is trying to keep it. No one has to hurry to catch up, and no one has to stop and wait.
Two people who are right for each other often look like that. From the outside there is nothing remarkable about it, but from the inside it feels unusually light. No sign holds true for everyone, and it is worth not nodding along too quickly to the first thing you read. But if all three of the things below sound familiar, you may well be walking beside someone who is headed the same way you are.
You do not have to walk faster or slower than yourself. You do not have to strain to seem more interesting, busier, or more certain than the person you really are, and you do not have to fold yourself down to fit someone else's mold. What you want from life, in your work, in where you live, in how you live, may not match theirs exactly, but it points in the same direction.
What they say and what they do end up in the same place. The old teaching was wary of a kind of closeness that lives only on the lips and the tip of the tongue: beautiful words, plenty of promises, and then, when it matters, actions that cannot keep up. What deserves your trust is usually much quieter than that. It is the times they showed up without you having to ask, and the small things they promised and then simply did.
Around them, you stop keeping count. You no longer tally who texted first, who gave in more often, or whether this time you should speak up or stay quiet. It is not that everything has become perfect; you just no longer feel any need to count. And if you have been counting like that for a long time, there is usually something between the two of you that has not quite clicked.
Beside someone who is right for you, your heart settles in its own quiet way
The same old teaching says that once closeness reaches the heart, a person grows steady, and the doubts that came before simply melt away. As for the people who drift in and out of your life only because they are weighing what they stand to gain or lose, you can let them drift in and out.
That kind of calm is not loud. It is nothing like the rush of the first few weeks, when your heart races and you cannot think about anything else. It is closer to the feeling of getting home after a long day: nothing special happens, you simply no longer have to be on guard. You will still disagree sometimes, and there will still be days when one of you is tired while the other is in high spirits, but a day like that does not send you into a panic, wondering whether everything is still there.
The person who is right for you is someone you can walk beside without either of you having to change your stride.
So, in the end: how to know if someone is right for you?
No one can answer that for you, and you should be wary of any article that promises you will know by the end of it. People on the outside only see a few evenings; you are the one walking that road every day.
But there is one question worth taking with you, the next time the two of you walk side by side: right now, am I hurrying to keep up, slowing down to wait, or simply walking? Do not answer right away. Just notice, over a few walks, whether the answer stays the same. If it changes every time, it may still be a little early, and that is perfectly all right too.
Sometimes what we need is not one more piece of advice, but a mirror tilted a few degrees, at the exact moment we dare to ask honestly. If you would like to try a single cast of your own, Sussurio is right here, and if you are curious about the southern school of thought behind it, that story is waiting to be told as well. And if what you feel is no longer a small uncertainty but a distance between you that keeps quietly widening, there is another piece on how to know when to walk away from a relationship.
