1. You're not scared that he's going to do something awful and hurt you. In my crappy relationships, I always had one foot out the door because I knew on some level they were jerks, but once you finally meet someone who's good for you, you know they'd never do that because they're actually not a pile of garbage in a trench coat pretending to be a person.
2. You know 100 percent whether he's into you or not. You don't feel like a spy trying to uncover his true motives all the time because his actions and his words constantly show you how he really feels about you. No detective work needed.
3. You're not secretly hoping he'll change one day. Maybe one day he'll drink less, Maybe one day he'll confront his man-boy problem, Maybe one day he will clean his apartment so I won't look at it and vomit are all things I've thought when I was in bad relationships. In good ones I just think, Thank you for being ready-made. Thank you.
4. Being with him isn't a constant battle. All my bad relationships felt like a battle I was trying to win. Like, OK, time to roll up my sleeves and make this dump truck of a relationship work. With the right guy, it's easy and you never need to roll up your sleeves unless you're, like, baking a pie together in a cute way.
5. You hardly ever complain about him to your friends. At freaking last you're in a relationship where every single text doesn't turn into a five-hour discourse with your friends about what he meant and what his deal is.
6. You don't feel like he's holding back with you. You know you're getting all of him and not just the portions he's not choosing to protect because he "got hurt really badly" or "needs time to open up." You get all of his attention, his love, his kindness, his vulnerability, and you don't have to constantly work for it (see: rolling up sleeves.)
7. Neither of you plays any of the stupid games you played when you were single. You don't suddenly start withholding affection because he withheld affection from you the last time you were out because — thank god — he doesn't withhold affection ever.
8. You can be completely honest with him without feeling like he's going to judge you. You don't even wonder if he will because you know he never would. It's like wondering if your best friend would judge you for wearing flares even though it's 2015. She probably should, but you know she wouldn't.
9. You can talk openly about the future without feeling weird about it. Because you're finally two people sharing a life instead of two people who are kind of holding back because they're afraid the other one is going to hurt them. So talking about where you see this going is just good communication, not an investigation.
10. You don't worry about who's going to pay for what. There's a natural rhythm between you two, so whatever the deal is, it comes naturally. If he always pays, you both know that. If you guys naturally take turns, you know that too. But it's not anything you stress over because it takes care of itself.
11. Your friends adore everything about him. They don't just think he's cute or are glad he makes you happy; they looooove him. They think he's as cool as you are and they're so psyched you're together.
12. When someone invites you somewhere, they also invite him. Because they not only know how solid you guys are, but you're both so awesome that it only makes sense to have you both there. Do you think Jay Z gets invited to things that Beyoncé doesn't get invited to? No. They're a combo pack.
13. You can fight and know it doesn't mean the end of the relationship. In the past, if you fought, you knew that was the end; you were breaking up, for sure. But now you know that fighting is a normal part of being a couple, and it doesn't hurt that you two fight like people who love each other and not like people who want to win every time. Big difference.
14. If he doesn't text you back right away, it doesn't even cross your mind to be worried. You're not thinking, Great, he hates me. He hates me and he's met someone else. Her name is Beth and they're moving to Wyoming, because you know he loves you and that is an insanely specific scenario.
15. You look back at all your other relationships and can't believe you settled for so much less than this. Now that you know how good a relationship can be, you can't believe you ever dated someone who used all your hair products and claimed they were stolen by someone who had a key and left quietly (That was not a believable story, Neil!!!).
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Lane Moore is an award-winning comedian, actor, writer, and musician. She is the creator of the hit comedy show Tinder Live and author of the critically acclaimed book How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't. Moore is the front person and songwriter in the band It Was Romance, which has been praised everywhere from Pitchfork to Vogue. She has written for The Onion, The New Yorker, and was previously the Sex and Relationships editor at Cosmopolitan.
