Honest test: does this person’s flourishing matter to you as much as your own, and would you choose them on a boring Tuesday in February?
Feelings fluctuate. Dopamine fluctuates. The early chemistry that made you sleepless and obsessive — that’s not designed to last forever. Biology doesn’t run that program indefinitely; you’d die of exhaustion.
What replaces it is either nothing (you drift apart, or you stay together but emptied), or something quieter and harder to point at: the practice of choosing them, on the unromantic days, when neither of you is at your best. That’s the part you build a life on.
Real love is what you do when the feeling goes quiet.