How to Know He's Open to Falling in Love

What Value Does He Place on Relationships and Women?

Picture a 4 carat natural diamond ring. If I asked a room of women to price it, every single one would give a different number, because the value each of you ties to a diamond comes from your own experiences, your family, what you've seen and been taught. Same ring, different values. Men are exactly like that with relationships. When you start dating a man, you have to find out what value he places on being in a relationship and on having a woman in his life, because it is not a given.

Get a guy to yap enough and he will spill his real feelings toward relationships and women. Some men on a date with you see marriage and girlfriends as a nuisance: I've watched my boys go through so much, I've seen the horror stories, I don't know if it's for me. Listen for that. A man who's open to falling in love can speak on the value a good woman brings to a man's life, and wants to attract that. A man who sees no value in the ring will never pay the price for it.

Check His Attachments: The Ex, the Big Bro, and the Mom

First attachment: the ex-girlfriend. Does he still see her, hang out one-on-one, share a friend group as they transition into being best friends? Avoid that man like the plague. He cannot be open to falling in love with you while he still has a connection to her.

Second: the big bro. The guy in his inner circle whose opinion he lives by. If that guy believes women are disposable and bring no value, he's in your man's ear about it constantly, and his whole life is the opposite example of what your relationship needs. That voice makes it much harder for your man to open up to connection at all.

Third, and the scariest: the mom. Ex-girlfriends are bad, but moms are a hundred times worse, because you can't get rid of them, and you will never win the I've-known-you-longer argument. If mom has decided nobody is good enough for her son, it doesn't matter if you're the queen of England, she will discourage him until she's blue in the face. I was helping a woman who spent seven years with a man, and the relationship died because he would never stand up to his mother. So on your dates, ask how his mom got along with his exes. If you hear friction, or that mom was a main reason a relationship ended, understand what you're dealing with: a man who is technically emotionally available but whose mother makes him functionally unavailable.

Ask About His Vision of the Future, Then Just Listen

Don't ask what are you looking for. Serial daters ask it on every first date, men are prepared for it, and they know how to answer it in a way that sounds good. Instead, ask the crystal ball question: what's your vision for your future? Where do you want to live, what do you want to be doing? Keep it vague. Do not steer him with, what's your vision as it relates to a girlfriend who looks just like me. Let his mind go where it goes.

Here's what I know firsthand from my own guy friends. The ones focused on themselves answer entirely about themselves: Dubai, the Lamborghini, Miami. The ones who genuinely want a relationship always implement a good woman into the picture: I want to find a woman I can trust and build something lasting with. Whatever sits at the front of a man's mind comes out first when he describes his future. If a relationship is on the back burner, it shows up last, if it shows up at all.

Look at Where His Career and Lifestyle Are Headed

Pay attention to the distance between where his career is and where he wants it to be. The entry-level software engineer who wants to become a director is walking a straight line: more responsibility, same life. But the grocery store cashier who's telling you he's about to be the next Drake? That man is not open to falling in love, and I'll tell you why. The energy required to go from cashier to successful rapper will consume everything, and love goes on the back burner while he chases the dream. You'll be dating a completely different person in a year, and you can't even gauge who you'll be to him by then. I'm not saying never be with a man before he makes it. Just don't board the ride mid-transition.

Then get sober about his lifestyle. Say he bartends at a couple of local clubs: working until 4 a.m. every weekend, flirting with girls for tips, taking numbers so people keep coming back to spend money. Nothing evil about the job, but be honest with yourself: does that lifestyle make a successful relationship easier or harder? He can say he's open to falling in love, but if love would hinder the way he earns, he's not really open to it. Ask what his day-to-day actually consists of, and believe what the schedule tells you.

Does He Understand the Sacrifice a Relationship Requires?

A relationship gives you both the benefit of each other, and it costs you both something: the ability to just up and go, the strip club nights, doing whatever you want whenever you want. That trade has to be a mental state he's already at peace with. You're not here to convince him or persuade him. You're here to observe his approach to the idea.

This is where deeper listening matters. If he's on the date saying, I don't get why women want to share locations and know where you're at, sometimes you just want to be out with the boys, free, not texting anybody, listen to the sentiment underneath the words. He's telling you that trading freedom for partnership feels disgusting to him. Any real relationship worth having requires compromise from both people, hearing another perspective, not getting your way every time. If that's not his state of being, he will not be open to falling in love, no matter what he says on the surface.

His Friends Are the Page He's On

You do not decide a man is open to falling in love until you understand the lifestyle his friends live and the rhetoric they speak. If every one of his best friends is a single bachelor who sees no point in relationships, you want to believe your guy is the one who evolved. He's most likely not. I'm telling you as a man who has also helped hundreds of women: the odds that a man is on a drastically different page from all of his BFFs are slim to basically none.

Here's how you extract it. Ask about his friends warmly: what's James like, what does Josh do? If he lights up telling you Josh is a wild boy, trips to Dubai, a different girl every month, don't judge, play along. Oh, Josh is crazy like that? Men slip up here, because talking about their boys doesn't feel self-incriminating. But you're quietly making the connection he thinks you can't make: nobody in this friend group desires a long-term relationship, so the version of himself he's selling me is probably a facade designed to tell me what I want to hear.

Promises, Work Ethic, and What He Thinks Love Actually Is

Watch what he does with promises to himself. The guy who announces he's quitting drinking, holds it for 30 days, then it's a couple of coolers with the boys, then shots by day 60, then back to square one by day 90 talking about how he'll just drink less. If a man breaks promises to himself, rest assured he will break promises to you. A man primed to fall in love is primed to be reliable and responsible to someone outside himself, and he can't give you a reliability he doesn't even give himself.

Work ethic is the same window. The guy who hides in the cereal aisle on his phone to dodge work, who brags about the clock-in glitch that pays him for hours he didn't do: that's not a funny finesse story, that's a preview. A relationship requires effort, consistency, and days that suck, and whatever work ethic he brings to his job is the work ethic he'll bring to you. Men who cut corners at work cut corners in love.

Finally, ask him what he thinks a romantic relationship should consist of, and listen to what he's really asking for. If his ideal girlfriend watches football, plays video games, and just has fun, no drama ever, listen to the totality: he's describing a guy friend. Your wife should be your best friend, but she is not supposed to be one of your boys. A man who's genuinely open to falling in love embraces the fact that you're different from him, and that together that's what makes the ultimate team. If his version of love just resembles a relationship he already has with his boys or his mother, he's not ready for the real thing.