7 Signs Someone Is Your Person

Your “person” is, in cheesy, outdated terms, your soul mate. They can be a best friend, a romantic partner, and honestly, the qualities that make them your person are mostly the same either way. There’s a distinct difference between someone just being a “friend” or even a “best friend” or a “boyfriend” or “girlfriend” – those are all very fine things to be, but when someone is you person, the connection and commitment and almost creepy degree of understanding each other is totally next level.

This is the person you marry. This is the person who will be your best friend until one of you dies. This is a relationship that isn’t limited to or defined by circumstantial things like being in school together, or going through a phase of life where you’re similar but eventually you’ll grow and change and move apart from each other. This person sticks forever because the thing that ties you isn’t that superficial – it’s deep down in the core of who you are. It is unchanging. You’re stuck with this weirdo for life.

Here’s how you know you’ve found them:

When something is wrong, you can’t hide it from them

To the rest of the world, you might appear completely fine. But the slightest shift in your demeanor – the way you responded to a text, or a quick look that came over your face before you replaced it with a smile – something small that might be completely undetectable to anyone else…they catch it. Every time.

But they respect your privacy

Privacy isn’t always about keeping secrets or being afraid to share things. Often, it’s about taking space to figure out how you feel about something so when you do share it, you actually know what to say. Everyone takes a different amount of time to do that. And everyone has certain things that they don’t need to open up about, that they are entitled to keep to themselves. Someone who is truly your person will respect that, and will never push you to share more than you want to. They won’t need to have total access to your every little thought and feeling just to validate their importance to you. Like, they know how important they are. But they also know that, no matter how close the two of you are, you are still separate people and they don’t own your brain or your heart.

Nothing that happens in your life is real until you tell them about it

If you get a raise at work, or accepted to grad school, or get a completely terrible haircut, or hear a hilarious joke – none of it really happened until you can tell your person about it. Once the two of you have laughed, cried, or bitched about something, then it’s real. The longest minutes of your life are always the time between something interesting happening and when you can tell that person about it.

You don’t care what you look like around them

They’ve seen you looking your absolute best, and have also seen you hungover, with the flu, on your couch, while your apartment is 18 shades of gross. And you don’t care. A high level of comfort and ease with totally being yourself is a fundamental part of something being your person.

They are on your side. Always. With no hesitation.

If someone is fucking with you, they are fucking with both of you. That’s just the rule. There is no situation where this person isn’t automatically on your side. You don’t have to be right. They are your teammate and they have your back, no matter what.

But will also tell you when you’re wrong

Once your person is done backing you up, they will also call you out, if that’s what is necessary. There’s a careful balance between being a united front to the rest of the world, but not bullshitting each other in private. They know you, they love you, you trust each other, which means they get to tell you when you’re being an asshole. Because you know they mean it with love.

You just know

Some of the signs that someone is your person can be described. Others are so intangible that they honestly defy words. It’s just…a feeling. It’s a gut thing. You get each other. With no good explanation or any logical reason, there is just a thing that is present in both of you and it is the same. You saw it in each other immediately, and from that moment on, you felt a little less alone and a lot more understood. 

Read more about girlfriends, best friends, and finding the one here.