For all the talk about how easy men are to understand, a remarkably large number of women find it difficult to determine whether or not the men in their lives really love them.
The simple truth is that men are not always as easy to read as conventional wisdom would have us believe.
Most men are reluctant to expose their deeper emotions to public view, due to outdated but nonetheless lingering misconceptions about how men are supposed to express themselves.
As a result, it can be almost impossible to determine the extent of a man's feelings until he is ready to express them in words.
Fortunately, there are still a few sure-fire ways to discover how much the man in your life cares about you.
Here are some of the best tips to find out if he loves you.
Does he listen to you? We're not talking about the kind of listening that men demonstrate when they are trying to pick you up in a bar, but the really intense sort of listening that demonstrates that he is interested in you as more than just a plaything.
Most guys will at least pretend to listen to you when they want something from you.
One of the best tips to find out if he loves you is to pay close attention to how he listens to what you have to say.
Is he really processing your words and emotions, or simply hearing them and dismissing them in one smooth motion? Men only listen to things that they really care about - they treat everything else as background noise.
Do you feel like he trusts you? One of the best tips to find out if he loves you is to assess the level of trust he has in you.
While some women may find some level of comfort in a man who continually asks where they have been and what they have been doing - as if those questions were expressions of real interest, most women should be smart enough by now to realize that men who act in that way are demonstrating a complete lack of trust.
A man who trusts you will never question you like that.
He will be confident that you will share with him anything that you want him to know, and will wait for you to do so.
Are you the center of his world? This is one of those tips to find out if he loves you that many women fail to consider.
There are so many different types of relationships that you can have with a man that it is sometimes easy to confuse the signals he is providing.
Does he treat you like one of his buddies - calling when it suits him, always assuming that you'll be available for whatever he has in mind - or does he focus on your needs and what makes you happy? Believe it or not, this is one of the best tips to find out if he loves you.
When a man really loves you, he will move Heaven and Earth to make you happy.
Conversely, if you don't feel like you have a central place in his life, you probably don't.
As you can see, there are tips to find out if he loves you - you just have to know how to read the signals he is sending.
There is often a fine line between real love and casual friendship when you are dealing with men, and you may sometimes find it difficult to know on which side of that line you really stand.
However, by using a little patience and these tips to find out if he loves you, your days of wondering how he feels can finally be at an end.