Whether You’re Married Or Dating, These 3 Reactions Mean It’s Physiological Attraction

Most of the time, adult romantic relationships get stuck on these four questions: How do I know they’re the one I like? What’s the difference between liking and loving? What does it actually feel like to truly love someone? At what point in a relationship is it okay to get married? When you feel drawn to many people of the opposite sex, how do you decide this person is the one for life? Is love really that elusive? What exactly counts as real liking?

Actually, psychology offers a simple answer: when you truly love someone, there’s almost always a deep, bone-level, instinctive physiological attraction. After all, the human mind can pretend sometimes, but the body’s instinctive reactions rarely lie. If you want to know whether someone truly loves you—or if you’re hesitating over your own feelings—today, let’s talk about this instinctive “physiological attraction”: your body language is exposing your true feelings.

When You’re Physiologically Attracted to Someone, Your Body Sends 3 “Confession Signals”

British psychologist Max A. Egert wrote a book called The Brilliance of Body Language. One line from it reads: “When someone has a crush on you, their body will unconsciously display all kinds of signals.”

Here are a few obvious ones you can pick up on:

1. Willingness to enter your personal space.

Everyone has their own psychological space. Whether someone enters your space or you enter theirs, the mind triggers an instinctive alarm—staying highly alert. For example, when riding an elevator, two strangers will deliberately keep their distance. But when someone is attracted to you, they can’t help but step into your personal space.

Personal distance is generally 45–120 cm—close enough to shake hands. If you’re very close, that distance shrinks to under 45 cm. If you don’t reject or resist this closeness, and even look forward to it—if you also take the initiative to get closer—congratulations: you like each other.

Like in the movie Flipped, when the little girl Juli first meets her new neighbor Bryce, she enthusiastically says hi, touches his hand, talks to him every day, and even fantasizes about kissing him. She was captivated by his blue eyes, describing that first moment as being “flipped.” That’s the direct manifestation of physiological attraction.

On the flip side, if in a relationship you consistently and instinctively recoil from the other person’s physical closeness, resist intimacy, or they deliberately keep their distance and refuse to get close—at its core, that’s subconscious rejection. True deep love is very unlikely to exist there.

2. Maintaining eye contact during conversation.

The eyes give away a person’s heart most easily. Social psychologist Zick Rubin found that the longer partners have been in love, the longer they hold eye contact—up to 75% of the time, even in undisturbed settings.

Why can they keep it up for so long? Biological anthropologist Dr. Helen Fisher writes in Why We Love that gazing is the most moving moment in love. It stimulates the most primitive parts of our brain that control desire, awakening two basic impulses: approach or retreat.

If your gaze lingers on someone for two or three seconds and your pupils dilate involuntarily—that’s a sign you like them. And if you maintain eye contact with someone you like for just 30–60 seconds, the brain secretes large amounts of oxytocin. Together with the hormones released in a hug or kiss, it becomes a “love adhesive,” creating attachment and affection between you.

3. Smiling at you frequently.

If every time someone sees you, they break into a genuine smile—or even when they’re in a bad mood, seeing you makes them smile uncontrollably—they truly like you. This is called a Duchenne smile.

Neurologist Duchenne de Boulogne conducted an experiment using electrical currents to stimulate facial muscles and study how they change expressions. He found that a real, contagious smile involves both the cheekbones and the muscles around the eyes, with “crow’s feet” fine lines appearing around the eyes. Because the muscles around the eyes are very hard to control voluntarily, once they move, it’s a smile from the heart.

When you meet true love, just having them by your side makes you smile involuntarily, feeling happy, fulfilled, and content.

Other similar physiological signals include: toes pointing toward you subconsciously, licking lips more frequently than usual, craving kisses, cuddles, and other forms of physical contact…

So if you want to know whether someone likes you, pay more attention to what your body is telling you. After all, for adults, this kind of physiological attraction is quite precious—sometimes it guides you, almost imperceptibly, to the person you want to be with.

When You Truly Like Someone, Your Skin Develops a “Hunger State”

It’s not just the body sending signals—even your skin gets “hungry.”

Don’t deny it just yet. Ask yourself: when you like someone, don’t you want to stick to them all the time, to be held in their arms?

Take Supermodel Xi Mengyao and her husband, He Youjun. Many people assumed He was a cold, aloof “rich kid boss,” but it turns out he’s a total “clingy spirit.” On their variety show, when Xi was cooking chicken soup in the kitchen, he wanted a hug. When she was cleaning, he wanted a hug. He dug bamboo shoots and got covered in mud, and the first thing he did when he got home was chase her around asking for cuddles. At the end of a long, tiring day, he still needed to fall asleep holding her.

I really wanted to shout through the screen: “Why don’t you just get welded to your wife?!”

As one netizen put it, he’s basically a human-shaped accessory attached to her. It’s no exaggeration to say this was the first time I’d ever seen a guy act so sweet and clingy. It reminds me that we all experience “skin hunger” in our lives—it’s a physiological need to be touched.

You may have heard of psychologist Harry Harlow’s “Rhesus Monkey Isolation Experiment”: baby rhesus monkeys were separated from their biological mothers from day one. Two “surrogate mothers” were placed in front of them: a wire mother with a milk bottle, and a soft terry-cloth mother without a bottle.

Even though the wire mother provided milk, the baby monkey would rather go hungry and spend all its time with the cloth mother. Harlow concluded that warm physical contact matters more than nursing.

Dr. Tiffany Field, director of the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami, says: “A light touch or caress can be exciting because it stimulates subcutaneous pressure sensors, making the vagus nerve more active. Heart rate, blood pressure, and stress hormones like cortisol drop, and brain waves show the person entering a relaxed state. So even a hug or a handshake brings great pleasure.”

When we hug someone for more than 20 seconds, the body also releases oxytocin—not only bonding our emotions but also relieving stress and fear. So no matter how frustrating life gets, a hug makes you calmer and happier. The warmth of each other’s skin and the closeness of that contact make us feel deeply: I still have someone I love, and you’re right here with me.

So if someone hugs you often, it’s proof they truly like you. Likewise, if you still like them, don’t be stingy with your hugs either.

When You Truly Like Someone, You Might Get “Addicted to Love”

Did you know? Once you fall in love, it can feel like an “addiction” that gets to your head.

Brian Earp of the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics wrote in his article “Addicted to Love: What Is Love Addiction and When Should It Be Treated?” that “love addiction” comes in two forms:

1. Narrow love addiction.​

For these people, love is a necessity of life—they can’t bear to live without it. Even after a breakup or during a single period, they must quickly find a new partner. They need to be in a romantic relationship for extended periods.

2. Broad love addiction.​

This is actually quite similar to ordinary romantic states, except the emotional reactions are more intense or unstable. For instance, they become highly sensitive to the other person’s actions and moods. If they get a response, they feel as happy as if a certain “craving” has been satisfied; if not, they start overthinking and feeling anxious.

So your mood swings between excitement, thrill, and depression—like a roller coaster.

The reason for this “addiction” is that when you like someone, nerve cells in your brain release a chemical called norepinephrine, which stimulates adrenaline production. Dopamine is also produced, activating other parts of the brain and making you feel excited and happy. This stimulating pleasure is like a reward in an otherwise plain life—once you’ve experienced it, it lingers.

On Douban, there’s a hugely popular group called “I Met a Crush Today,” with over 180,000 members. Opening those pink-bubble-filled posts every day gives you an adrenaline rush.

What is a “crush”? It’s more like a brief, intense, yet shy infatuation. Someone once shared their crush experience: at a social event, they met a guy by chance. They had a drink together and kissed instinctively. But neither asked for the other’s contact info—they simply stayed briefly in each other’s lives, then returned to their own paths.

What’s truly unforgettable is that moment of a racing heart and sweet ambiguity when love strikes. For that instant, we’re drawn to each other, beautiful enough to get high on.

Of course, real, lasting love involves long-term attachment to a partner—the instinct to stay close, to accompany, and to commit, even after the novelty fades.

Final Thoughts

Psychologist Robert Sternberg believed that love consists of three elements: passion, intimacy, and commitment.​ Passion is sexual desire, infatuation—it’s “fiery.” Intimacy is mutual liking, appreciation, and care—it’s “warm.” Commitment is the expectation of maintaining the relationship, loyalty to love—it’s “sober.”

If a relationship lacks any one of these three, it becomes shaky. Reality bears this out: most failed relationships fall apart over the latter two parts. That’s why so many people today have lost hope in love.

And because of this disappointment, in order to protect ourselves from getting hurt, we attach all kinds of conditions to love. I can totally understand that—I just feel a sense of regret: What was it that made us like the other person in the first place?

Maybe it was the inability to stop thinking about them, an almost crazy obsession. Maybe it was feeling that having them was the best thing in life. Maybe it was feeling an inexplicable sense of peace just having them around. Or believing that even if the whole world abandoned you, they would never leave…

These “physiological likes” are our emotional impulses as human beings. So, don’t let yourself lose the ability to love.

As Erich Fromm wrote in The Art of Loving: “I have always believed that love can awaken something alive in the other person, and both will be filled with joy from awakening something alive within themselves.”

The world and I love you.