You know you like someone when your body settles around them and you still want more of them: more of their actual company, their stories, their face across a table, not just more of their attention pointed at you. Liking feels like curiosity with a warm pull toward closeness, calm enough that you can be yourself. Anxiety feels different: a coiled hum that keeps asking what they think of you, and that hum gets mistaken for chemistry all the time. If you are a few weeks in and still cannot tell which one you are feeling, tell Figlet what has happened so far and it will help you sort the feeling from the alarm.
It is late and you are on the couch with the thread open. Maybe it is the person from the app you have seen three times, the coworker whose message made your stomach drop this afternoon, or the friend you suddenly cannot stop looking at. You check how long they took to answer. And underneath all of it is a question nobody taught you how to answer: do I actually like this person, or do I just like being liked?
Why can’t I tell if I like someone?
Feeling more like roommates than partners?
Talk it through with Figlet right now. Private, judgment free, built on 17 years of couples therapy.
Because two different things feel identical at midnight. In seventeen years as a couples therapist, the most common mix-up I see at the start is alarm mistaken for chemistry.
Underneath every new connection your nervous system is running two ancient questions. Are you there for me? Am I enough for you? When someone gives you warmth and then distance, interest and then silence, those questions never get answered, so your system keeps asking them all day and louder at night. With a steady person the answer comes back and the system settles. With an uncertain one it comes back sometimes, and the searching never stops.
That searching produces the racing heart, the thin sleep, the inability to think about anything else. Dopamine is not really the pleasure chemical. It is the anticipation chemical. It spikes when you think you might get it. So the spark you feel with someone slightly out of reach may not be chemistry at all. It may be your alarm system going off. And your alarm system has terrible taste.
The intensity is not a measure of connection. It is a measure of activation. Certainty is calm. Calm does not feel like this.
Do I like them, or do I just like the attention?
Slow down the thoughts you keep having and listen to which way they point. Some are about the person: what they said about their brother, how they talk about their work. Others are about you: was I too much, do they still want me, what does their silence say about me?
Thinking about a person is longing. Thinking about what their distance proves about you is the alarm. Limerence, the obsessive state Dorothy Tennov named in 1979, asks about you through the other person. Liking asks about the other person, full stop. If almost every thought circles back to whether they want you, you may be hungry for the answer yes more than you are hungry for them.
That hunger is not shallow. A new person can give you that yes cheaply, because there is no history. You get to be wanted without being weighed. It feels like oxygen. Very often it is relief.
Two tests from my office. Can you name three things about them that genuinely bother you, actual flaws, not charming quirks? If you cannot, you are not seeing them yet, you are seeing a projection. And if this person became completely, boringly available tomorrow, would you still want them? If the honest answer is “I don’t know” or “probably not,” the attraction is being powered by the uncertainty, not by the person.
What does liking someone actually feel like in the body?
Your mind is a terrible instrument for this. Your body is far more honest, so ask it. Bring the person to mind. Not the fantasy version. The real one, the way they look when they are tired. Then notice. Does your chest open or tighten? Does your breathing deepen or go shallow? Do your shoulders drop or creep toward your ears? I listen for one distinction above all: if it is safety, there is a spaciousness underneath it. Your breath is long. If it is alarm, there is a coiled tension, something in your belly still braced even while you smile.
Then ask: after time with them, are my shoulders lower and my jaw unclenched? Can I imagine telling them something small that scares me, without panic?
Nerves are allowed. The difference is what happens after. With someone you like, the nerves give way to ease once you are together. With the alarm, being together never settles anything, and you go home more wound up than you arrived.
Why does the kind one feel like nothing?
The women I sit with who chased fireworks for a decade eventually noticed the same pattern. It felt like fireworks with the ones who could not stay. It felt like nothing with the ones who could.
If your body learned early to equate intensity with love, a steady person who texts back in an hour and means what they say will not spike your system. The part of you running the audit reads the missing spike as missing feeling and files a report: I don’t think I like them. But you may not be feeling nothing. You may be feeling safety, and mistaking it for indifference because nobody ever named it for you.
Am I even showing up as myself?
Early dates have their own trap. To survive the fear of not being enough, most of us send in what I call the Representative: the polished version, charming, low maintenance, the tone right and the smile calibrated. The extra effort on your outfit, laughing at jokes that are not funny, mirroring their interests: a lot of the usual “signs you like them” are really signs your Representative is working hard.
When you are busy managing their experience of you, you have no access to your own experience of them. By the third date you realize you have no idea if you even like this person, because you were never actually present. The Representative does not feel. She assesses. The answer you are waiting for comes from the real you being willing to sit at the table.
A woman who could not tell
A brilliant creative director I will call C sat on one end of my couch. Her partner, J, sat on the other, fuming. She had spent forty minutes explaining, in perfect paragraphs, why he was not quite intellectual enough. Why she was not sure she liked him. Why she was, in her words, “still deciding.”
I asked C not what she thought about him, but what she was noticing in her chest right now, with him three feet away. Her face softened. “My chest is freezing cold,” she said. “My throat is closing.” I asked what the cold was about. Quietly: “I am terrified of letting him love me. Because if I let him love me, and it does not last, I do not know how I survive.”
That was not “I do not like him.” That was “I like him so much I cannot bear to let him matter, so I have been running a small trial in my head where I get to reject him before he can leave.” J’s whole body dropped when he heard it. For the first time he was not the case being tried. He was the person she was scared of losing. I wrote that whole session up, along with why the steady one can feel like nothing, in do I like him.
What is happening between the two of you?
Even before anything is defined, there is a dance. The one who reaches, the Relentless Lover, sends the careful text and becomes an expert in their moods. The one who retreats, the Reluctant Lover, enjoys the warmth and pulls back when real expectations appear. If someone goes quiet for a week and then sends one warm message, the high you feel is not proof you like them. It is a threat response switching off. That middle stretch, before you know what you are to each other, is where the pull is strongest, which is why I wrote about how many dates before a relationship.
One line I will not blur. If someone is threatening you, controlling your money or your phone, blocking you from leaving, or following you, that is not a dance and it is not a question of liking. Get help today. In the US, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233.
What do I do tonight?
Put the phone face down. Decoding the last text is living in the Story of Other: the flashlight stays on them so you never feel what is happening in you. Turn it around. Hand on your chest. Is it spaciousness or coil?
Then, before you see them next, in the car or on the walk over, say this to yourself, word for word: “Tonight I want to be honest. I want to notice how I feel, not just how they feel about me.” That sentence sends the Representative home for an evening and gives the real you a seat at the table. Afterwards, Figlet can help you make sense of what you noticed.
If you are the one they are unsure about
If you are dating someone who keeps going warm and then flat, their hesitation is not proof you are not enough. It is often a nervous system bracing. Do not chase harder; chasing amplifies the fear that started the retreat. Slow down, lower your voltage, and name what you see without accusation: “I notice you’ve pulled back. I’m not angry. I’d like to understand what happened for you.” Then give them room. Your steadiness may feel like nothing to them at first, and that may be exactly what they have never had.
Where to go from here
If the uncertainty is keeping you up at night, read why can’t I stop thinking about him. If the kind ones always feel flat and the unavailable ones feel electric, why can’t I find love walks through why. And if you are further along, months in, and the question has become bigger than liking, that is the later question: how to know if you love someone.
Frequently asked questions
How do you know if you like someone or just the attention?
Notice which way your thoughts point. If most of them are about the person, what they think and need and care about, that is liking. If most of them are about whether they still want you and what their silence says about you, you may be hungry for the answer yes more than for them.
How do I know if I like someone romantically or as a friend?
Imagine them with someone else. If your chest tightens, not from ego but from something deeper, and you want to be enough for them specifically, your body is treating them as more than a friend. A friendship can be close and warm without that particular weight.
Can you like someone and not know it?
Yes, often. If your body learned to associate love with intensity, a steady, kind person can feel like nothing at first. That calm may be the feeling you are looking for.
Is it a crush or real feelings?
A crush keeps the person a central figure, not the only figure; you can think about other things. When it tips into limerence you think about them most of your waking hours, cannot name their flaws, and analyse every text for one question: do they feel the same? Real feelings grow when you see the actual person and still want them.
How long does it take to know if you like someone?
There is no fixed timeline. Certainty on date three is often a sign of projection, not a healthy bond. You learn more by being honest with them about one small tender thing than by counting dates.
If you are still sitting with the thread open, tell Figlet. It is a coaching tool I built from the same work I do in my office. Tell it what happened, the date, the text, the feeling you cannot name, and it will show you the pattern and give you one line to say. It is free to start tonight.
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Feeling more like roommates than partners?
Figlet is relationship coaching built on 17 years of couples therapy. Talk through what is happening the moment it matters, get a clear next step, and stop circling the same fight. Private, judgment free, ready whenever you are.
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Figs O'Sullivan
Founder · EFT couples therapist
“What I would tell you at 10pm, if I could.”
