Did you actually love your ex? This is a question that flows through the minds of many months after a relationship ends — when there isn't even a reminisce of feelings left for that prior significant other who used to be one of the most important parts of your life. How is this?

In my experience, if you truly loved someone, that love never leaves you.

I don't think you ever stop loving someone, you simply learn to love someone else more. Sometimes it is so hard to tell if love is actually love in a fresh relationship. I think the ultimate test of love is if that love still exists even long after the existence of that relationship. I have thought I have been in love before and some of those people have no significance in my life anymore. The difference between those relationships and the ones I truly did fall in love with is the way I feel about them now.

I have been in love twice in my life. Both wonderful relationships — each ending because of forces outside mine and my significant others ability to change or control. While one love was more recent, the other was 5 years ago. For my first love, I can honestly say I still love that person. I do not love them in the way that I want to be with them. But in a way that I acknowledge that loves existence, the love for the relationship, what we had, our friendship and the growth that person brought me in my individual life. I will continue to love that person for who he was with me and the happiness they brought me in our relationship.

It took me over three years until I found someone I truly and wholly wanted to be with after my first love. I thought something was wrong with me because I could not be with anyone. Now I know that I was just waiting for the man that I would love even more than the first one. This second love happened so quickly, I never saw it coming. This second man is probably to this day the most important person in my life outside of my family and few best friends. I was broken after that first love and the second was the one who put the pieces back together. I will forever be grateful to him for that. He gave me his love and showed me that I could love again too.

Even months after the end of this relationship, my love has not wavered.

Does it scare me? No. Do I miss him? Absolutely. Love is terrifying, but I accept that I will always love this man. It is not easy to move on from this and new relationships can't be forced. I remember that I need time and space. I remind myself that there is a chance that I could love someone more than I love the first two, and maybe there is a man out there for me that I will have the capacity to love more than the rest. I will forever appreciate all the loves in my life and all that they have done for me and continue to do and look forward to what is ahead for me.

My point that I am trying to make here is that if you fall out of love with your significant other, or months later feel like you don't love or care about them – then I don't believe that love ever truly did exist. Because if it did, if that love was real, believe me when I say it never leaves you.