Relationships

He Knows Your Soul: 8 Signs He'll Still Love You After You've Grown Old

by Lauren Martin

Beauty is a curse. It enchants and bewitches, and like all curses, will one day be broken. We live with it from the day we're born. We’re told we’re beautiful, perfect, gorgeous. We’re put on pedestals and admired from afar. We’re treated like princesses and given grand dreams of our beauty sending us off into the eternal happy ending.

We’re never told that our spotlight will fade, our powers will dwindle and our princes will still yearn for the beauty of the young princesses.

Throughout the years, we'll watch the once soft and supple skin we used to capture attention and lust become withered and wrinkled. We'll bear witness to the changes of our mothers and grandmothers.

We'll begin to shudder as we look at young photographs of them, their youthful faces barely recognizable now. We'll finally be attuned to the harsh reality that this beauty we hold so dear, our soft skin and unmarred face, is more a curse than a power.

It’s an illusion, a fading whim. It’s a slow death, a continual transformation. One day, we won't have the power of smooth skin and perky breasts.

We won't walk with the notion that our youthful good looks have the capacity to lure men and break hearts. We won't be the young beautiful princess who never ages. We won't have the same power our 20-something image once held.

Instead, we'll have something else.

Laugh lines and age spots... wrinkles and scars that tell stories. We'll have skin that’s been through breakups and losses, fingers that have touched the world before some have even come to know it. We'll have arms that have wrapped around hundreds and eyes that have witnessed both birth and death.

We will get older -- not uglier, just older. Our beauty will mold and transform along with us. We will never lose it, but it will look different. It’s the kind of beauty that’s endearing and respectable. And any man you're supposed to be with will also see that.

You’re looking for that man who is less like Prince Charming and more like a Great Guy. He’s not trying to save you, just be with you. He will see your beauty as you see it: ever-changing and evolving.

After years together, he won't look at you as the shadow of the young girl he married, but the woman he’s loved for years. He'll watch your beauty evolve and transform with awe and tenderness.

He will never turn to younger women, lusting and yearning after their youthful charm. Because it’s not about that with him. He knows your soul; he knows you better than anyone, and that depth is more beautiful and real than any 20-something’s nice tan.

He likes you before he likes to look at you.

Your beauty isn’t first for him. It’s something he enjoys, but not something he expects. He sees you as a soul, a counterpart, a person. He doesn’t see you as the object of his desires or the prize he loves to mount in the living room.

He only has eyes for you, not the next best thing.

He doesn’t look at other women because there’s nothing to look for. He found what he wanted and it’s not your beauty that’s keeping him there, just like it’s not another woman’s beauty who will take him away.

Your smile made him do a double take, not your cat-eye.

It wasn’t your face that made him turn around when he passed you, but something that drew him to you. He needed to look at you again, be near you for another second. You pull him toward you with a force stronger than your good looks.

He tells you you still look beautiful, he doesn’t question it.

He isn’t telling himself -- he’s telling you. He sees you for how you really look and the more he gets to know you, the more your beauty grows. He ages alongside you, your face only becoming more familiar and more beautiful with the years.

He likes to show you a good time, not show you around.

He doesn’t take you out because he likes how good you look on his arm, he takes you out because he can’t stay away from you. Nothing is the same without you, nothing is as fun.

Whether it’s at a crowded restaurant or the quiet seclusion of your home, it’s not about how you look with him, it’s just about being with him.

He's in awe of what you say, not how you look.

He loves what you say, not how you look saying it. He waits, anticipates and yearns to hear you talk. He loves your stories and hearing your voice on the phone. He finds comfort in your words and could listen to you talk all day.

He's eager to show off your brain, not your beauty.

When he takes you out with his friends, it’s not about planting you in the corner. His friends enjoy you, the same way they enjoy him. You’re not someone he feels obligated to bring around, but excited to invite.

He laughs because you're funny, not because he wants you to think you are.

You’re one of the funniest people he knows. Whether you guys have the same sense of humor, love the same TV or he just thinks you’re hilarious, you know that he’s not indulging you when water comes out of his nose.