How do you know if you're still in love with your ex?
After a breakup, everything gets mixed up. You miss your ex, you think about them at night, one song is enough to pull you right back in... and you're no longer sure whether it's love or something else.
The thing is, two very different things give the same symptoms. There's love for the person: their voice, the way they are, wanting them back and not someone else. And there's missing the relationship: someone waiting for you at home, the little habits you had as a couple, the fear of being alone, sometimes wanting your ex to regret it. Both hurt and both make you think of your ex, but they don't ask for the same thing at all.
Here's a simple example. Imagine someone kind, funny and thoughtful asked you out tomorrow. If most of what you're missing would go away, it was mainly the relationship you missed. If nothing would change because it's your ex you want, that's love.
That's why this quiz gives you two scores instead of one. Ten questions look at what you feel for your ex, ten others at what the breakup took away from you, and you read the two bars together.
Signs you're still in love with your ex
Some signs are about the person themselves. Those are the ones that weigh the most in the quiz, and here are the main ones.
Thinking about your ex a lot isn't a sign on its own. Everyone thinks about their ex after a breakup, in love or not. What matters is what you think about: them, or what you lost.
What looks like love, but isn't
Missing the relationship often wears your ex's face, simply because they were the one in that place. Here's what people most often mistake for love.
Sunday-night loneliness
Do you miss your ex mostly when the apartment is empty, and a lot less when you're surrounded by people? Then it's having someone around that you miss, more than the person themselves.
A bruised ego
When you've been dumped, you often want the other person to regret it and come back apologizing, even if you'd say no. And your brain doesn't help. In 2010, anthropologist Helen Fisher and her team scanned fifteen people who had just been rejected and said they were still intensely in love: when they looked at a photo of their ex, the areas that lit up were the ones linked to reward and craving, the same ones involved in addiction. Being rejected can make you want someone even more.
Nostalgia that erases everything
Over time, your memory mostly keeps the good moments. The fights and the reasons you left fade away, and what's left is a perfect story that never existed. If you can't quite remember why it ended, think back to the last few months, not the first ones.
The fear of being alone
After a breakup, a lot of people tell themselves they'll never find anyone again. That fear makes you look back, toward the only person you already know. So it's less love for them than fear of the unknown.
The five possible results
The quiz doesn't give you a score out of a hundred. It gives you two bars, and their shape is what makes the result: one can be ahead of the other, both can be high, or both low.
| Your two bars | The result | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Both low | You're not in love anymore | Memories are left, not feelings |
| Missing ahead | It's missing, not love | What you miss most is being a couple |
| Love ahead | You still love them | It's them you miss, not the relationship |
| Both high | In love and hooked | The most painful mix |
| Both in the middle | A bit of both | The feelings are fading without disappearing |
The result tells you where you are today, and it moves a lot in the months after a breakup. Take the quiz again in a few weeks: comparing the two will tell you as much as the first result.
You still love them: now what?
Still being in love with your ex is nothing unusual. Feelings don't stop on the day the relationship does: according to a University of Illinois study published in 2025, it takes around four years on average to be halfway detached from an ex, after a relationship of at least two years. What matters is what you do with that feeling.
If the breakup came down to things that can change
A bad patch, distance, a misunderstanding, a time when one of you wasn't doing well... In that case, you can tell your ex, once, clearly, without burying it in hints. Before that, look at what they're doing on their side: a text sent for no reason or an offer to meet up says a lot more than stories watched at midnight.
If it came down to something deeper
Values that don't fit, two different life plans, cheating that broke everything, or an ex who told you clearly it was over. Then love isn't enough, and keeping it alive mostly hurts you. Cut contact until things settle: it's what helps the most to move on, long before any big resolution.
If it's mostly missing the relationship
Then don't text your ex to fill a lonely evening: you'd get the same relationship back, with the same problems. Fill what the relationship used to fill instead: see your friends, plan things for your evenings. And once you feel good on your own again, room for someone new will open up by itself!
