How to Know If a Guy Is Serious About You After a Year

Once you've been dating a guy for a year, it's only natural to want to know where you stand. The little things he does after being with you for such a long time can reveal more about how he feels than you might think. Attune yourself to the signals he's sending and you'll find out whether he's serious enough about your relationship to survive the trials of high school, your undergraduate years or even post-college life.

At this point in your relationship, a guy who is serious about you shouldn't just be letting you into his life, he should want you in it. Maybe he plays you music by his favorite band in the hopes that you'll be into it, too, or tries to get you excited about his preferred hiking spot. He should be past just trying to impress you and ready to show who he really is, warts and all, instead. Wanting to share his time with you is a sure sign that he's serious about you, longtime relationship writer and psychotherapist Caroline Presno writes in "10 Signs You're in a Commitment-Ready Relationship" on "The Huffington Post."

Once you're a year in, a guy who's serious about you doesn't require you to look like you stepped out of a catalogue every time he sees you. You should be able to look and act natural without feeling his judgment. He should also be interested in your friends and family because he cares about you, according to Presno. And he should be genuinely interested in your deepest passions, not just expect you to latch onto his.

You'll know a guy is serious about you if he invites you to meet his parents, whether that means coming over for dinner or a spring break visit. Meeting a sibling or other family member most likely doesn't carry the same weight as meeting his mom, relationship expert, author and speaker Corey Guyton writes in "Six Ways to Know If a Man Is Serious About You" on his website "The Genuine Scholar." Of course, each family is unique, but your partner will want the people closest to him to get to know someone for whom he cares deeply.

While words alone can't tell you what a guy is thinking, they can certainly help. After dating him for a year, you deserve the relationship title -- and he should be open to conversations about the future, writes Guyton. If he says he's serious about you and demonstrates his commitment by being there when you need him, he means it, according to Presno. When he's planning months into the future and punctuating your conversations with proclamations of love, you should take him at his word.