Last night, my roommate’s boyfriend was over at the apartment. It was dinner time. She was wearing her baggy pajama pants, her hair unkempt, her face make-up free. I noticed how little she seemed to care about her appearance while in his presence, and I’m not necessarily saying that’s a bad thing. She just seemed so comfortable, and so….indifferent.

And then it got me thinking about myself. I came up with a theory: You can tell if you love some one by how you act in the morning when you’re both in bed.

When we sleep over a guy’s place for the first time, we wake up next to him, hopefully giving ourselves a high five and doing a DJ Tanner, “Yes!” (you know, when she pulls her leg up and clenches her fist with a celebretory “yes!” if she gets away with some kind of shenanigan or something). We are wearing our cutest underwear, just in case of a little morning mess-around session.

Maybe we take out our compact while he’s still sleeping and dab on some mascara or blush, so we appear fresh-faced when he wakes up and looks at us. We smell our armpits to make sure there’s no B.O., maybe spritz on something flowery, bla bla, bla. And we sure as hell make a mad dash to brush our teeth, and even if we dont’ have a toothbrush at his place, we’ll gladly use our finger.

But then, something changes. As we get deeper into a relationship, our feminine side gradually chills out. One day, when we wake up next to him, we don’t rush to put on concealer, we don’t care if we don’t smell like flowers, we may not even rush to the bathroom if we finally do have a toothbrush at his place. And you know things are getting serious when you have claimed a rightful place in his medicine cabinet for your stuff.

So, if you’re not sure if you’re in love with someone, think about your knee-jerk reaction the next time you wake up next to him. Do you wake up and feel the need to reach for the make-up bag in your purse? Do you sneak off to the bathroom quietly to shave, shower and brush your teeth? Or do you stay in bed and think, “Ehhh, whatever….I’ll get up in a few minutes.”

It’s not that we turn gross or dirty when we’re in love. It’s that we get so comfortable, that we start turning into the person we are when we’re alone and when we’re single. Things ironically come full circle.

In a lot of ways, it’s a good thing. It’s good to feel that comfort with another person, the kind of comfort you feel when you can just be completely and utterly yourself; when you couldn’t care less if you eat more barbecue ribs at Chili’s than he does, or challenge him to a burping contest and win. Or when you let him see your hungover face in the morning without a drop of make-up, and he still wants to hang out with you for the day. Now that’s love.

But we all know we also love those exciting, first few months of a relationship, when you have something and someone to primp for, when things are still shiny and new. I think the solution is to find a balance when it comes to letting our girly, feminine tendancies fall away in the face of comfort; to always keep a few morning rituals that he will never see, no matter what.

But, if your boyfriend really wants to date some one as smelly and gassy as him, spraying something flowery ain’t gonna do a damn thing.