He is not a lover who does not love forever.

Setting permanence as the test is demanding, and you are free to reject it, since plenty of real love has ended without becoming counterfeit. What is being reached for is the difference between attachment and appetite, between wanting somebody’s company for years and wanting the feeling they currently produce in you. Only one of those survives inconvenience.

The honest check is not how strongly you feel now but what you would do when it costs you something. Would you still be there through an illness, a bad year, a version of them you never signed up for. That question tells you far more than intensity does.