Have I found 'the one'? You asked Google - here's the answer

Every day millions of internet users ask Google some of life's most difficult questions, big and small. Our writers answer some of the commonest queries

Have you found the one? That's an easy one. No. No you haven't, no you can't no you won't You haven't found "the one" because there is no "one" to be found, by your or anyone else. The idea that there is just one person in the world who can effortlessly bring you to the summit of emotional, sexual and spiritual fulfillment, then keep you there, happily ever after - it's laughable, just like the idea of you being "the one" for someone else. It's like kissing frogs and expecting them to turn into princes, or trying to bag a unicorn by remaining a virgin and hanging around the forest.

And it's a little conceited. You're not that special, and nor is whoever you're obsessing about. You're not a vault with 7 billion possible combinations, only one of which will grant access to your heart. You're one of those cheap little padlocks that can be worked by millions of keys. No offence - we all are. This doesn't mean you have millions of chances at a loving and satisfying relationship (it's a big world, after all, inhabited by busy people), just that you have more than one. The problem is that once you've been seduced by the idea of "the one", it can be hard to accept that you'd be happier with another one, or just no one.

So let's ask the grown-up question. This person you've met and are falling in love with: does he or she make your like better, and it this likely to continue?

This is a harder question, and you'll have to do most of the answering on your own. You wouldn't ask a stranger, "What do I fancy eating right now?" The best insights into your relationship are reserved for you and your partner - and even then each of you has only a partial view, thanks to the untruths we all tell ourselves and each other, deliberately or not. So you've got your work cut out predicting how the two of you might interact over five, 15 or 25 years.

But there are clues. The first thing to look at - mercilessly - is whether your lover is currently making you happy. Not whether they might make you happy in some vague future, once you've sorted out all the other crap going on in your life, but right here, right now. As Karam Chand, one half of the world's longest-married couple, put it as they celebrated 90 years together: "Life and marriage is all about happiness. It is what is most important."

Forget the butterflies when you see them or the sadness when you part: when the two of you are together, do you smile, laugh, sigh with pleasure, even when you're not having sex? If you;re often separated, and sometimes wonder if this is why your hear grows fonder, do you have fun when you're together - or do you often snap at each other, then blame if on the tension of mutual rediscovery?

It doesn't matter which of you is "at fault" - if things aren't good between you early on, it's unlikely they'll improve. Yes, you may change, or they may, but it's just as probable that you will grow apart as that you'll grow closer. Even married couples, who once hoped to stay together till death they did part, end up divorcing 42% of the time.

Looking to the long haul, you have to think about compatibility. Do you want to live in more or less the same place, raise more or less the same number of kids (or none) at more or less the same point, relax in more or less the same way, with the same sort of people? Do you turn each other on and try your hardest to get each other off, with more or less the same frequency? Do you both value fidelity - or not? Are both of you in this for richer and poorer, in sickness and in health?

You know what 's important to you, and with luck what counts for your partner. Make a like if it helps - but try to distinguish between what you genuinely care about and what you're expected to. If you don't give a toss about grand romantic gestures, say, don't insist your Special One whisks you off to Paris on Valentine's Day, just because your best friend's partner did. And don't be afraid to recognize your strengths, combined and individual. Just because your lover is not "the one", that doesn't make them just anyone. Don't let the nonexistent best be the enemy of the flesh-and-blood good.

Where there are big gaps between what the two of you expect from life, you may decide you can live with them. You may even be able to narrow them, if the pair of you work at it. But don't fool yourself that serious incompatibilities will just fade away, or assume less importance as the years go by, because the opposite is probably true.

That works both ways, of course. If you wouldn't change a thing about your "other half" (and there's another dodgy expression), but they would about you, think long and hard before buying a house together, or having a baby. To misquote Sting, if you love someone but you're going to make them miserable, set them free.

Decency matters, too. Because however special your partner makes you feel right now, you need to look at how he or she behaves with others, from friends to family, to workmates to waiters. Once the gloss wears off your relationship, this is probably how they'll be with you, especially at times of stress. Are they rude, insensitive, dishonest, stingy? 

This is all very unromantic. But most of us get more realistic as time goes by. We stop looking for the human-shaped philosopher's stone who will transmute the the base metal of our existence into untarnishable gold. We work out what matters to us, where we can give way and where we have to draw the line. We find someone we can spend the rest of our life with - a real person who has faults like us, not some nonexistent and unattainable ideal.

Call this "settling" if you must, but you could also see it as appreciating the person you have stumbled across, and giving the pair of you the chance to raise your game. You let them make you happy, and you try your hardest to do the same for them. You cherish them for what they are - one in seven billion, even if not the one in seven billion. you invest in them, and you do your best to repay their investment in you. And because you don't expect everything to work straight out of the box, you make a little extra effort, and a few extra allowances. 

They may not be 'the one", but they're someone. Play it right and they could be your someone.