Unrequited love is a thing that exists, and breakups where only one side feels the relationship should end are common. In fact, one reason that people decide to stop dating is because the other person is falling / has fallen in love with them, and they don’t feel that strongly towards that person (or see themselves likely to do so soon) and therefore call it off to let both people go on to find other partners (EDIT: polyamory mitigates this problem to a degree but you will still have a problem if there is severely unequal attachment between partners). I have no statistics for the number of people who end up with staying with the first person they said “I love you” too, or with the first person who said “I love you” to them, but I expect it (90%) to be under 50%, and wouldn’t be surprised (50%) if it’s 25% or lower, for either direction. People do not “usually fall in love with someone who is likewise in love with them”.
You can quibble over definitions of what constitutes “love”; people, including those in relationships, do it constantly. If you simply take it as “capacity to be in a strong romantic relationship with a person for a period of years” then for most people there are a huge number of people they could fall in love with, and if they spend a lot of time with one of those people and mutually engage in displays of closeness, affection, desire, and pleasure in spending time together, many of those people will mutually fall in love.
Don’t believe in the myth of “the one for me”; high standards are good, but if you spend a lot of time with somebody who you really like and who really likes you, you will probably find that the characteristics you’re looking for in a love and the way you view the other person will become more aligned. That applies to both (or potentially “all”, for cases of more than two people) parties. Definitely don’t believe in “love at first sight”; you may well fall in love with somebody who you felt you loved from the moment you met them, but you’re far more likely to fall in love with somebody who you got to know and discovered a mutual attraction and desire for each other’s affection and presence in your/their life.
Unrequited love is a thing that exists, and breakups where only one side feels the relationship should end are common. In fact, one reason that people decide to stop dating is because the other person is falling / has fallen in love with them, and they don’t feel that strongly towards that person (or see themselves likely to do so soon) and therefore call it off to let both people go on to find other partners (EDIT: polyamory mitigates this problem to a degree but you will still have a problem if there is severely unequal attachment between partners). I have no statistics for the number of people who end up with staying with the first person they said “I love you” too, or with the first person who said “I love you” to them, but I expect it (90%) to be under 50%, and wouldn’t be surprised (50%) if it’s 25% or lower, for either direction. People do not “usually fall in love with someone who is likewise in love with them”.
You can quibble over definitions of what constitutes “love”; people, including those in relationships, do it constantly. If you simply take it as “capacity to be in a strong romantic relationship with a person for a period of years” then for most people there are a huge number of people they could fall in love with, and if they spend a lot of time with one of those people and mutually engage in displays of closeness, affection, desire, and pleasure in spending time together, many of those people will mutually fall in love.
Don’t believe in the myth of “the one for me”; high standards are good, but if you spend a lot of time with somebody who you really like and who really likes you, you will probably find that the characteristics you’re looking for in a love and the way you view the other person will become more aligned. That applies to both (or potentially “all”, for cases of more than two people) parties. Definitely don’t believe in “love at first sight”; you may well fall in love with somebody who you felt you loved from the moment you met them, but you’re far more likely to fall in love with somebody who you got to know and discovered a mutual attraction and desire for each other’s affection and presence in your/their life.