Infatuation is something people often confuse with true love. But unfortunately, true love is not something people come across often. Everyone wants to find it, but it’s one of the hardest things to achieve. Still, that doesn’t mean you won’t ever have feelings towards someone else. It’s just that those feelings aren’t always what they seem.
It’s far more common to feel infatuation, but that feeling isn’t an issue. The issue is what people do with it. Instead of recognizing and accepting it as it is, they treat it like love. When that happens, you can start to create false expectations about the relationship you’re in. Realistically, you can never spend your life with someone you’re just infatuated with. But that doesn’t mean that people don’t try.
That’s how you end up getting hurt or even hurting someone else. It would help if you learned to differentiate between the two feelings. One will lead to a short-lived, albeit fun, relationship. And the other will lead to a lifetime of happiness next to your match.
What is Infatuation?
Infatuation is something people experience as early as childhood. At first, you get captivated by objects. You have that one toy you are obsessed with and never let it out of sight. You have that one book you repeatedly read that you can almost recite by heart. And then you grow older, and you start feeling attracted to people. You start liking a classmate and convince yourself they are your true love. Even though they aren’t, you still imagine your life with them. And your heart gets broken when those dreams don’t become a reality.
Research shows that infatuation does not possess the element of attachment and compassion required by true love. Instead, it’s a state that precedes love. But that doesn’t mean love always comes after infatuation. It just means that, often, infatuation becomes love. This evolution makes sense, as the definition of infatuation is an intense state of physical and psychological arousal. When you become infatuated, your thoughts become obsessive, filling you with anxiety. You’ll also make up scenarios that will most likely not happen. Finally, you’ll start worrying and overthinking, as you won’t be able to get those thoughts out of your head.
The scientific literature hasn’t yet agreed upon a fixed definition, but those seem to be the most common characteristics. Still, they agree that everyone experiences infatuation, regardless of age or culture. If you weren’t familiar with the term, that doesn’t mean you’ve never heard of the concept. But you probably know it under a different name, like puppy love, passionate love, or obsessive love. But the term “love” is used in all these names is what throws people off.
Sure, infatuation is a type of love. But it’s not what people expect when they hear love. If this infatuation doesn’t turn into something relatively quickly, it will become toxic. You can’t be with someone you’re just fascinated with and expect things to go well after a couple of years. Either you won’t make it that far or end up abusing each other.
4 Differences Between Infatuation and True Love
Infatuation is a feeling everyone needs to experience. It teaches you the first things you need to know about attraction and love. But that’s only possible if you learn to differentiate between infatuation and true love. To make things more transparent, here are four differences between true love …
Click here to read this complete article.
