What Is the Difference Between Love and Infatuation?

10.06.2019

Sometimes we meet a person and just can’t get enough of them. We want to know everything about them, from their desires and hobbies to what’s underneath their shirt. And that’s quite all right, we all are humans after all.

Imagine you met a european girl and want to be with her 24/7. She is all you think about. Besides, you haven’t had THAT contact yet, so the desire is simply overwhelming. This time you wonder - is it love or infatuation? Sure thing, no one can tell that your feelings are only from lust you experience, but we are here to learn how to detect infatuation, so here we go.

What does infatuation mean?

How to define infatuation in one word? No one can tell for sure. Infatuation is uncontrollable passion you feel towards a certain person. It hits you suddenly and makes you do stupid and unreasonable things. The difference between love and infatuation is that love presupposes that you feel the same whether a person is faraway, taken or with you. But with infatuation, you don’t take “no” as an answer. You just want to make him or her your prize possession in a speck of a second.

Dealing with infatuation can be hard because you rarely know how long will It last, and whether your new partner feels the same way about you. You can be crippled by an unread message you left them three hours ago. Infatuation can influence your workability and overall composure. People who feel lust will think about the subject of their infatuation all the time, forgetting about nourishing or sleep. It can be cruel, sometimes even fatal, like madness. However, love is the opposite of infatuation making you evolve as a person and reach new heights. Love is supposed to be motivational and harmless for both people, whereas infatuation is dreadful and sore.

Infatuation means desire over mental evaluation. People who feel lust rarely see negative sides of their potential partner as they remain under chemical influence of dopamine. It makes them want to obtain the bodily contact with a certain person, and they rarely think about the consequences, plunging into a whirlpool of lust pretty quickly.

Signs of infatuation

Love vs infatuation seems to be in a constant battle and in order to understand what is love, you need to also be familiar with infatuation and how it works. Here are the signs that you are led by lust, not by love:

You over-idealize the person. Everything about them seems to be pretty perfect when you are a hostage of infatuation. In fact, you don’t know the person and don’t really want to because this would ruin the perfect image of your prince or princess. You seem so head over heels in love that sometimes it’s easy to miss serious and even disturbing flaws. But don’t cover behind this first and almost always wrong impression – reality will get you good and you will feel how drastically this person differs from your ideal image.

You spend most of the day dreaming. You end up planning your wedding and already choose lingerie for your first honeymoon night, although you are not even familiar with each other yet. The more triggering situation happens when the adult gets attached to the image of a celebrity so much, they want to leave in a dream and plan the whole life in their head. Not only they risk to be disappointed or ridiculed later, they risk losing contact with reality and seeing something that is not present here.

You change yourself drastically. It’s a good thing if you are in love with a fitness instructor and it’s only the matter of time before you got that Insta body. Unfortunately, reality is not so colorful and cheerful. People often fall in love with alcoholics or drug addicts and feel strong infatuation for them. Additionally, they start taking up all the damaging life patterns from the person they love which leads to a mutual decay.

You become very hot-headed. One of the infatuation signs is the inability to control your emotions. You either become too much of a flirt and maybe do some promiscuous things like rushing to make love on a first date to expressing anger and desperation because you didn’t get the right respond to your actions. Half of the day you praise this person, but in the afternoon you start hating them for not giving you enough feedback.

You became a stalker. It’s natural to be interested in a certain type of person who you can stalk a little bit later, but under the influence of lust we all get lost in Instagram, Twitter or Facebook of our chosen one, jumping from photos to posts, scrolling down every comment and finding an imaginary rival who turns out to be their sister. You want to fight the world over this person, and that’s no good!

You get things too quickly. Once you see the perfect couple, you may want to propose the next day. The problem with that is that both of you might agree to marry each other, but after infatuation comes sad reality where you might find out that you never actually loved each other. Conclusions must be made as some time passes, aren’t they?

You are delusional and people see it. Sometimes if we don’t get enough feedback from our idol, we make up the rest of the story. No, he might never call you back. Yes, she definitely has a partner. Ask your friends or your family to give you a full perspective before you come for her only boyfriend with a knife, accusing her in cheating on you.

How long does infatuation last?

Even love doesn’t last too long. It’s just a chemical response in your brain. And once you get passed through this phase of total admiration, you feel like the whole world is crushing before your eyes because you start noticing all the imperfections and blaming yourself for trying to live to inexistent standards and forgetting about the person you wanted so much. Infatuation will live until it either turns into love and respect, or you lose interest and feel sad and lonely afterwards. Infatuation can last from a month to several years, and it depends on how long you stay with each other.

How long does infatuation last for a man? For example, if your lust is led by desire, there is no way you can forget about this person until you get it. But if you sleep for quite a long time, that mystery disappears, so there is no need for you to be head over heels in love.

What is the difference between love and infatuation?

The main difference between infatuation vs love is that when you have lust, you don’t really give a damn about this person. Sounds contradictory, but let us explain it. When you are infatuated, it is a rather selfish motive to obtain a person as a trophy – touch them, attach them, make them yours. But you never really get to think how they feel about you, all because your love is one-sided. You either think it’s going to be your way or the highway. But it doesn’t work like that when you love.

1. When you love a person, you prioritize them over everything. That means if they want to be something else, you retreat and continue keeping an eye on them from behind like a guardian or an angel. You’ll never be toxic or intrusive over the person you like. You won’t screw them up in any way. You wish them only the best, so you don’t objectify the person as your possession and see the living body in them, with lots of problems and nuances.

2. Love is deep, so if you obsess over one side of your crush like their looks or style, or your hobbies that so conveniently coincide, don’t try to keep them. It’s not love.

3. Love powers up both partners and boosts their self-esteem. They feel supported and work like a team. Infatuated people always try to win their partners playing an invisible game which lets them be on top, beating you up. Also, if you feel insecure or miserable, it’s not love either. Love only makes us stronger.

4. Loving people are forgiving. They don’t hold grudges or get petty. Infatuated people look like children who lost their favorite toy, so they cry all day and blame the Universe for not bringing them the new present. People in love become wiser and think that whatever happens is not the fault of one partner but a mutual responsibility to fix it.

5. Infatuation is loud and pompous. You overpower your crush with compliments, making them uncomfortable. Love is often silent and subtle.

How to stop infatuation?

1.Take a quiz online. The first thing you need to do is realize what type of feeling you got for this person.

2. Ask a relative what it looks like from the outside – like obsession or true feelings. Other people have clear visions when it comes to stuff that doesn’t bother them, so they will be able to tell the real picture.

3. Try to find at least 5 bad qualities in the person you like. If you can’t do it and there is absolutely nothing you dislike in your partner, you are delusional as there are no perfect people in the world. The person you love has to piss you off in some way, but it won’t affect your feelings towards them as deep down you understand the motive of their actions. Try to analyze their behavior. If it’s uninteresting and you are stuck to their looks, well, you might be not that interested in getting to know them for real.

4. Find at least three other people you would sleep with (but don’t do it literally if you are in the relationship). Taking interest in other people is a healthy sign. It means that you will see sense in life even without your crush.

5. Distract yourself. Do some hobbies, take up some yoga classes, talk to your friends. Always have time for yourself and your self-education. People often fall in love and give all emotions to a stranger only because they don’t know how to love themselves. Love yourself and things will balance out.

All in all, love or infatuation, it’s good to have emotions in your warm ol’ heart. But if you don’t use them wisely, you can hop into a bummer situation where nobody wins. Stay positive about yourself, rearrange your life, take a deep breath and realize that it’s not that serious. You have yourself in this world and if you donate too many emotions, it can be dangerous for your own health. Remember that if the person is meant to be yours, you will come across each other even living on different continents.