In a new relationship, you may battle with the question of love vs. infatuation. You feel like you are on top of the world and it's all because of this new person in your life. Your emotions are heightened and you may wonder if it's true love or just a quick infatuation trip.
How Love and Infatuation Are Similar
The reason why it's so difficult to understand love vs. infatuation is because many of the feelings are similar, especially in the early stages of a relationship.
When you first fall in love or become infatuated with someone, you will believe this person is the best thing that has ever happened to you. You will think about the person often and have a difficult time concentrating on other things. When you are with this person, you won't be able to stop smiling and laughing. When you are with other people, you will have a difficult time talking about anything other than your new lover. You feel exhilarated and don't ever want to come down from the high of your emotions.
Love vs. Infatuation: Understanding the Difference
While the beginning feelings of love vs. infatuation are similar, differences will arise quite rapidly as the relationship matures.
Infatuation
Infatuation is a temporary sudden burst of emotion. You experience intense sexual attraction to the person. Your feelings have taken over your life. You will start to put the person who seems like the love of your life ahead of the things that used to be important to you. You may push friends aside, decrease productivity at work, and create conflict with family because of your preoccupation with seeing your new boyfriend or girlfriend.
You believe your new relationship is infallible until the excitement dwindles. Your emotions start to calm down and you find yourself uninterested in the person. You wonder what happened to the passion. The next thing you know, you have nothing left for the person. You may figure you fell out of love and you move on, in actuality, you were never truly in love.
True Love
While falling in love can feel grand, it's often a complement and not a replacement in your life like infatuation can be. True love incorporates all the feelings of infatuation but may present itself at a lower, more constant level. You will feel sexual attraction to your partner but it won't consume you like it does when you are infatuated. You will feel like you have the perfect balance in your life.
As your love relationship matures, you will notice that the degree of excitement and passion that was present at the beginning of your relationship may no longer present. With infatuation, this often signals the end of the relationship. When it is true love, you continue to want to be with the person and enjoy his/her company. With love your feelings change to a deeper level but they don't vanish like infatuation.
Infatuation is emotion without the deeper sense of love. Love is what carries you through when the beginning of a relationship is no longer new and exciting. Love will positively affect all areas of your life and not consume it as infatuation can. When trying to figure out if what you are experiencing love or infatuation, take a step back, check your level of emotions, and how much they are controlling your life. See if you can take your intensity down a notch and still feel good about the relationship. No matter what, time will always tell in the end.
