Love Or Infatuation – Which Is It
It can sometimes be difficult to know whether you are actually in love with someone or whether it is just a bad case of infatuation. The signs of infatuation are quite similar to those of love making it difficult to distinguish between the two at times. Of course it is usually only difficult to determine the difference early on in a relationship and as time goes on you will realize which it is.
You can become infatuated with someone from the very first moment you meet them and that really is too early to fall in love so it is quite obvious that it is infatuation at that stage. As you talk and get to know the person then the attraction you have for them may become stronger and you want to spend as much time as you can with them. When you begin to seriously dating then that’s when things can start to get a bit tricky.
When you start dating you have very strange things happening to you – you have trouble sleeping, you don’t have much appetite and you really aren’t interested in anything except for this new person that has entered your life. These are symptoms of ‘love sickness’. Every time that your phone rings your heart skips a beat because you know it could be this special new person. If it is someone else then your heart drops and you may actually feel irritated with the person because it isn’t who you wanted it to be.
When you are going to meet this person for a date you begin feeling anxious, your hands sweat and you can’t sit still. You look at the clock every couple of minutes and you check yourself in the mirror over and over again to make sure you look your best. However, it doesn’t matter how he looks because at this point you think everything he does is great. Even though he may show some traits that would send others running – a terrible laugh or terrible table manners – you don’t care because you are blinded by this love sickness that you love everything he does. You don’t want to be apart from him and whenever you are you just constantly think about him and can’t wait until the next time you see him. You can’t keep your hands off each other and you never run out of things to say.
Up to this point in the relationship, love sickness may not actually mean that it is true love, it could still be infatuation. After about six to eight weeks if still think his terrible table manners and atrocious laugh are cute then maybe it really is love. However, if those things are really starting to irritate you then it has possibly just been infatuation up to this point. After this honeymoon period is over things will begin to settle and you will be able to cope with a couple of days apart. This doesn’t mean that it isn’t love; this is a normal progression of a relationship. If you start actually enjoying your days apart more than you enjoy being with him, then it might be a sign that it is infatuation and not love.
The biggest sign that it is love and not infatuation is that when the honeymoon period is over you still love to spend time together, despite any little traits that annoy you, then it is love. If you begin to find each other disgusting, then it was just a fun time, it was infatuation and now it’s time to move on.