infatuation or love?
Recently, one of my Baristas asked for my opinion on the difference between infatuation and love. I’ve been mulling it over in my head ever since.
I’ve been lucky to experience both of those emotions. Only recently, though, did I get to know a reciprocated love. The kind that feels like what you dream it’s going to, because it’s finally happened that the one you love, loves you too. It appears that what I thought was love before simply wasn’t it. Sure had me fooled.
Infatuation, categorically, is having no reason to actively choose someone other than being intrigued by who they may be. It’s what you get when you don’t fully know this person yet; when they’re someone that you get to paint whatever shades you see fit. It’s passionate precisely because it’s unchallenged. There’s no healthy friction, so it’s mistaken for a soulmate connection.
Love, on the other hand, is when you deliberately choose someone, from sun up til sun down. It’s when their complete personhood is on full display. You’ve seen them at their least polished, their picture-perfect, and everything in between. They’ve given you reasons and opportunities to leave, and yet you stay. You might’ve even come close to stepping beyond the doorframe, but you never make your way out.
One of the utmost expressions of love, and arguably the one at the very foundation of true love, is that of active, informed choice. It’s is making the conscious decision to stay. You know that there’s a chance that this person might break your heart and turn your mind upside down, but you stay because loving them, for right now, is all that you need.
The state of infatuation is addictive and thrilling for a time, but it isn’t sustainable. It can result in the most captivating of poems (see: Dante’s *Vita Nuova* collection) and the most timeless of songs (see: The Doors’ *Hello, I Love You).* We’ve all known infatuation at one point or another. I bet someone’s already popped into your head. However, to know love is to know preservation. It’s harder to capture, but it’s far more rewarding. Infatuation will only keep you satiated until it sinks in that the connection is superficial at best, and delusional at worst. Once you see it for what it is, you can’t turn back. But love gets better with every new thing that you learn about your person. It’s what stays solid in the times when it seems you might break. I hope you know exactly what I mean.
