What Is The Difference Between Love And Infatuation?

Sometimes new couples feel such a rush of excitement that they mistake immense attraction and chemistry for love and compatibility.

They strongly believe that they’ve met their one and only soulmate and that their long-awaited search is finally over.

But, unfortunately, such couples don’t know that there is no one and only soulmate and that there’s a huge difference between love and infatuation.

Most new couples I converse with only seem to talk about the initial attraction – the infatuation.

They say things like, “We have a really good connection and we get along really well. Things are great between us. We’re meant for each other.“

But when I check up on these couples a few months later to see how they’re doing, their attitude and thoughts about each other appear completely different. They no longer talk about how great their relationship is and how compatible they are.

That’s a matter of the past.

They instead talk about the problems they deal with on a daily/weekly basis and the difficulties that they still have to work through.

That’s when that perfect infatuated image of their relationship that they’ve put in my head quickly turns into a much more realistic image.

It turns into a genuine representation of personality clashes and long-term relationship struggles and incompatibilities.

You see, the biggest mistake new couples make is that they put their hopes and dreams on honeymoon emotions and think that a happy start of a relationship means a happy ending.

Needless to say, it oftentimes means exactly the opposite as couples who have a fairytale-like start only believe that their relationship is perfect.

They think that because they:

• Have only been together for a short while and haven’t gotten to know each other very well yet.
• Focus on each other’s good points and neglect most differences.
• Feel powerful emotions of desirability and consequently, think that their relationship is going to take care of itself without any willpower and conscious effort.

Such emotion-driven couples usually do really well at first. They promise each other big things and appear to be all over each other.

But when the initial infatuation of a new relationship subsides and they stop feeling elated, these couples soon change for the worse.

They drop their guards around each other, stop pretending to be someone they’re not, and find themselves in a self-destructive loop that they can’t break free from.

Consequently, they continue to react to the way they make each other feel.

Sometimes they react well and other times, they react poorly. But eventually (in almost all cases), they lose the attraction for each other because the many ups and downs shake up the relationship and destroy the trust within the relationship.

Today, we’re going to dissect the difference between love and infatuation. If you’re in a relationship and you can’t tell whether you love your boyfriend or girlfriend, pay close attention to this article. We’re going to compare infatuation to real love and help you realize what kind of attraction you have with your partner.

What’s the difference between love and infatuation?

The difference between love and infatuation is very easy to spot. If you’re merely infatuated with someone, you’re going to feel extremely elated to be around him.

You’re going to feel desired and validated—and see only the most positive aspects of your relationship. Anything that isn’t positive, you will usually neglect or underestimate.

If you’re in love, on the other hand, you likely won’t feel remarkably excited to be with your partner. At least not over the top. Your initial excitement will have waned, leaving you with more subtle feelings of joy, adoration, and mutual understanding.

Unlike infatuation that occurs almost instantaneously, love will take you many months to develop. On top of that, it will take many positive experiences as well as some kind of mutual long-term plan or a shared vision.

This is why love is more than just a feeling of attraction.

Love is also rational, meaning that without positive thinking and continuous love affirmations/reminders to stay committed, love can’t last forever. It ends the moment people take it for granted and treat it as if it’s merely an emotion that’s either there or not there.

Fortunately, love doesn’t depend on itself or on external factors for existence. It doesn’t depend on the quality of your health or job either (although that can affect it if you’re not aware of your thoughts and feelings).

Love depends on the way you choose to act, react, and perceive your partner. In simpler terms, it all comes down to the kind of thoughts you generate throughout each and every day.

If your thoughts are happy, you generally feel happy. If they’re bad thoughts, you feel bad emotions and most likely act on your unhappiness too.

And if your thoughts are just so-so, then that’s how you feel toward your partner as well. Just so-so.

You need to remember that your relationship cannot succeed or continue to remain successful without a healthy relationship mentality.

It actually requires two healthy relationship mentalities otherwise your love (which is a mutual feeling) ends up severely unbalanced and unrequited.

So make sure to always keep a positive relationship mentality, and with it, a positive attitude. Your relationship depends on it.

Are new couples in love or infatuated with each other?

When we see a new couple who is fresh in love, we normally say that they’re in love, love-struck, head over heels in love, lovesick, lovey-dovey, and so on…

But the truth is that they’re anything but in love. They’re merely infatuated with each other and don’t yet feel the emotion (love) that binds them together long-term.

All new couples feel are the famous four love/happy hormones (endorphins, serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin) which promote their love, attraction, pleasure, and other positive feelings of mutual desirability.

On that note, new couples may say they love each other and appear that way to others, but they most certainly don’t love-love each other yet.

Provided that they stay together long enough to get to know each other and overcome their differences, misunderstandings, problems, and shortcomings, they can, of course, fall in love and stay in love.

But before they get to that love stage, they aren’t in love yet. They’re still in the process of developing the thoughts and feelings that connect them to each other long-term.

As we said before, real love takes months to develop. And couples who are head over heels in love with each other necessarily need those months of time to stop feeling elated.

With the help of time, they can properly test their relationship for love and willpower – and not get mislead by their infatuated emotions.

How to tell the difference between love and infatuation?

To see the difference between love and infatuation, examine the intensity of your feelings for your partner.

Dig deep and discern whether your attraction for your partner is emotional or rational.

If it’s leaning toward the emotional end of the scale and you feel immensely pulled toward your partner, you’re probably infatuated with your partner and the newness of your relationship.

You’re extremely excited to love and to feel loved.

Of course, there’s also a chance that you’re more than just infatuated with your boyfriend or girlfriend and that you desire your partner’s love and recognition because you don’t feel infatuated with yourself enough.

If that’s the case, it’s possible that you’re projecting your lack of self-love onto your partner—and for that reason, think that you’re in love with him or her when in reality, you could just crave your partner’s love to compensate for your poor self-love.

You could be codependent, so consider that a possibility as well.

To tell whether you’re infatuated with a person or in love with him or her, examine your obsessiveness and possessiveness with that person.

Figure out whether your partner is the main attraction of your life and discern if you spend every waking moment thinking about your partner.

If you puzzle out that your partner relentlessly occupies your mind with pleasant thoughts and emotions, you’re most likely infatuated with him or her.

You desire your partner’s affection because you’re still in the early stages of a new relationship.

However, if you’re not/no longer infatuated and you’re instead in love with your partner, then you probably don’t feel ecstatic at the thought of conversing with your partner.

You feel grateful to be with your partner and feel happy to receive his or her love, but you don’t get flooded with euphoria anymore.

You feel valued, whereas if you were infatuated, you’d feel desired.

Although the infatuation phase is important for couples to fall in love, it’s also very important for couples to ask important relationship questions.

Questions that reveal how people think and act under difficult circumstances that may arise in the stage that follows the infatuation stage.

It’s so important that new couples explore each other’s wants, needs, flaws, insecurities, and shortcomings. By doing so, they can discern whether they want the same out of the relationship and foresee some of the challenges that they may face when they fall in love.

Below is a side by side comparison of the differences between love and infatuation. Feel free to compare your love to your partner.

Love vs infatuation

When you’re infatuated with someone, you feel like you’re on cloud nine. You feel pulled toward your partner and admire his or her attractive traits.

Some of these traits include confidence, self-esteem, physical attraction, and the way your partner’s behavior makes you feel.

But as you can tell, these traits are all positive traits and may not accurately represent a person’s deep-rooted personality. They’re merely traits that are on display for the public to see.

This means that people aren’t always as perfect as they present themselves to be.

In the infatuation phase, people merely appear that way to us because we haven’t seen their imperfections yet. We’ve only seen their positives, which is why we don’t know what’s in store for us yet.

In love, however, things are much different. We spend enough time with our partner to see our partner’s flaws and weaknesses. And once we’ve seen them, we accept them and show our partner that it’s okay to be flawed.

Love, after all, is about accepting our partner’s imperfections and about loving our partner as he or she is.

This, of course, doesn’t mean that we should put up with unhealthy, toxic behavior. Far from it. All acceptance in a long-term relationship means is that we become okay with our partner’s differences and that we love our partner in good and bad.

Love doesn’t have to be unconditional as some naive people want it to be. In my opinion, nobody should put up with betrayal, lies, and dishonesty. That’s not what a healthy relationship is.

Love should know limits. Especially when it comes to abuse and ill-treatment.

But when we’re talking about a perfectly healthy relationship, people in relationships should do something to keep it healthy.

They should continuously remind themselves why they love the person they’re with and always remember that love is not just a desire or a longing.

It’s also a burning sensation of mutual understanding and acceptance—and an immensely strong feeling of willpower, durable enough to deal with the negative aspects of the relationship.

These negative aspects include bad behavioral patterns, insecurities and trust issues, occasional mistakes, and, of course, shortcomings.

The main difference between love and infatuation is that love is a combination of physical and emotional attraction, whereas infatuation is more about the physical presence and the emotions you feel as a result of something your partner says or does.

In other words, infatuation creates strong emotions of attraction and is dependent on something that triggers it, while love is usually less noticeable and exists continuously on a conscious or subconscious level.

Most of the time, it’s the latter.

Infatuation is usually physical

When we meet a person for the first time and we feel physically attracted to him/her, we often call our attraction to that person love at first sight.

But as you know, that’s clearly not long-lasting love. It’s the kind of infatuation that is created on the spot by our intense desire for recognition and emotional reciprocation.

It may feel like love because emotions are running wild, but more often than not, infatuation occurs on a completely physical/superficial level and has very little to do with a person’s personality.

A person’s attitude, intelligence, and the way he or she presents himself or herself could, of course, contribute to the feelings you feel for that person, but in essence, when you’re falling in love with someone, you’re still falling in love with the best of the best of that person’s characteristics.

To meet his or her real personality and core values, you’d need more time. You’d need so much time that this man or woman naturally drops his/her guard around you and shows you what he or she is truly made of.

Normally, real personality traits become evident to us when our crush gets used to us and shows us how he or she behaves under difficult/stressful situations.

That’s when our relationship starts to experience various difficulties and goes through the make it or break it relationship trial.

This trial usually awaits new couples 4-6 months into the relationship when they get past the honeymoon phase.

But sometimes, it can occur even sooner.

The honeymoon phase is the infatuation phase

When a couple falls madly in love, they feel immensely infatuated with each other’s idealized persona.

They fall in love with the person they perceive and want their partner to be—and not necessarily with who their partner actually is.

The phrase “Love is blind,” therefore couldn’t be more true as it asserts that couples in love don’t think logically with their brain. They think with their heart as they make emotional decisions—and oftentimes act on impulse.

A big part of new couples’ attraction is unfortunately idealistic and physical because couples grow accustomed to each other’s looks and presence.

They become addicted to the way they make each other feel and grow dependent on love hormones.

This infatuation phase, also known as the honeymoon phase of a new relationship can, therefore, have an important long-lasting effect on couples.

It can bind couples together emotionally and make them feel attached during and after this phase.

As for those couples who don’t particularly feel strong love-like emotions for their partner during the infatuation stage, let’s say because they’re in a rebound relationship or because they’re not emotionally ready yet, such people oftentimes fail to attach/stay attached to their partner.

They usually feel incapable of giving and receiving love, so they proceed by breaking up.

Please note that there are also some couples out there who don’t feel incredibly elated during the infatuation phase. They get excited at times and feel generally happy to be around each other.

But the interesting thing that separates such couples from other couples is that they don’t depend on their infatuated emotions for love and compatibility.

They prefer to invest time and effort into each other’s differences and truly get to know each other first.

Such couples normally have a slow start, but over time, grow their feelings and develop a relationship with a strong foundation built on trust, devotion, and adoration.

How can you tell if you’re in love with your boyfriend/girlfriend?

Before we talk about how to recognize real love, I’d first like to point out that it’s perfectly possible for couples to stay together even if they’re not too enthusiastic about each other.

They can stay together (and often do) even if they don’t love each other. And that’s because couples who have fallen out of love continue to stay together out of routine and comfort.

They’re so used to having each other by their side that they don’t even think about looking for love elsewhere.

Love, usually finds them on it’s own when they’re not looking for it.

Anyway, to be able to tell whether you’re in love with your boyfriend or girlfriend, discern whether you like your partner’s personality, behavioral patterns, attitude, and the way he or she contributes to your life.

If the answer is yes, then feel free to check the rational part of the questionnaire as complete. ✅

Next up is the emotional part. This part is about positive associations and general compatibility.

If you feel that your partner makes you feel happy, romantic emotions most of the time and you feel pulled toward your partner even after the infatuated stage of the relationship, mark the emotional part as complete. ✅

You’re attached to your partner because you’ve associated positive emotions with his or her persona.

Keep in mind that it’s perfectly normal not to always feel 100% connected to your partner. Especially during arguments and stressful times.

But that doesn’t mean that your love for your partner is weak or not as great as it should be.

Those who compare love to infatuation – to emotions in the present moment, oftentimes end up convincing themselves that they’re not in love—and as a result, fall out of love.

Let me reiterate that in different words.

Couples who argue in unhealthy ways and during difficult times think that they don’t love their significant other slowly attach negativity to their partner. The more often they do this, the more they self-sabotage their feelings of love and ultimately, destroy the love bond.

This is why positive thoughts are so important in a romantic relationship. They are the key to staying out of trouble and the key to staying in love.

So next time you argue with your partner, remember to think positively. Remind yourself why your partner matters to you—and do what it takes to improve/not to worsen the way he or she thinks about you and feels toward you.

Am I in love or in infatuation?

If you’re wondering whether you’re in love or in infatuation, do a quick love or infatuation quiz.

Go through the following 6 yes/no questions and discern whether your love is real or merely infatuated.

1)Has it been more than 6 months since you’ve met your partner?

2)Have you met your partner’s real or darkest personality traits yet?

3)Has the initial excitement (the butterflies)/attraction waned yet?

4)Would you describe your love for your boyfriend or girlfriend as mainly rational?

5)Are you 100% certain you want a future with this person?

6)Do you trust this person with your life?

If you answered most questions with yes, you’re likely not infatuated with this person. You’re probably in love.

Unless, of course, you’re so love-struck that you’ve sacrificed everything you have for this person. Even your personal happiness.

In that case, you’re blinded by the relationship and are at great risk of possessing and suffocating your partner.

The biggest difference between love and infatuation is that infatuation is purely a feeling of excitement and euphoria, whereas love doesn’t necessarily consist of continuous strong emotions.

Love is a feeling that happens on a subliminal level and may not always be noticeable. We tend to just know we’re in love with someone when the initial rush of feelings wanes and we feel excited to spend our time with our partner.

Can infatuation turn into love?

It’s possible for infatuation to turn into love. In fact, most serious relationships start that way.

During the infatuation stage, couples get to know each other and find out whether they’re compatible. If they are and they like where their relationship is going, they continue to bond and watch their infatuation slowly disappear.

Bear in mind that this is perfectly normal. It’s what infatuation is. Here’s Google’s definition of infatuation; “an intense but short-lived passion or admiration for someone or something.”

It doesn’t matter if you’re in a long-distance relationship or same-sex relationship. People get excited about new things, but that excitement isn’t permanent. It can’t be because people are creatures of habit.

Just how we stop feeling excited about a new car or a new house, we stop feeling elated about being with someone new. It’s in our nature as that rush of the initial excitement is meant to wane.

But if we have a healthy mentality and everything works out well, we get something even better in its stead. We get love—and we get to decide what we do with it.

Thank you for reading. I hope this article has answered the question, “What is the difference between love and infatuation.” Comment below and let us know what you think about it.

Angelie

I’m Angelie, a writer and a designer at Magnet of Success. Whether I’m writing compelling content or designing engaging pictures, I create content that resonates with our visitors and aids them on their self-improvement journey. I enjoy writing about relationship dynamics and the difficulties couples may face.