The extreme highs and lows of an infatuation can leave you feeling insecure and vulnerable. You might find yourself preoccupied with your partner's experience of the relationship and opinion of you without pausing to check-in with your own feelings of comfort, safety, and self-worth.
In other words, both emotions involve falling for another person, but love embraces truth and reality, while infatuation only feeds on perception. You may put that person “on a pedestal” — one that may be vastly disconnected from the reality of who that person actually is.
Researchers have scanned the brains of people who are madly in love and found a heavy surge of dopamine, a neurotransmitter in the brain's reward system that helps people feel pleasure. Dopamine, along with other chemicals, gives us that energy, focus, and obsession we feel when we're wild about someone.
You Have a Chemical Reaction
In your brain the dopamine center is rewarded when you see or think about your love interest. Then your brain gets flooded with dopamine. This pleasure response feels so good that it's easy to mistake infatuation with a real connection.
Adrenaline rushes to the bloodstream. Hallucinogenic feelings of intoxication drench the brain. Call it a natural high, but like drugs, the feeling can become addictive. During the opening stages of romance and subsequent infatuation, the brain is awash in drug-like chemicals.
Infatuation can also be present in the process of falling in love, and in healthy amounts, it's not necessarily a bad thing. "If infatuation turns bidirectional, with the sense of security from both parties, you're off a good start," Suh says.
infatuation (n.) 1640s, noun of action from infatuate (q.v.), or else from French infatuation or directly from Late Latin infatuationem (nominative infatuatio), from past participle stem of Latin infatuare "make a fool of."
How long can infatuation last? An infatuation lasts anywhere between six months to three years. It could turn into a more serious relationship if it lasts beyond that. But people do realize even after a year that they are infatuated and it is not love.
It doesn't appear in the American Psychiatric Association's “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.” But obsessive love can signal other mental health challenges. The specific causes are difficult to pinpoint, but many psychologists agree certain risk factors increase a person's chance of having it.
Butterflies in your stomach, a racing heartbeat—you probably remember those symptoms well from your first middle school crush. As an adult, they're actually your body's subtle clues that you're falling in love (or lust, at least).
The extreme highs and lows of an infatuation can leave you feeling insecure and vulnerable. You might find yourself preoccupied with your partner's experience of the relationship and opinion of you without pausing to check-in with your own feelings of comfort, safety, and self-worth.
Infatuation is romance and sex rolled into one colossal high. Authentic love takes that one step further to attachment; wanting to stay together. Infatuation is about idealizing romantic love.
You can assume a man is deeply in love with a woman once his initial attraction turns into attachment. Physical attraction, sexual compatibility, empathy, and emotional connection are key to making a man fall in love with a woman.
Although it's not true that too much love will kill you, it can lead to unhealthy—and at times damaging—dynamics between partners. For example, love may cause obsessive or controlling behaviors in some cases. You may also reach a point where your needs go unmet because you're so focused on your partner's needs.
Trauma or experiences in childhood that lead to an insecure attachment style may lead to fear of abandonment. People with a fear of abandonment may develop obsessive tendencies. People may be fearful to be alone and they may make threats or take impulsive actions in order to prevent a partner from leaving.
The difference between healthy and obsessive love is that with the latter, those feelings of infatuation become extreme, expanding to the point of becoming obsessions. Obsessive love and jealousy that is delusional is a symptom of mental-health problems and is a symptom that occurs in about 0.1% of adults.
Limerence is a mental state of profound romantic infatuation, deep obsession, and fantastical longing. The experience can range from euphoria to despair. "Limerence is a term that was coined by [psychologist] Dorothy Tennov in the '70s," relationship therapist Eliza Boquin, LMFT, tells mbg.
As the infatuation fades a bit, you start investigating your partner and who they really are as a person. This is when the mask comes off and you're figuring out the other person's true self and whether or not you can work as a couple.
Infatuation usually doesn't last long, and when it ends, it is sometimes a messy ordeal. Usually, an infatuated couple will have moved too fast too soon and abruptly finds out that they are not the perfect match they thought they were.
“Usually, infatuation lasts for between 18 months and three years,” says Mundin. “Unless a long-distance relationship is involved or an extremely insecure individual is fascinated, infatuation rarely lasts longer.” The remnants of infatuation may help strengthen a relationship, however, according to Lee.
: a feeling of foolish or obsessively strong love for, admiration for, or interest in someone or something : strong and unreasoning attachment.
Empty love: Sometimes, a stronger love deteriorates into empty love, in which the commitment remains, but the intimacy and passion have died. In cultures in which arranged marriages are common, relationships often begin as empty love.
Crushes and infatuation go hand in hand and are very similar. Crush is defined as a brief but intense infatuation for someone, especially someone inappropriate or unattainable. Infatuation is defined as an intense but short-lived passion or admiration for someone or something.