"It's not love, it's infatuation"

[Hygro]

... is a whole load of BS.

The love is real.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

What love, and to whom does your statement pertain?

 

[Hygro]

We millennials were brought up to believe this mantra, that overwhelming early feelings for someone that take over aren't feelings of love but feelings of infatuation. Classical Hero repeated the mantra in the rants thread, but I'm not trying to call him out since we all had it drilled into our skulls. I suppose we were told so, so that we didn't lose ourselves in the moment and to not mistake that kind of love that comes with time and familiarity for that initial connection and feeling love.

But it's still love.

 

[Lohrenswald]

I don't know, what is love?
I've only had experiences of "infatuation" that kind of is fizzling out.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

I hadn't hammered it into m skull, I learned it in my mid twenties. Infatuation can turn into love when you start to really know the othr person, but at the begining it's mostly superficial desire.

 

[Borachio]

Don't know.

Infatuation is when you can't stop thinking of the other person.

And love is when you can't stop thinking of the other person.

What's the difference?

 

[Terxpahseyton]

I am cool with calling such "infatuations" their own kind of love. But that seems to entirely miss the point of "It's not love, it's infatuation". Which is that you can not trust that kind of love. But okay, this saying drives the point a bit too harshly and uncompromisingly home, I guess. On the other hand, that may be necessary to out-balance the uncompromising nature infatuations can have.

Don't know.

Infatuation is when you can't stop thinking of the other person.

And love is when you can't stop thinking of the other person.

What's the difference?

So the kind of seasoned and matured love is in the end no love to you? (say after 3+ years)

 

[warpus]

Sometimes it's love, sometimes it's infatuation, usually it's a bit of both.

 

[bathsheba666]

Infatuation is part of love, but love isn't part of infatuation.

 

[sophie]

What love, and to whom does your statement pertain?

A certain evangelical christian told a certain amazing and perfect Australian that the love he felt towards another person was not real, presumably because it was love he felt for another man. That's what Hygro is referencing. And that's all I'll say.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

And that's all I'll say.

Mystery Man

 

[classical_hero]

Too many people think their feelings towards a person is love when it is just emotions that a running. We have lost the concept of what real love is and confuse it with our emotional state of being at the time.

 

[sophie]

Too many people think their feelings towards a person is love when it is just emotions that a running. We have lost the concept of what real love is and confuse it with our emotional state of being at the time.

How do you know what somebody else is feeling?

 

[Mise]

I like the idea of "regulation love". Like how the government regulates how much cow meat needs to be in a patty before you can call it a beef burger. It's not real football unless it's played on a regulation football pitch. Love isn't real unless it's an official, church-sanctioned love. It's like a copy of a DVD: it looks, sounds and plays out exactly the same way as the genuine article, but it's an unofficial copy, not authorised by the original artist, the Big Man upstairs. It's bootleg romance. Love is only real if it's practised within certain prescribed boundaries.

This concept has legs.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Love is more of a long-term thing.

 

[sophie]

Love is more of a long-term thing.

So love is something that's only knowable in retrospect?

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

So love is something that's only knowable in retrospect?

It is if you want to distinguish it from infatuation.

 

[Farm Boy]

So love is something that's only knowable in retrospect?

I think it makes more sense like: InfatuationAsLove is when being near somebody is all encompassing. It captures your attention. You look into somebody's eyes and the rest of the world be damned. Older love, the one that gets set aside as a different sort of thing even though its the same thing, just stable? That's more like when being apart from somebody is more encompassing. You're used to being around them at this point, you function normally when you have them. Their absence is now the conspicuous occurrence that captures your attention. When you lose them, it's like having lost a foot. You just don't function right without them anymore. Getting over that sort of loss is very much like re-learning to walk through physical therapy.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

When you decide to get married, I highly recommend marrying someone you just met. Marriage will change them anyway, so there is no advantage in knowing the unmarried version very well and if you really loved that unmarried version you will probably miss them.

 

[warpus]

What you so instead is divorce them as soon as they've changed beyond recognition. Then you just marry somebody else and repeat.

/never been married