LOVE? INFATUATION? LUST?

Assessing your feelings:

Knowing the Difference among Love, Infatuation and Lust

(my second article; CAStimes official publication)

So there you are, you meet someone who all your life, or so it seems, you have been waiting for, the person who makes your heart pound, makes the stars bright, and taken over all reasonable thought processes with ideas of love.

Whenever we are about to consider entering a relationship, we should ask ourselves first. What do I really feel about this special person?

While there's no clear, fool-proof way to make sense out of your feelings for someone, the following are certain ways from reliable sources that will help you to make the distinction between love, lust and infatuation clearer for yourself.

Could it be love?

Infatuation is when you think of someone all the time, you go out of your way to be around him/her, and you begin to center your priorities around him/her as well. There is history with this person: Maybe a short history, but maybe quite a while. You both enjoy being together. You both daydream about each other.
Infatuation is a static process characterized by an unrealistic expectation of blissful passion without positive growth and development. Characterized by a lack of trust, lack of loyalty, lack of commitment, lack of reciprocity, an infatuation is not necessarily foreplay for a love scenario.

In infatuation, you have blinders on. It seems that everything seems so perfect. What you might not see by keeping the blinders on, what can be serious flaws in any relationship, are the destructive traits and behaviors that degrade self esteem and cause some pretty negative effects on one’s choices and decisions. Your thoughts of
romance were simply an innocent fantasy: An infatuation that felt like love at the time.

As they’ve said, in time, the faults that you refuse to see will begin to come to the foreground. You may be infatuated with a handsome and intelligent person, but as you come to know that person on a more intimate basis, the qualities that intrigued you will begin to fade into the background.

In Lust?

In lust, there is the desire and belief that everything is yours; selfish concerns dominate. There is an intense craving for self gratification including sex. No thought put into the other persons feeling or cares. And if so caring is somewhat present, it is about of some thing or some person because of what it or he or she can give to us. And of course it’s not connected with love

If you only want to be with this person to have sex, it's lust. If you try to describe your date to a friend and can only talk about physical appearance and body parts, that's lust. If you don't call or converse with this person except when you want physical pleasure, that's lust. If you lie to someone in order to get into bed with him or her, that's lust. And, naturally, if your partner does any of these things to you, that's lust too.

It's possible for an affair based purely on lust to develop into a healthy relationship based on love, but it doesn't happen all that often.

Love as a dynamic process.

For me, that means that there is a relationship that flexes, changes and grows as people mature, experience happens upon them, priorities and dreams are built and goals are met. Love brings out the best in people as individuals. The relationship between them becomes the way they define their lives. As jobs, careers, and family concerns change, people are able to work as a team to be understanding and flexible so the relationship (their lives) will flourish.

Dynamic process of love equals a sharing of emotion, trust, and growth of relationship. Growth is increasing ability of a couple to live symbiotically, enjoy each others company, trust each other with more secrets, depend on each other in more crises over the years, in raising children and taking care of aging relatives. It’s about growing old together, and long-term investments like real estate and children.

In the case of love, your focus is on your special someone, and that someone exists in the real world. Give and take, compromise and cooperation are characteristics of love relationships. Working toward common goals, sharing dreams and values define the dynamics of a good love relationship. People know each other on a separate and private level than the world at large.

So, are you in love? Or are you in lust? Or maybe you’re just infatuated?

The answers and the courage to face the facts is the key to making the determination.

Beware of your own vulnerability, and your own desire to get rescued from that solitary life of the unpaired. Think before you decide and be responsible for your decisions.

-krista