Love and Infatuation?

[ab_user]

What is the difference between Love and Infatuation? Many thanks

[4getmenot]

love is give and take. Infatuation is all a bit more one sided. :-)

[Scarlett]

I think you often only know the answer after the event! eg- if you have a relationship and it is really intense at the start. You feel you love that person and would do anything for them and this is the one etc. Then it goes pear shaped, then you split up. Only on looking back can you tell whether you were really in love with them or infatuated. I would also say that love develops over time and experience with that person. Infatuation is what you experience initially when you really don't know them very well.

[kp nonuts]

An l v and an e twonk

[blu3wave]

Love lasts. Infatuation's temporary and gotten over quickly.

[Cockney_si]

If you love someone you'd wanna be there to care for them when you're sick, sometimes just grabbing the bowl for them at the right moment is enough to show you care.

Infatuation is fantasy land where you don't imagine the object of the infatuation to be sick or ill or have bodily odour or bad breath or anything negative.

[Cockney_si]

Sorry it should have read 'when they're sick' .

[ab_user]

So to think about someone a lot does not necessarily point towards love?

[4getmenot]

Either one you could think about them all the time. Personanly I think if you're infatuated its more, when you're in love theres always there but you dont necessarily think about them all the time. Is this your mates bloke you're on about?

[eyeshade]

Well I was infatuated with my second husband when I first met him and lusted after him badly! We have now been married 28 years. Still love him to bits and would be totally lost without him but am not infatuated with him, so I guess somewhere along the line I lost the infatuation bit.

[Octavius]

Brain chemicals and chocolate and stuff.

Infatuation is the state of being completely carried away by unreasoning passion or love; addictive love. Infatuation usually occurs at the beginning of relationship when sexual attraction is central. It is characterized by urgency, intensity, sexual desire, and anxiety, in which there is an extreme absorption in another. It is traditionally associated with youth.

Love is a constellation of emotions and experiences related to a sense of strong affection or profound oneness. There are some feelings we have when infatuated that we don�t have when we�re feeling love.

When infatuated we experience a surge of dopamine that rushes through the brain causing us to feel good. Norepinephrine flows through the brain stimulating production of adrenaline. Phenylethalimine (found in chocolate) creates a feeling of bliss. Irrational romantic sentiments may be caused by oxytocin, a primary sexual arousal hormone that signals orgasm and feelings of emotional attachment. Together these chemicals sometimes override the brain activity that governs logic.

The body can build up tolerances to these chemicals so it takes more of the substance to get that special feeling of infatuation. People who jump from relationship to relationship may be craving the intoxicating effects of these substances and may be �infatuation junkies�.

When the chemical flood dries up, the relationship either moves into a loving romantic one or there is disillusionment, and the relationship ends.