Love or Infatuation???

PART 2
Love, sex, and lasting relationships

Love or Infatuation????


The problem with our society, is infatuation is commonly mistaken for love.
Even though you read these you still need to examine your love or infatuation closely, because sometimes our emotions are so misleading we can still be confused.

AM I IN LOVE?

Greek meanings of love are:

Eros-This is need love. This is based upon physical attraction and fulfillment. This love is necessary for marriage to succeed; however, marriage cannot be kept only by eros.
Proverbs 5:15-19

Phileo-This is friendship love. This is friendship love based on reciprocal sharing of time, activities, the home, hobbies, games, and other objects of common affection.
Romans 12:9-13

Agape-This is giving love. This is supernatural love. It is a love where one would give their life and all for the other.
1 Corinthians 13:4-8

Storge - family love, the love of good friends or family

For help to see whether love is infatuation or not I looked this up out of a book on love and infatuation,. The author gave a few tests to see the difference. So here they are. I believe they are wise to consider, but I will add this is merely a man’s opinion of ways to test if one is infatuated or in love. He said he has observed and went thorough both. So don’t take this as all truth, just suggestions.


Is it love or Infatuation?

Test 1 TIME!!!
Love grows, and all growth requires time. Infatuation may come on suddenly.

Test 2 Knowledge.
Love grows out of an appraisal of all the known characteristics of the other person. Infatuation may arise from an acquaintance with only one or a few of these characteristics.

Test 3 Focus
Love is other-person-centered. It is outgoing. It results in sharing. Infatuation is self-centered.

Test 4 Singularity.
Genuine love is centered on one person only. An infatuated person may be “in love” with two or more persons simultaneously.

Test 5 Security
An individual in love tends to have a sense of security and a feeling of trust after considering everything involved in his relationship with the other person. An infatuated individual tends to have a blind sense of security based upon wishful thinking rather than upon careful consideration, or he may have a sense of insecurity that is sometimes expressed as jealousy.

Test 6 Work
An individual in love works for the other person or for their mutual benefit, He may study to make the other person proud of him. His ambition is spurred and he plans and saves for the future. He may daydream, but his dreams are reasonably attainable. An infatuated person may lose his ambition, his appetite, and his interest in everyday affairs. He thinks of his own misery. He often daydreams, but his dreams are sometimes not limited to the attainable and are given free rain. At times the dreams become substitutes for reality and the individual lives in his world of dreams.

Test 7 Problem-Solving
A couple in love faces problems frankly and attempts to solve them. If there are barriers to their getting married, these barriers are approached intelligently and removed or circumvented. In infatuation, problems tend to be disregarded or glossed over.

Test 8 Distance
Love tends to be constant. Infatuation often varies with the distance between the couple.

Test 9 Physical attraction and involvement
Physical attraction is relatively smaller part of their total relationship when a couple is in love, a relatively greater part when they are infatuated. When a couple is in love, any physical contact they have tends to have meaning as well as be a pleasurable experience in and of itself. It tends to express what they feel toward each other. In infatuation, physical contact tends to be an end in itself. It represents only pleasurable experience devoid of meaning.

Test 10 Affection
In love, an expression of affection tends to come relatively late in the couples relationship. In infatuation, it may come earlier sometimes from the very beginning.

Test 11 Stability
Love tends to endure. Infatuation may change suddenly, unpredictably.

Test 12 Delayed Gratification
A couple in love is not indifferent to the effects of postponement of their wedding and do no prolong the period of postponement unless they find it wiser to wait a reasonable time; they do not feel an almost irresistible drive toward haste. Infatuated couples tend to feel an urge toward getting married. Postponement is intolerable to them and they interpret it as deprivation rather than preparation.