Men share 10 ways through which anyone can differentiate between love and infatuation

The fine line between love and infatuation

Love is a profound and enduring connection rooted in understanding and respect. While it is a powerful emotion, it need not always be something that one feels for another person. In some cases, it can be infatuation which is fleeting and driven by an idealistic view of the other person. There is an unhealthy obsession with the short-term thrill of the whole thing which can result in relationships that lack genuine connections. A Reddit user asked men in the community the difference between love and infatuation. Here are 10 of the most thought-provoking answers that they had to share.

1. Love brings joy to your life

My thoughts. Infatuation: mostly physical attraction, thinking about them sexually, it's what you feel when you don't know someone but are interested in something with them. If they left, it wouldn't be a big deal. Love: Someone you live for. Being with them and talking to them makes you a better person. They don't just make you happy, they bring joy to your life. No matter how bad your day was, hugging them just makes everything go away. Holding them can feel like time itself has stopped. They become your whole world, everything you do is for them and very little if anything is for yourself. Trust is on a whole new level. There's nothing you can't say or talk about. Every day when you see them after coming home and both of you just light up. You need each other as much as you want each other. No matter how broken we are, no matter what issues we have, they're willing to spend the rest of our lives together putting us back together. Being scared is mostly gone, with your only fear being what you would be without them. u/Dax723

2. Infatuation is when you see nothing but perfection

Love is when she takes a s*** and you smell the aftermath because you gotta go to and still love her. Infatuation is where you see nothing wrong with her at all and she's perfect. Yeah wait until she eats the jalapeño bean chili dip and washes it down with Jack Daniels and we'll see how infatuated you will be after that mess. Short and to the point and it gets the job done lol. You always hear about love when they're there for you and in a time of need. Well right now In this time of need, I need a new roll of toilet paper. Do you feel me? Love is being able to handle one another's negatives. For instance, farting around each other and being ok with it, burping, holding her hair when she's throwing up, being there when she's sick, having to smell her dump as you take a piss. It's the gross things. u/Rudeyyyy

3. Infatuation does not last 

You can tell but only after a year and a half when the chemicals run out and it’s just you and her and a boatload of baggage that just suddenly caught up with you both. Yeah, all relationships are a leap of faith for the first year, at least. When you’re deeply into someone, you ignore red flags, you don’t care about the realities of the future. You just want the person. It’s unfair really. Our biology doesn’t care if our partner is right for us or if we’ll be able to meet each other’s needs now or later. We’re somewhat doomed to choose the wrong person, no matter what we do. The game then is to simply choose the least wrong person. It’s not the most romantic notion but it’s real. u/Blainefeinspains

4. Love is knowing everything about a person

I was infatuated with a man before. Then we had s**, and my infatuation grew. The mere idea of him was so exciting and lovely in my own head. I wondered what he was doing all the time, what it would be like to call him mine, etc. But I didn’t know him. I didn’t know what it was like to argue with him or wake up next to him every morning, or what his little annoying quirks were. I didn’t know his morning breath or the way his farts smelled, or what made him laugh until his belly hurt. I only knew what it was like to sleep with him and to think he was cute. It was all very superficial. Now I’m engaged to someone else, and I know what love is. It’s knowing all of the bad things about a person, all of their flaws, coming to the realization that this person is far from perfect, and still choosing them every minute of every day. It’s about connecting with someone so deeply that when they cry, you cry. When they laugh, you laugh. It’s about creating and sharing a life with someone that even over time, when looks fade, wrinkles pop up, and skin sags, you still can’t wait to lay your head next to theirs every night. u/fancyowls

5. Infatuation can bring two people together 

Infatuation is what brings two people together. Love is what keeps them together. I was infatuated with a cute girl back in college. I asked her out after two months of working up the nerve. We were married the following year. Even then we were still infatuated. Love was there, but it really didn't kick in till after about a year past our wedding--once we had time to feel each other's faults. Ten years and four amazing kids later, we are still in love. There's still a bit of Infatuation in the background, but we've been such a huge part of each other's life that love is what drives us now. She's still plenty attractive, just in a more seasoned and mature way. u/IcyNapalm

6. Love is more permanent 

Infatuation is normally fleeting. You can think this person is the moon and the stars even though you barely know them and then 3 months later you suddenly realize it was all hormones and chemicals and the spark is gone and you wanna go find someone else to get infatuated with. Loving someone is long-lasting. Can often come from initial infatuation of course. But you know a person's good and bad parts and still, you think about them when they're not there or do things to make them happy, etc and it's been 3 years and you still love coming home to them. Spark may never have gone or if it did there was love there to back up working on getting it back without wanting to go look somewhere else. u/Ok-Gate-9610

7. Infatuation is a necessary feeling 

I've always liked the idea of "love" being a verb. That is, it's something you choose to do and it is expressed as action. Infatuation is a feeling. A very good feeling, and necessary to a degree to get a relationship started (I'm thinking honeymoon period here and not stalking), but just a feeling. I think you can tell the difference based on what you're willing to do and what comes out during times of hardship or inconvenience. Infatuation tends to dry up when the object of your affection breaks both of her wrists skiing and needs help using the bathroom. If you can pull that off without a problem, that's love. u/BlindPelican

8. Love is a mix of feelings

For me, infatuation involves having a very idealized and unrealistic image of someone in your head. You may feel that this person is perfect. However, everyone has flaws and if you stick with them long enough you will see them. Genuine love for me is a mix of attraction, respect, and loyalty. It might be different for everyone, but I look at my wife with certainty that I love her because we know each other well and we’ve been tested. We’ve been through some shit, but we always fight through things together. Genuine love to me is something that can only be seen or understood with time. I think anyone who’s been dating for under 6 months is more guessing and wishing that what they are feeling is genuine love. Maybe they end up being right, maybe they don’t. It’s hard to truly know who someone is without having to make any hard decisions together and without seeing them at their worst. Just my opinion though. u/ModernWolfStrategies

9. Infatuation is fantasy

You don't love someone you don't know. Infatuation is being in love with the fantasy of what could be. Love is knowing the reality, with all the ugly parts, and choosing it anyway. u/sweadle. I've always felt that you can't truly love someone until you've seen them in a crisis. There is something incredibly honest and telling about an individual and a relationship when you go through something that is especially, hard, scary and stressful. It is a big part of really knowing someone, and as you said, loving someone is knowing them. u/ItsMeMurphYSlaw

10. Love is accepting imperfections

Love is about the real person. Infatuation is about the imaginary idealized version of that person that you cook up in your mind. The easiest way to tell the difference is that with infatuation we fill in the blanks and conclude that the object of our affections is perfect in every way. Typically this will overpower even glaringly obvious faults. In contrast with love, we get to know a person well enough that we know their faults and they know ours. We do not pretend they are perfect. And we accept the good with the bad. The problem with modern American dating rituals is that we are supposed to cultivate infatuation in one another and then expect this to morph into love. This rarely works because eventually reality overpowers our imagination and we interpret this to mean that they either were hiding something or they changed (how dare they!) u/AlfredJFuzzywinkle