Differences between love and falling in love, two sides of the same coin?

“It’s one thing to fall in love. It is another thing to feel another person fall in love with you and feel the responsibility of that love.” This is how David Levithan wrote in his work Cada dia. Could the author mean that there are differences between love and infatuation? May be.

And, although many people think that love and infatuation are synonymous terms, the truth is that many experts consider this belief a mistake. There are significant differences that we see below.

Differences between love and infatuation

One of the differences between love and infatuation more classic, it appears when we think that love is inevitably related to the romantic. A question will help explain it better. Do you love your siblings, parents, friends, pets…? It’s just that you’re not in love with them, right?

Obsession and desire

Because Falling in love, speaking in a neurochemical sense, provokes an enormous desire, a broad obsession. We could even say that it is an addiction: attention is focused on the person we love and solitary activities that were previously pleasurable are now dwarfed by any project that involves time with the other person.

Chemistry also has a lot to say about falling in love. While we are under its “spell”, powerful neurotransmitters intervene in our brain, such as serotonin and dopamine, which also equate the neurochemical effect of falling in love in the brain with that produced by other types of drugs.

We feel like we are “tarnishing” an aura as mysterious and magical as the one that surrounds falling in love with these scientific concepts, but it is reality. These neurotransmitters are what make us perceive emotions with such intensity. We idealize our partner, it fills us with energy and allows us to live in a kind of bubble. If you can make it last forever, it will be wonderful, won’t it?

Love is very diverse

As we hinted at the beginning, the reality is that we can love many people, however the focus of a person in love is usually focused on just one person. It is like if everything were reduced to the other. It is enough for the other to hint at a desire for us to wonder what we could do to make it come true. Furthermore, if we find a way, we tend to underestimate the costs in resources – time, money, neglect of other relationships, etc. – that it would entail for us.

On the other hand, in many cases falling in love is the starting point of love. Through it, people obtain enough energy to begin to create bonds with each other. Ties that will be in part what sustain the couple in moments of crisis.

On the other hand, do you have self-love? Do you love your partner? Do you feel great love towards your parents? Do you love your friends and loved ones? Surely yes, but not to everyone equally and under the same conditions. As you see, we have already answered one of these differences between love and falling in love.

Love is more rational

This point is directly and closely related to the previous two. That is to say, love is rational, or at least it is not as irrational as falling in love, since we do not feel the same emotional intensity for a friend or sibling as we do for the person we are in love with.

Because Falling in love involves an enormous escalation of chemical neurotransmitters that make emotions have a high intensity. However, little by little she disappears, giving rise to a more calm, twilight and rational love. At least in most cases (there are always exceptions).

Time passes for everyone

It is difficult for this stage of falling in love to last over time, mainly because it produces a great drain on the resources of people in love (although within the stage of falling in love itself it may not feel that way). This way, the sparkling flame of infatuation becomes a calmer flame.

At the beginning of a relationship, the expectations are many, the attraction is very intense, there is great suspense about what may happen with the loved one. But time passes, and security, stability, affection, one’s own communication codes arrive…

We come down from the cloud

So While we are in the process of falling in love, we live in a cloud that seems to lift us towards heaven, since there is the loved one, an idyllic image of perfection that even keeps us awake.

But finally, no matter how much the cloud rises towards the pedestal where that person is, there comes a time when we have to come down, step on the ground and stop flying blindly. It is there where love makes an appearance (for some it is transformed), and The loved one shows his defects, but also his closeness, his understanding and his affection.

Love is more complicit

Couples who have just met usually have an enviable harmony: empathy is easier because one is very aware of the other and vice versa. However, Knowledge and complicity is a slow-burning broth, as is trust.. It is true that we will never stop discovering the other, partly because the other is dynamic and changes; They change their customs, their social circle or their character. However, we are able to see in him a hard core, a certain stability within the movement, which is what makes us have the feeling that we know the other.

We know what his most characteristic gestures are, those dissimulated grimaces that dictate that there is something he liked or didn’t like.. A mimicry that would go unnoticed by another person, even if they paid more attention to our partner, and yet not by us.

On the other hand, if with the end of falling in love desire subsides and defects emerge, it is no less true that once the transition is over, other bonds are also strengthened. Before we have talked about trust, complicity or intimacy. However, If there is a good omen for the continuity of a love, it is that the mutual admiration, which began with falling in love, is maintained..

The differences between love and infatuation explained here perhaps correspond to what is normative and, as always, the nuances of reality are much richer.. There are people who say they are in love with a friend, there are others who start out loving their partners and then fall in love or never do so. There are also couples who confess to being in love all their lives. Beyond the differences between love and infatuation, between being on one side or the other (if they really are different sides), the important thing is that any relationship we share is a positive fortune for us.

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