Chapter IV
Is It Love—or Infatuation?
“Love” is unquestionably the most abused word in the English language. People “love” puppies, or they “love” ice cream. Women commonly close their letters to acquaintances with the word “love” as do all relatives when they write to one another. Boys trying to get a kiss from their girl friends mumble something about love. That’s to make the giving easier for the girl.
Then there are different kinds of genuine love. A mother loves her two-year-old baby just as wholeheartedly as she loves her husband. And she loves her husband now just as much as she did as a girl eight years ago when she “fell” in love with him, but the love is different. She was more misty-eyed then. She didn’t realize it but the earlier love was heavily flavored by sexual attraction. Now sex is still present in her regard for her husband but the bond is primarily a deep feeling of comradeship. And with the baby, of course, true sexual feelings are not involved at all.
In all three of the cases, however, she had developed a deep concern for the welfare of the loved one; and in all three of the cases the loved one had similar feelings of attachment to her. Right here you have the gist of true love, whether parental, conjugal or romantic.
Still, it is often difficult to know if your “love” is the real thing. Two out of five of the girls who come to the Penn State Marriage Counseling Service for advice about their affairs think they are in love but aren’t sure.
One girl was really confused. She reported that she was terribly in love with two different men at the college. One was on the basketball team. The other played in a campus orchestra. She did not know which one she loved the more and wanted to be told which to choose. Tests soon established beyond a doubt that she had the warmest kind of physical feeling for both men. But the tests also showed that she was primarily fascinated by them as “catches.” She wasn’t actually in love with either, and was so informed.
She was the victim of double infatuation. How can you tell love from infatuation? Dr. Henry Bowman of Stephens College offers these points of distinction:—
Infatuation may come suddenly but loves takes time.
Infatuation can be based on one or two traits (usually including sex appeal) whereas love is based on many traits.
In infatuation the person is in “love” with love, whereas in love, the person is in love with another person.