In infatuation the other person is thought of as a separate entity and employed for self-gratification. In real love there is a feeling of identity with the other person.
Infatuation produces feelings of insecurity and wishful thinking whereas love produces a sense of security.
In infatuation you suffer loss of ambition, appetite, etc., whereas in love you work and plan to please the other person.
The physical element is much more important in infatuation than in love.
Infatuation may change quickly but love lasts.
In general you can be surer that it is really love if it has developed over a period of time rather than if it comes all of a sudden.
But, you may ask, how about those couples who are “meant for each other” and “fell in love at first sight.” Both are nice romantic notions, but both have little validity in fact.
There is no one person in the world for anyone. We don’t expect happily married couples or happily engaged couples to believe that but all the evidence indicates it is true. There are hundreds, indeed thousands, of people that you could fall in love with and be happily married to. (And there are, of course, thousands and perhaps millions of people you would be miserable with as mates.) The only sense in which there can be a “one and only” for you is that there may be only one good prospect within your range of possible acquaintanceship. It is the multitude of good possible mates that sometimes makes it difficult for a girl to choose between two men. It is the multitude of possibilities that produces triangular situations after marriages; and it is this multitude of available mates in America that makes it possible for a girl to find and love a man in her own community rather than to have to go from Maine to California to meet a “one and only.”
As for instantaneous love, a girl has about as much chance of “falling in love at first sight” as she does of becoming Cinderella. At times couples experience “infatuation at first sight” which may or may not later mature into love. And ordinarily the infatuation is based about eighty per cent on sexual attraction. “Love at first sight” also often occurs when you come across someone who happens to match your “phantasy ideal” for a mate. If you have always dreamed of a bride with large brown eyes, a turned-up nose and a shapely figure—and you are ripe for mating—you fall for the first girl matching that description. It is a mighty hazardous way to try to pick a mate.
Other people think they fall in love “at first sight” because they are desperately anxious to have some one to hold to, and clutch at the first person who comes along. They suffer from feelings of insecurity. This was particularly true of girls during the war. One girl who came to the Penn State clinic was rapturous about her coming marriage to an army lieutenant stationed temporarily at the college. Why did she love him? She was pretty vague about that and seemed to resent the question. What did they have in common in the way of interests and ideals? The only thing she could think of was that they both liked to bowl. It soon developed that what she was in love with was the idea of getting married. She was twenty-seven and nervous about her future. That she was sincerely convinced she was in love with the man was a tribute to her own powers of self-deception. She realized that she should in all decency be in love with the man she was going to marry, and convinced herself that she was.