It is a person’s belief that the experience of falling in love is love. We experience such strong emotions, are ready for actions so unusual for us, that it is difficult to discern the differences. Nevertheless, they are there, and sometimes it is useful to see them. What is the difference between these feelings and how to distinguish love from infatuation?
Read about the six most striking differences that will tell you which direction to take your relationship. You will learn why true love is devoid of selfish desires. Feelings as a game of hormones or the result of a conscious choice? Why do we fall in love with the wrong people? And is it true that passion is not responsible for the development of relationships because it is afraid of the future?
True love involves responsibility
When you really value a person, you are interested in his health and development, worry about the future, and are ready to take on obligations to protect your partner from danger. Your love is expressed in action, in the desire to help, guide, protect, inspire.
Falling in love does not have such a caring attitude towards the object of sympathy; on the contrary, you are ready to take any steps to completely own a person. You can encroach on his personal space, dictate your rules of the game to him, even destroy his life for the sake of your personal ideas. And this is a significant indicator.
Love, unlike passion, is always a conscious choice
Many describe the state of falling in love as an obsession that appears out of nowhere, not always at the right time, not for the most suitable person. It turns out that you are not responsible for yourself, there was just a revolution inside, the hormones rebelled, awakening animal instincts. If you look into it, you may not like this turn, you and your chosen one have so little in common! But the eyes are covered with a veil, it is impossible to discipline yourself.
Love is the result of a conscious choice, when you are perfectly aware of your feelings, clearly see a person’s shortcomings, but are ready to put up with them. Your eyes are open.
Love looks to the future with a smile
When two people find comfort in each other's arms, it is wonderful because it helps them live in the present. However, such a “placebo” also has a side effect - falling in love can become an attempt to escape from reality, a pressing past or a frightening future, a way to fill an inner emptiness.
True love does not anesthetize, but it heals. You accept your past and are not afraid to make far-reaching plans. Fears and complexes go away, illusions subside, this helps partners trust in life and decide to make important changes.
Love is free from criticism and labels
When you are romantically in love, you dream of subordinating your partner to the system of your demands and ideals, adjusting his appearance, and imposing the “correct” dreams. You are a harsh critic, but you justify this preoccupation with other people's happiness by the fact that you love! Alas, you can’t hear your partner.
True love will not impose its picture of the world on a person, will not limit his capabilities, suppress his will, or make judgments. A lover understands that he has no right to tell another how to live, what to feel and in which direction to develop, but he can always support the best aspirations of his half. Love does not press, it encourages.
Love is devoid of selfishness
Attachment to a person creates dependence; it seems that if he leaves, your life will lose meaning. You get hooked on endorphins, internal anxiety appears: what if he leaves, betrays, cheats, stops loving? And jealousy turns on inside, a desire to control another, a demand to love more or to provide evidence of one’s devotion (“why don’t you give flowers?”, “either me or your friends”). This is a selfish feeling, a real extortion.
True love does not seek to bind anyone, does not keep count of mistakes and obligations. You are simply happy, filled from within, and you want to give in order to see the same joy in the eyes of your loved one.
Love is a long-lasting state
Feelings that ignite with great speed tend to quickly burn out, leaving a scorched desert in the soul. Just yesterday you swore allegiance to each other, and today you desperately take revenge on the first person you meet, without thinking about the consequences. Joy gives way to anger, passion to hatred, desire to disgust. You look at your ex and don’t understand what you saw in him then. This is love. When we love, there is not that intensity of passions, that crazy pandemonium of emotions, but something warm and bright burns inside you, a spark that eventually grows into a flame. The longer you are together, the more good you discover in each other. And if the relationship for some reason did not work out, there is no anger, there are warm memories with a bitter taste, a desire for the person to do well.
So, we tried to briefly tell you how to distinguish love from falling in love, but here’s what’s much more important: both feelings are wonderful in their own way, and it’s even better when you manage to experience them with the same person! Attraction lives by feeling, love by action. What do you choose?
The emergence of new and strong feelings for the opposite sex inspires a person, gives him strength and joy. But at the same time it can bring a lot of pain and suffering. To avoid unnecessary disappointments, you should understand your feelings instead of denying their occurrence.
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True love is not always easy to recognize. To do this, you need to conduct an honest introspection and show diligence in order to understand your feelings and understand the sympathies of your chosen one.
- sympathy;
- love;
- Love.
- frankness, trust and understanding;
- loyalty;
- passion.
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Love or infatuation?
Before you completely plunge headlong into a romantic relationship, you need to understand three main facets:
Understanding these points will help you avoid mistakes and eventually find true happiness.
Falling in love can very often be confused with love. Both of these concepts imply romantic feelings. However, their basis is different. If love turns a blind eye to shortcomings and rests only on an external and superficial foundation, then love knows about the strengths and weaknesses of its partner, it constantly grows and strengthens, no matter what.
To decide, you need to study 10 differences between love and infatuation.
How to distinguish love from affection
What do you like about a person?
A passionate person pays most attention to physical characteristics - beautiful figure, cute face, athletic body, etc. Although there is nothing wrong with looking at beautiful people, but appearance is only a beautiful wrapper, in which there is no corresponding filling. Having met a person of more attractive appearance, sympathy can easily pass, and thoughts will already be occupied with a new acquaintance.
Unlike sympathy, true love is interested in the personality of a loved one. Physical attraction is present, but it only complements the personality characteristics and attractive qualities of the partner.
How to get rid of being in love
Evaluation of merits
When falling in love, a person pays attention only to some of the qualities of the chosen one. He turns a blind eye to shortcomings and exaggerates strengths.
But when you truly love a person, you know about all his shortcomings, you accept them and try to focus more on his actions, strengths and admire them.
What is the difference between love and infatuation
Consistency in feelings
Falling in love is not characterized by constancy. Therefore, the feelings of a man or woman can either glow or subside for a certain period. The reason is that it is a superficial feeling. It does not have deep roots that constantly fuel interest in a person.
Men's love does not calm down. Thoughts about your beloved, the desire to constantly see a person, be close and hear her voice do not let go for a single day. If a passionate person can easily endure separation, then with real feelings it becomes unbearable pain.
How did feelings affect your personality?
Psychology notes that a fleeting infatuation with another person leads to disorganization. The person becomes distracted, relaxed, and stops thinking sensibly. In addition, falling in love encourages spontaneous and thoughtless actions.
Deep feelings are always creative. They encourage the lover to develop, improve, work on his qualities, and give a surge of new strength and energy with which he can move mountains.
Important Elements of Love
An analysis of the main components of true love will help you distinguish love from infatuation.
Deep and genuine feelings are based on:
In sympathy there is only physical attraction and loyalty, but there is no open communication and mutual understanding. Falling in love involves passion and frankness, but if partners do not make efforts to overcome difficulties and remain faithful to each other, then over time it will pass.
Basis of feelings
To find out whether this is real love, you should think about what purpose is pursued in the desire to have a loved one. If a girl believes that a guy can make her happy, will provide for her and thinks only about his own interests, then this is infatuation, but not love.
True love is different in that it does not seek its own benefit. Love encourages one to unselfishly, devotedly care for the interests of another and do everything possible for his happiness.
Opinions of others
An important test of true feelings is the opinion of close people about the chosen one. An enthusiastic person tends to idealize another, not paying attention to serious shortcomings. Friends or family may not approve of the choice made because they look at things realistically and see dangerous signals.
When a girl truly loves, then more often her parents and friends do not go against such a relationship. They will see the same good qualities and the actions for which she fell in love with a man can make sure that she knows about his shortcomings and is ready to put up with them all her life.
Time is the best indicator of feelings
Distance is the best opportunity to identify and test your feelings. Liking rests only on physical attractiveness. If people are simply passionate about each other, then under the influence of time and distance, interest in the person disappears and the relationship ends.
To completely forget a man, a woman in love only needs 1-3 months. Then she is visited by thoughts about the futility of relationships, and she begins to pay attention to cute guys.
Unlike passion for deep feelings, nothing can interfere. For those who truly love each other, the thread of love only grows stronger, despite thousands of kilometers and years of separation. Lovers will find opportunities to maintain their relationship, since they will no longer be able to exist without each other. No other person of the opposite sex can replace and fill the emptiness in your heart.
Love in all its manifestations, and especially romantic love, is always elevated to the rank of the highest feeling. She is everywhere: books are written about her, films and TV series are made, pictures are drawn.
But reality and works of art are two different things. A person who feels strongly attracted to another person may feel confused and internal sensations may be contradictory.
Does he really feel love? And how to distinguish love from infatuation, affection and other feelings? To understand this, It’s important to analyze your own feelings and compare them with information about what love and infatuation are.
What is love?
Love- a feeling of very strong sympathy that a person experiences, a feeling of spiritual unity with someone.
It is one of the dominant themes in all spheres of art; it is extolled, sought to be found, and highly idealized.
Robert Sternberg developed a three-component theory of true love, which perfectly reveals the essence of this feeling:
- Frankness, intimacy, sincerity. This point includes the confidence that you can entrust your partner with almost anything without fear of getting negative, and the desire to do this; a feeling of calm, confidence in the future that appears thanks to the presence of this person in life; the desire to be the same confidant for a loved one; the desire to better understand his feelings and help in everything.
- Passion. This is the desire to be intimate with a partner and receive deep physical pleasure from these moments. Also a person who truly loves will find his partner attractive. Passion is an element that is similar to falling in love, but in people who have been together for a long time, it is not as strong as in the first stages of communication, and this is completely normal: the body does not maintain a high level of love hormones for years.
- Obligations. This is fidelity, the desire to be with this particular person for many years, the desire to support him, to look for reasonable ways out of conflict situations in order to prevent a breakdown in relationships, and much more.
True love- this is a lot of work that needs to be done over decades. But, of course, this work brings generous results and makes life ten times better.
Many young people who grew up on fairy tales about love are little familiar with the concept of “responsibility”, often confuse love and infatuation, and strive to break off relationships as soon as “passion has weakened”, because they are sure that passion in the case of true love should always be as hot as in the first month of the relationship.
But these are extremely erroneous judgments, the emergence of which is closely related to the problem existing in society: love is overly idealized.
What is this work that needs to be done? Here is just a small part of what you need to do to experience deep spiritual unity with your partner for many years:
How to prove to a girl that you love her? will help you!
Sympathy or true love? Find out from the video:
Signs
The main signs of love:
How to get your beloved man back after a breakup? Find out about this from ours.
Love and affection - what are the differences? How to understand what keeps you staying with a person? Comment in this video:
Concept of falling in love
Falling in love is a strong feeling of sympathy, which is based on hormonal activity, which is not stable.
Over time, it either dries up or transforms into love, depending on the desires of people in love with each other. She not limited only to sexual desire, although it is certainly one of the pillars of this feeling.
Also, when falling in love, due to the action of hormones, a person is not always able to logically comprehend the personality of his chosen one.
Even if he realizes that he has some negative sides, he does not take them seriously and extols the positive ones. These are the so-called “rose-colored glasses” that “fall off” when love wanes.
The more rational and intelligent a person is, the more difficult it is for the feeling of love to completely fool him.
Lightweight, romantic people, accustomed to relying on feelings rather than reason, on the contrary, it's much easier to turn your head.
Hormones, influencing the appearance and maintenance of feelings of love:
- dopamine;
- serotonin;
- adrenalin;
- endorphins;
- vasopressin;
- oxytocin.
But falling in love is not just about hormones. It is unreasonable to believe that people - creatures that have advanced far in development - are driven solely by substances produced by the body.
The appearance of a feeling of love is influenced by a lot of factors, including socially conditioned ones, which are difficult to fully take into account.
Main features
Signs of falling in love:
There are other signs of falling in love, such as the desire to care, the fear of losing the chosen one, patience with any of his antics, even the most inappropriate.
Love or infatuation? How to distinguish? Watch the video:
Similarities of the two concepts
The main similarities between these feelings:
- the presence of strong sympathy for a person, attraction;
- fear of parting with the chosen one;
- fear that something might happen to him;
- desire to help, support;
- the desire to be a confidant for the chosen one.
Love and infatuation have a lot in common with each other, because they have a common basis and common goals, but it depends only on the couple how long the feelings will last and what they will bring with them.
How to forget a loved one after a breakup? find out right now.
The difference between love and:
Like and love - what's the difference? Find out about it in the video:
Attraction and true love - what's the difference?
Sexual attraction takes place during the period of falling in love, but if it is in the foreground, and other aspects of the feeling - the desire to protect, support, the desire to become better, the fear of losing - are absent or expressed extremely weakly, this is attraction, not love.
But if people who are in love with each other have a very strong libido, the boundaries between attraction and falling in love are partially erased.
True love not selfish, and to maintain it you need to work: be attentive to your partner, take part of the responsibility, see the negative sides of your partner, be able to resolve conflicts, realize that love is not a holiday for life, but a much more complex quintessence of feelings, emotions, situations.
When falling in love, some aspects of love can also be observed, but they are not expressed too strongly. Falling in love is more fanatical, but love is a conscious, mature feeling that can last a lifetime.
Love or passion? How to determine? Comparison:
How to protect yourself from mistakes?
To better understand your own feelings, it is important to analyze them, think about it, ask yourself questions such as “Do I really want to live my life with this person?”, “Am I ready to accept him or her?”, try to track the negative aspects of the chosen one, write them down and try to imagine what they are belong to someone else.
Will it be difficult to tolerate such a person? Would you like to do business with him?
When you are in love (in the first few months), the color of rose-colored glasses is most saturated, so it will be difficult to protect yourself from mistakes due to the fact that hormones force the brain to perceive the chosen one exclusively positively, even if he behaves disgustingly.
In principle, there is no ideal algorithm that is guaranteed not to make mistakes in feelings, since life is unpredictable, and even a person who behaves exemplarily can turn out to be completely different at any moment.
Romantic interactions are a matter of trial and error, and it's worth recognizing that.
The most important - notice in time that the relationship began to bring pain, not pleasure, warmth and peace, and abandon them as soon as possible.
It is impossible to say with certainty when exactly the concept of love was formed. Ancient philosophers and thinkers thought about it. It's hard to imagine without him modern world. There are many shades and types of this feeling. They are difficult to define and explain. And yet we will try, with the help of qualified people, how to distinguish love from affection.
Evolution of love
At first glance, it seems that every story of human relationships is unique and inimitable. This is not entirely true. Love or infatuation always begins with sympathy. A person singles out from the surrounding crowd one person who seems to him the most interesting and attractive. At the very beginning of communication, the object of sympathy seems to us more and more attractive every day. Sometimes even a few days after meeting you, you become confident that this is your soulmate. Such feelings are nothing more than falling in love. With complete reciprocity and regular communication, a loving relationship begins. Gradually, lovers take off and begin to discover their partner’s shortcomings. A significant part of the romanticism and passion from the relationship also disappears. Comparing the beginning of the novel and its middle, it is difficult not to be disappointed. How to distinguish love from affection and understand whether it is worth trying to maintain a relationship?
Express test for love and habit
In your free time, when you are alone, ask yourself a couple of questions and try to answer them honestly. You can even write down all your thoughts. Many practicing psychologists advise this exercise to their clients. Question one: what do you like about your partner? Listing some features of appearance, social status or individual character traits is a direct hint that you are experiencing affection. A person who truly loves will answer that he values his partner’s personality, realizing all its strengths and weaknesses. Try to evaluate how this relationship has affected your life. If you are not interested in anything except your partner, and all other people have been “abandoned” by you, we are most likely talking about attachment. Love is a feeling that preserves and develops personality. People who love each other maintain their own interests. Such a union is full-fledged, each of its participants can have their own friends and hobbies. Now you know how to distinguish love from affection. The test above can be simplified a little. Think about how you most often talk about yourself and your partner. “We”, “our”, “us” - these are words of true love. “I” and “he” are a clear sign of habit or attachment.
Five signs of true love
Still wondering how to distinguish love from attachment to a person? Remember the five main signs that characterize deep feeling. The first of them is constant thoughts about a loved one. When we are in love or attached, we also often think about who we feel for. Most often these are dreams of a future together and memories of moments spent together. Love is characterized by thoughts of a slightly different nature. A person who loves never forgets that he is not alone. We warn our loved ones if we are delayed; We worry when they are late, we miss them when they are apart. Good way How to distinguish love from affection - analyze the quality of communication with your loved one. Even if it’s deep, you can talk with each other for hours and on any topic. Popular wisdom says that love is the desire to make a loved one happy. And indeed, without this emotion it is difficult to imagine this feeling. inspires. For the sake of a joint future and the happiness of your lover, you want to be better and achieve success. A loving person soberly evaluates his chosen one. The secret of love lies in the fact that, knowing all the shortcomings, we continue to love and accept our partner for who he is.
Symptoms of attachment
Many people ask the question: “How to distinguish love from affection?” Relationship psychology gives the exact answer. Attachment differs from love in that it is pathologically dependent on the object of affection. In a relationship characterized by this feeling, there is always a side that “loves” and a second that “allows oneself to be loved.” Dependence manifests itself in the desire to spend as much time as possible with a loved one and the desire to possess him alone. Very often in such relationships a hypertrophied feeling of jealousy arises. At the same time, the dependent party can be very jealous of other people, including relatives, pets and even inanimate objects. Sometimes the attachment becomes so strong that in the absence of the “loved one,” not only a depressed moral state is observed, but also physical symptoms of malaise.
bad or good?
At first glance, it seems that it is love-dependence that can help build strong and long-term relationships. But in fact this is a big misconception. Attachment causes many problems for each of the partners. The addict is under constant psychological stress. He gets genuinely upset every time his partner isn't around. Most often, when experiencing affection, a person realizes how dependent he is on his soulmate. This gives rise to the fear that the partner may disappear from the life of the addict. The party that “allows itself to be loved” does not have an easier time in such a relationship. The main problem is too much attention from the partner. The addict will call every hour, demanding communication. Surely he will be offended if his loved one wants to spend the weekend without him.
Love is respect and care
Love is in many ways similar to affection and falling in love. And yet this feeling is special. It is not for nothing that he is called the highest and true. Love never brings negative emotions and is built on pure selflessness. If you value and respect your partner for treating you well, we're talking about about love or affection. A loving person will take care of his soulmate. He really cares about how his partner’s day went, and he is always ready to have a heart-to-heart talk and help solve problems. When experiencing love, a person knows that his chosen one is not ideal. But, despite this, he respects him and will never allow himself to speak disrespectfully about him.
Love does not love?
Understanding yourself is not easy, but it is quite possible if you want. How can you distinguish love from affection in marriage and understand how your spouse feels towards you? You can get the answer to this question by analyzing the behavior of your significant other. The easiest way to recognize affection is from a partner. If your significant other literally suffocates you with their attention and wants to control your every move, most likely there is no love. A simple way to distinguish love from affection in men: try to understand how jealous he is. Unfortunately, constant scandals and groundless suspicions have nothing to do with love. High feelings allow partners to feel harmony. Loving people They almost never fight and always treat each other with respect.
Is it possible to love your partner after years of marriage?
Having realized that in marriage you experience not love, but affection, it is difficult to resist disappointment. What to do in such a situation? Is it really necessary to urgently file for divorce? In fact, you can live for many years feeling nothing but affection for your partner. But there is an alternative option - try to love him. Try to give more freedom to your chosen one. Take care of yourself, find interests outside the home and spouse. It is not your significant other in your life that will decrease. By leading an active lifestyle, you will become more interesting person. Perhaps this will help you spend more productive and quality time with your loved one. We hope that our article on how to distinguish love from attachment helped you understand your own feelings and improve your life.
There is perhaps no stronger feeling among the entire spectrum of human emotions than love. She rules the world, inspires heroic deeds and simply supports life on the planet. Although is it fair to attribute all these merits to this feeling? And how not to confuse it with what is commonly called basic instinct? Indeed, in a fit of passion, a representative of the opposite sex may seem so attractive that confessing your love to him will not be the slightest difficulty. Especially if we are talking about the age at which hormones undergo a kind of “test drive”, and life experience does not yet allow one to orientate oneself well enough in what is happening. That is, it is young girls and young men who most often do not know how to distinguish love from falling in love and just attraction.
However, there is nothing reprehensible in this, because all people are subject to emotions, and all ages are subject to love. Even in a fit of feeling mature person It can be difficult to soberly assess your condition and behavior. And yet we must strive to observe, analyze and draw correct conclusions about what is happening not only in the body, but also in the soul and consciousness. Distinguish between vivid, but fleeting and superficial impressions from genuine, long-lasting and deep experiences. This is not so difficult if you pull yourself together in time and figure it out properly, without neglecting the important signs that distinguish love from falling in love. We invite them to talk to him. But as you read the following information, don’t forget to comprehend it and apply it to yourself. This is the only way to avoid mistakes and distinguish love from infatuation.
What is falling in love
The emotional sphere is very complex and multifaceted. All people are different, and the manifestation of feelings very much depends on temperament, character, upbringing, life experience and even the hormonal state of each person. And yet, psychologists and neurologists do not work in vain. They were able to create at least a schematic idea of the stages that almost everyone goes through who has encountered a strong passion on their life’s path. Regardless of whether the feeling turns out to be mutual, and what development the new relationship will receive, falling in love can be divided into two main parts: inspiration and falling in love itself. Each of them has its own character traits and typical manifestations.
- Inspiration arises almost at the same moment when you saw the person you are interested in. You still don’t know who he is, what his name is or how old he is, but he is already different in your eyes from the other people around him. From now on, you will also highlight it against the general background and unconsciously look for it among others. You are fascinated by everything about your new acquaintance: his voice, gaze, facial features, facial expressions, manner of dressing, sense of humor and hobbies. But at the same time, the shortcomings are leveled out, and such insignificant nuances among real values as the shape of lips, eye color and even the style of a shirt can acquire enormous value. Inspiration can last from a couple of days to a couple of months, after which it either dissipates or moves into the next, slightly more conscious stage - falling in love.
- Love comes after passion if you managed to continue communication with the person you are interested in. You dared to talk to him and were convinced that he was really as beautiful as he seemed to you at first glance. When he is near, your heart beats faster, your cheeks glow, and time flies by. When he's not around, you find yourself almost constantly thinking about him, remembering his words and imagining what he's doing at that moment without you. All this indicates that in your mind there lives an image not of a real, really existing person you have met, but of an imaginary one, how you would like to see your ideal chosen one. If you understand this in time, you can even derive some benefit from this state: it will help you understand what exactly you are looking for in a life partner, how you want your loved one to be, and what qualities you need most. But avoid firmly associating these traits with reality - most likely, most of them are made up by you.
- Idealization of a partner- these are rose-colored glasses that you wear 24 hours a day and look at your lover exclusively through them. There is no more beautiful, smarter and more attractive person in the world than your sweetheart. All other people seem unworthy of his little finger. He has no shortcomings and cannot have any by definition!
- Excessive emotionality, in which state you are. Talk a lot and loudly, smile often and are ready for any madness, especially if the object of your passion is watching them. You really want to make an exceptional, most favorable impression on him!
- Obsession with a partner. Wherever you are, whatever you do, your thoughts invariably return to him, and your actions are directed towards him. In a clothing store you look for something that would suit him, in a grocery store you look for something that he finds tasty. Even at a dog show, you manage to find exactly the breed that he would like!
- Impatience in desires and actions. You need everything at once, here and now. A slight delay or being late for a meeting is tantamount to disaster, because you will spend an extra 5 minutes apart. You would rather spend half your salary on a plane ticket than travel three times longer to meet a dear friend on the bus. No time to wait!
- Touchiness at anyone and everyone who dares to question the value of your feelings or the exclusivity of your beloved. You are ready to answer him rudely without thinking, rush to the defense of your lover and prove to the whole world that no one dares to speak badly about your partner. You take insults directed at him personally, period!
Love is an amazing feeling, in particular because it is connected with falling in love and is very different from it. Love often stems from falling in love, but at the same time it can completely deny its ideals. These two feelings are similar and dissimilar at the same time. But, just like falling in love, love has its own periods and natural stages of development. And it should be noted that they can only occur after the two stages of falling in love described above. If within three to six months, sometimes up to a year, the relationship between new acquaintances has not ceased, it will inevitably develop due to the structure of the human psyche and sooner or later will reach the following stages:
- Love is classic. It’s probably not for nothing that it is considered the best, most valuable and rare feeling between people. Only a small part of partners manage to achieve it after falling in love, especially taking into account the different degrees and depths of their love for each other. And only if the goals, life positions and personality traits of two people coincide, they form a strong couple, connected by true love. This is a long-lasting feeling, experiencing which two people sincerely care about each other, strive to help and support. They are ready to sacrifice themselves for the well-being of a loved one and give more to him than to take for themselves. At the same time, the balance of comfort is still maintained - provided that the feeling is mutual and equal on both sides. Such love can be called realized.
- Attachment- a deep, calm feeling that comes after love. It is more measured, does not involve explosions of passion and accepts all the shortcomings of the partner’s character, age, and behavior. It’s even difficult to call two people partners at this stage of the relationship - because they have already become family, truly inextricably linked. Attachment can be considered the final stage love relationship, but that doesn't mean she's talking about the ending. On the contrary, attachment can last until the death of the spouses and sometimes takes up the lion's share of life time. Love affection is love multiplied by habit, comfort and complete mutual understanding. This is the pinnacle of feelings that a human being can experience.
- Partner knowledge, characteristics of his character and individual traits. Not only its advantages, but also its disadvantages. After all, your loved one is just a person. He is dear to you personally, but there are other people in the world, both better and worse. You don’t need anyone except your loved one - but not because he is ideal, but because he is him, and there are simply no others like him. And even if there is, you won’t look and find out. You simply don't need anyone else.
- Calm– a peaceful, even state of confidence without emotional outbursts. You remember your loved one all the time, but thoughts about him do not cause stress, but calm and warm feeling. You are not afraid to part with him for a minute or even a day, because you know for sure that you will see each other soon and both will be happy about this meeting. Internal and external harmony is a sign of true, “high-quality” love.
- Development– your own and helping your loved one develop, broadening your horizons together and individually, sharing experiences and new knowledge. In general, a lot of important, constructive information about the world around and life besides relationships. All this makes love itself deeper, more productive and fulfilling. Because only a union of two developed personalities can become lasting and interesting for both.
- Patience and tolerance. Your feeling was not born yesterday and you are not expecting its ending any day now. You don’t think about time at all, don’t rush things, don’t rush your partner - but simply live for today and enjoy the moment. In the depths of your soul, knowing for sure that you still have a lot of time ahead to be happy, and you will have time to accomplish everything you planned and what you still come up with and want later.
- Irony stems from knowing yourself and your loved one, as well as understanding the nature of relationships, all the pitfalls and the inevitability of some moments in life. This gives you the strength to face challenges with a smile and overcome them with dignity. This is acceptance of one’s own choice, understanding of its value, awareness of one’s own imperfections and condescension towards the shortcomings of another. Ultimately, it is a reluctance to compare.
A thoughtful comparison of the signs of falling in love and love in itself should clearly demonstrate to you their features: both advantages and disadvantages. Both feelings have a lot of the first and second. And yet, it is almost impossible to make a choice in favor of one thing and refuse the other - because in this case, your life will be devoid of many valuable facets. Because love and infatuation are, in essence, manifestations of the sensual side of human nature. In this they are united and inseparable, this is their value and interaction. And if you still doubt what stage your personal feelings are at the moment, try taking a short test yourself, honestly answering such questions to yourself. It won’t hurt anyone to ask them periodically; you can even regularly re-certify yourself - for example, every spring or after meeting a new attractive representative of the opposite sex:
- What's your appetite? Do you have a craving for a certain type of food? Don't you want to look at food at all? Forgetting to eat?
- Do you experience emotional withdrawal in the absence of your partner or can you calmly wait for the next meeting with him?
- Do you feel jealous at the thought that your lover at this moment can talk and/or spend time with other people, even of the same sex?
