infatuation

infatuation is like an opiate high. where love is still in the early flirtatious giggley stage.. the stage where your palms get sweatly.. your tummy feels like butterflies are fluttering about.. its a lovely thing.

Their words can crush you or lift you to undreamt of heights.
You think nothing of rearranging your life to suit them.
Your priorities switch without you realising it.
You wonder if you are unhealthily obsessed; You worry about an accusation of net stalking.
Every word on every line of every email from them makes you beam like a child at Christmas.
You get hot and cold just thinking about talking to them.
Your literary talents suddenly seem to explode.
You try to convey this to your friends, but they stare at you baffled.
You misinterpret the slightest little thing to mean that this is destiny.
You find meaning in lyrics again.
Sometimes it feels as if you are falling from a plane, sometimes as though you are on a rocket.
Your self-confidence blooms; you feel relaxed about yourself.
You grow.

You start writing nodes to them and about them

infatuation: foolish and extravagant passion, especially as applied to a love affair that does not meet with family or local community or religious approval, and does not conform to customary criteria of a well arranged marriage. See also limerence.

Dictionary of Sexology Project: Main Index

Infatuation

Let us assume, as many do, that there is such a thing as love. Let us assume that this love is an emotion, and by emotion, we mean an intangible reaction to an experience/situation. And let us assume, then, that there are emotions which are not love, but which can masquerade as love, or be a conduit of love. This is what we call infatuation.

It should come as no shock that the term is derived from the Latin fatuus--a fool, a buffoon. We act like fools when we are infatuated. Obsessing over a person, maybe (innocuously) following them around; in high school or college, memorizing their schedule. Constantly thinking about that person, wondering what they're thinking, whether they think of you. It thrives on the unknown, it is a state of chaos and exploration. It is a flooding the the senses (literally; see below) with pleasure.

During this period, our body is flooded with amphetamine-related chemicals, namely phenylethylamine, dopamine, and norepinephrine. What you experience literally is a "high." For instance, phenylethylamine is found in chocolate. Hense the connections between love and chocolate, depression and chocolate, etc.

The body will only do this for so long with a certain stimulus. A tolerance is developed. Infatuation can last a very short time, or it can last a long time. The problem with infatuation is that it doesn't last. It isn't deep, it has nothing invested in it. It is purely chemcial. If it doesn't aid in the development of love--infatuation does not become love, but helps it develope by creating an initial attraction--then the relationship is doomed to failure. By failure I don't necessarily mean that the two people involved do not stay together--worse, they may stat together simply out of a certain comfort level. A desire not to leave or be alone. In other cases, those infatuated persons usually realize at some point that that is all they feel--not love--and thus end the relationship.

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How does infatuation help develope love? That's something I can't answer yet. Sometimes infatuation developes love--it keeps the person around. Sometimes that's all there is, the infatuation. Where love--mutual love between two people, not an unrequited love--comes from, though, I don't know yet.

I could feel it. His words making me blush despite the millions of miles between us. I can hear his voice in my mind and my ears, and I imagine us holding hands or something. It's a strange feeling of infatuation and real love mixed in a blender on high. I don't know what to make of it. It's a nice feeling though, so I'm not really complaining, despite the lack of him being near me physically. I see us on a cold night, our breath is foggy. I dunno. I can see us kiss once and at the same time I can see us just talk about whatever....I feel bad for not starting the conversations or trying harder to keep in touch though.

That suits me just fine.

The real question is.........

...nevermind, it's a stupid question.

I found a better one.

...Is this wrong?

I imagine him kissing me and my whole body shudders. I wanted that. Just kisses. Maybe it's wrong. I don't know.

He tells me it's not over the internet and gives me a kiss. I blush.

Damn it, why can't he be here? Why can't I be there?

I think back to that time before he left. Kissing him. My mind was inebriated by the music. The thumping in my chest caused by mixing heartrate and bass. What if it had been us alone? I wouldn't have done anything extreme, just making out and talking. Which, again, works for me.

 

This infatuation.
It’s warm. It feels.
It’s dopamine-producing and adrenaline-consuming scary.
These flutters of my heart, they’re real because they’re reflected in the shortness of my breath.
How intense. How stupid.
I always scroll a bit faster when I see her face on my news feed.
It’s like I miss her when I see those doppelganger pixels.
Someone needs to be there first for another to miss them, right?
This is clearly unhealthy.
I could contain this creation by harbouring it deep in my heart.
Never breathing it to life with words.
But this fluttering. This shortness of breath.
Intense. Stupid.
Let’s kill it instead.
How?
Admit it.

In*fat`u*a"tion (?), n. [LL. infatuatio: cf. F. infatuation.]

The act of infatuating; the state of being infatuated; folly; that which infatuates.

The infatuations of the sensual and frivolous part of mankind are amazing; but the infatuations of the learned and sophistical are incomparably more so. I. Taylor.

Such is the infatuation of self-love. Blair.

 

© Webster 1913.