I thought my first relationship was perfect. I was 18 and fully convinced that I had found it: true love. The one. My twin flame. How could it have been anything other than love? My first relationship was a textbook romance. My boyfriend actually seemed to listen to me and care about what I was saying. He would compliment me left and right, tell me how much I meant to him, how he couldn’t imagine losing me. He texted me all the time. He seemed obsessed with everything about me. It was perfect… wasn’t it?
Should I have been concerned when he said he loved me three weeks into our “relationship”? Was he actually listening to what I was saying or was he just pretending to, and love bombing me? Was it a red flag when he would say that I didn’t like him because I didn’t respond to his messages immediately? In hindsight, those were most definitely red flags. Ultimately, I had to ask myself the question: was he actually in love with me or was he just infatuated?
Understanding the difference between love and infatuation is much more difficult than it seems at first glance. Speaking for myself, I had black and white tunnel vision, and wasn’t mature enough to understand that love is so much more than adoration for the other person. It’s more than gifts, beautiful promises, sunshine, and rainbows. Loving someone can mean respecting the person wholly, unconditionally, and patiently. Here are a few ways to spot if what you think is love, is in fact infatuation.
- Love bombing
If you find yourself being either showered with gifts in the early stages of your relationship, bombarded with promises, or feeling overwhelmed with compliments, this may be infatuation. It is short-term and is often a phase that occurs before two people have fully gotten the chance to get to know one another, dissipating rather quickly after the infatuation has died down.
- They say “I love you” extremely soon
This is a classic sign of infatuation. In my case, the person I had a relationship with loved the image of me they had curated in their head, but not the real me. Loving someone means being there for them on the bad days just as much as the good days; it means understanding what pushes their buttons and having the patience to help them sort through their frustrations; and more. If they say they love you when you’ve only experienced good days together, chances are, it’s not love.
- You don’t feel comfortable opening up to them about your weaknesses
This goes hand in hand with the above point. If you feel like you’re walking on eggshells, or are anxious to be yourself around them out of fear that they might stop liking you, it’s not love. Love should feel safe, like a cozy bed in a home where you can unwind and have no reservations. Infatuation often involves the other person curating an image of you in their minds, thereby creating a sort of expectation of who you should be. If you feel yourself pressured to live up to whatever this expectation is, think twice about if this person truly loves you, or is infatuated with you.
It may take a few heartbreaks before you are able to notice the difference between love and infatuation on the spot. I know it did for me. But, as the cliché saying goes, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and with every heartbreak you will also grow wiser, more mature, and will be able to know what’s real love and what is not.