Infatuation or love?

Oct 20, 2004

Remember when you loved her so much that you could sell your kidney to take her out? Or the time you threatened to abandon home

Remember when you loved her so much that you could sell your kidney to take her out? Or the time you threatened to abandon home because they said he smelled like an ashtray?

You welcomed him like a president-in-the-making, but a month later, started pointing at his bicupuli degree and threatening to expel him from the party. Where did all the love go?

Love did I say? No! It was infatuation. The sudden surge of emotion keeps you trembling whenever the beloved is around. But the one that will melt out sooner like ice cream in the mid-day sun.

Almost often, whenever two hearts connect, twins are born; Love and Infatuation. Both proceed to play love tunes. Infatuation music comes louder and more vigorous. Many new lovers ignore the softer tunes of Love and load their firearms with infatuation ammunition to face ‘the enemy’.

After a few shoot-outs, they run out of ammunition and take off for the hills. The relationship expires before its first birthday.

It looks as harmless as the Conservative Party. But wait till it becomes your turn.

An infatuated person can tempt you into deploying all your security organisations for a show down. When all jets are open, the beloved walks away like breaking your heart was the mission. You wonder why a love should die that young.

Your self-esteem is shattered.

Infatuation thrives on physical attraction and whenever you are together, you hope it will end in sexual intimacy. Suddenly, you want the party registered because you think delaying the marriage would mean losing the lover.

This lack of confidence about yourself and your partner brings feelings of jealousy and distrust. You become miserable whenever the beloved is physically absent.

And in the meantime, an idealised image of each other with wonderful pictures forms in your head. In your world, the movement has no blemish and is incapable of sin. Your anticipations become expectations.

And that becomes love’s undoing. For soon after, you discover your new catch is also made of clay. The disillusionment kicks your love out of the window. You cannot stop wondering what had attracted you to the person in the first place.

Love, on the other hand, is not an instant desire, which fades away with time.

It takes root and grows, one day at a time.

You eventually learn to be patient and to plan your future with confidence. You know that your beloved has a skeleton and this builds a vital immunisation against infant mortality of the relationship. Honesty, respect and trust flood in — naturally.

Before you know it, a feeling of commitment will have moved the relationship from a motorable truck to a highway.

In short, infatuation is a kind of affliction where a person’s normal ability to think clearly and act rationally are flung aside with suspicious ease because all emotions are funnelled to a particular someone without whom, nothing matters anymore.

It hides behind love to flower. But the petals wither away fast and the halo bestowed on the beloved fades.

Watch out friends, don’t be used. If infatuation sponsors you to study abroad, take the money but don’t be bought. Use it like a vehicle’s gear one, which sets desire in motion.

But then change it to a lesser-emotional gear two if the relationship is to move to another level. Love will take over and you will live in peace ever after.

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