How to distinguish love from a good relationship. Love or falling in love: what is the difference between feelings and how to define them. Love or infatuation

Adalind Koss

What is true love like? How to recognize it? What are the qualities of love? These questions have been asked by writers, poets and ordinary people for many centuries in a row.

What is true love

Feelings that have gone through the test of time, overcame difficulties, doubts are called. The correct model of this feeling is developed by Robert Sternberg. According to this theory, true love has 3 main components:

frankness;
attraction;
loyalty.

Frankness is sincere feelings and relationships, complete trust, a desire to help a partner. It is the ability to open the soul without fear. But it does not mean that you approve and encourage any actions and opinions of the second half. Rather, it is understanding and knowledge of a person, the reasons for his actions.

Attraction is sexual attraction. Such a component is not inherent in friendship or other love. It is the fuel that sustains the fire of the senses.

Loyalty is the desire to share with this particular person all the trials and joys of life. It also refers to the decision to be faithful despite the difficulties of the relationship.

How to distinguish love from infatuation

If you do not know how to distinguish love from being in love, some comparative characteristics of these feelings will help you.

When a person is in love, then in a partner he is worried about physical qualities - beauty, figure. If this is love, then the personality of the person is more important. You like his character, actions, appearance, manners, etc. In addition, if you have a passing crush, the number of qualities in a lover that you admire is small. Yes, your legs give way from some of its features, but such factors are limited only to gait, voice, smile, etc. True love is love for every scar and mole on the body, for every deed and habit.

At the first stage of a relationship, falling in love is distinguished by an instant flash - from a touch, a glance. Reminds me of an obsession. Love comes gradually. It takes time to fully understand and accept another person. You can't love someone you don't know anything about. As for interest in a lover, when he is in love, he either burns or subsides. Love will not subside for a while. Not a day goes by when you don't think about your soul mate.

If you are only in love, then over time, quarrels happen more often. And the reason is that under these feelings there is no basis - a spiritual connection, a base, common themes and emotions. Love does not interfere with disagreements. They will strengthen the relationship. But, really, before you play a wedding, make repairs together.

How to distinguish love from addiction

There is true love, but let's remember the painful state mistaken for this high feeling. How to distinguish love from addiction?

Love does not make life worse, it brings happiness. This is the main thing. You are happy both with your loved one and without him - he is on Earth, and this is already pleasing. Love is not a hindrance to human development in other areas, it is a muse. Addiction is the opposite state, unfreedom. This is a growing concentration on a partner.

At the first stage, a feeling of joy appears, it may not disappear even with the evasiveness and coldness of the partner. A person easily finds excuses for bad deeds. Then the need for the presence of the beloved grows, he becomes a drug. Life is divided into black and white. Only in the presence of the object there is a feeling of happiness, and without it - melancholy and depression. This behavior resembles a hangover syndrome in alcoholics.

The addict wants to have complete control over the life of his love object, often becomes obsessive, cruel and picky.

How to distinguish love from affection

Psychological studies have proven the validity of the opinion that 3 years are allotted for passionate love. But this does not mean that after this the feelings end. Relationships become a great feeling, love matures, goes through difficulties and trials, but does not die. Love sometimes begins with passion, turns into care and tenderness, then life tests come, but adversity only strengthens the feeling. It becomes big, independent of circumstances.

Do not be afraid of betrayed feelings for a long-time loved one - this is normal. But if it is so important for you to understand how to distinguish love from affection without love, then a simple test will help.

First, ask yourself what in your soulmate attracts you more. Fleeting affection is characterized only by physical feelings, like falling in love. You like his way of speaking, dressing, driving. For love, external qualities do not play a key role.

Think back to the beginning of the relationship, the first few months. A fleeting feeling is characterized by the transience of events, as if you are “diving” into a pool. True love is formed gradually.

Another way to distinguish between the concepts of ephemeral and true love is to test for strength. If people love each other, have serious feelings, then a long separation is not easy for them. But sometimes it heals the soul, the emptiness with attachment is soon replaced by new emotions and feelings. Love only grows stronger from obstacles and difficulties. It will help to survive separation, will not fade away, but will warm the heart.

December 31, 2013, 11:40 Quite often we come across such concepts as falling in love. Many do not see much difference in them, and often these feelings are confused, sometimes causing pain. Love and infatuation are two similar and at the same time different concepts. Further we will consider both these concepts in detail, in order to have at least some idea about them in the future.

Article outline:

What are the differences?

is a psycho-emotional attraction to a person. This state lasts for a short time and, unlike love, is not a comprehensive feeling, but it is also not limited to the exclusively physiological sphere.

Falling in love is not an ordinary combination of emotions and sex. And frankly, it is not so easy to distinguish the feelings that accompany love from the feelings that accompany falling in love.

Often, falling in love is accompanied by euphoria, which can also be called an altered state of consciousness, something similar to intoxication or hypnosis. If we take into account the fact that feelings are caused by hormones, then this condition can be called hormonal intoxication.

Everyone knows such symptoms of falling in love as: general enthusiasm, sharp emotional swings, the object of love seems ideal, the relationship is going well, smoothly, on the rise. If you describe the state in one word, it seems that you are in a fairy tale.

It can still be called a fairy tale, because it has little to do with real people. This happens because a person often falls in love with an image invented by him, where there is practically no real person. Well, or this person acts only as an excuse.

Falling in love with a person, we ourselves, without particularly realizing it, hang on him all the ideas about the ideal partner, and for some time we believe that we really found him. It becomes an ideal partner because we want it, we make it so in our subconscious, exalt it to heaven, etc., but in fact, it cannot have all the qualities that we attributed to it.

For some time, while we are in a state of euphoria, this may not be noticed. But as time goes by, it will show up more and more often. And all because each person is individual and behaves the way he wants, and not the way we would like. Learning more about a person, we are not always ready to perceive him as he is, we are not always ready to give up our invented ideal, and, therefore, falling in love passes, it can also pass because our body cannot stay in a state of euphoria.

Both falling in love and love are characterized by such a feature as a strong attachment to a person of a different sex, which complicates the search for differences between them, since most of their manifestations are similar. Too passionate, blind love can contain the properties that belong to true love. Consequently, the difference between them is generally found more in intensity than in features. That is why it is necessary to carefully examine each manifestation of these feelings.

Love and falling in love has three similar manifestations, such as intimacy, passion and extraordinary emotions. In fact, a person can experience passion for another person without even loving him. A person can be overcome by passion and a rather strong sexual attraction to another person whom he practically does not know. Caressing and kissing increase addiction to erotic experiences, to the point where sex becomes the basis of the connection. These experiences do not necessarily indicate true love. Sexual attraction, in turn, can accompany both true love and falling in love.

Phases of love

To answer the question of what feelings we experience when we really love, we should consider all the phases of love. Basically, a person experiences five phases of love, in order to understand how the ability to love actually develops, it is necessary to understand all these five phases.

First phase of love is the infant phase. The baby still does not know how to love, he lives in himself. At this stage, he is only concerned with getting what he wants, he is not worried about how much trouble he causes to others. The baby's parents do not get enough sleep all the time, but this does not bother him either. The child loves only himself.

Second phase- phase of parental love. The first love of a child, not counting the love for himself, is directed precisely to his parents, this is especially manifested in relation to his mother. This is quite normal, since it is she who spends the most time with him. Therefore, she means to him, much more than anyone else. In this period, the child loves not only himself, but has already learned to love his parents.

Third phase- phase of friendly love. After a few years, the child is already accustomed outside the walls of the house and, therefore, he has an interest in his peers, especially if they are of the same sex. Further, the child relies not only on the opinion of his parents, but also on the opinion of his friends. He is already learning to communicate with people like him, lives in society and is gradually leaving parental care, they are already relegated to the background. Now he already loves not only himself and his parents, but also his friends.

Fourth phase- phase of youthful love. In youth, interest is already manifested in the opposite sex. Boys understand that girls deserve more attention, and, therefore, vice versa. But at the same time, this love is considered from the position of a baby, that is, what it will give, instead of what I can give.

It is the youthful phase of love that is the time of mistakes and trials. Girls dream of a handsome prince or some movie star, as they grow older they become more realistic, and they look at the opposite sex in a different way. But in their youth they still consider their partner from the consumer side, what he can give them.

In this phase, love is born from the thought of what we will extract for ourselves from these relationships, but from the position that we ourselves will bring to this relationship.

Fifth phase- phase of mature love. At this stage, a person gives less and less preference for physical beauty, psychological and emotional factors become more important. In this phase, a person thinks more about what he can contribute to the relationship, and not about what he will receive from them. All thoughts in this case move from your person to your partner. In the case when a person really loves his partner, disinterestedly, then, of course, he will try to do everything in his power for his partner. The same situation occurs with lovers, if they love, then in this case the interests of their partner will be above their own. Therefore, the more you give, the more you will receive in return.

What to do?

We all understand perfectly well that it takes time to go through all these phases. Therefore, many marry at the stage of infant love. Many of us never reach maturity at all of these stages. And some are too deeply entrenched in their emotional childhood that adult relationships are almost inaccessible to them.

In order to determine what phase your relationship is in, you need to carefully analyze the current relationship. It is difficult enough to distinguish the youthful phase from the mature phase of true love.

If you were in love, and you began to notice how the veil is coming off your eyes, and reality appears in all its guise, and your beloved turned out to be completely different from what it seemed before, but in fact, you didn’t know him real . Your relationship was built on a fantasy of an ideal.

In this case, there are only two ways out: having decided that it was all a mistake, and, or go the second way - stay with this person and get to know him better, accept him for who he is. Love can be learned, it is quite difficult, but it affects both sides. This path is very difficult, painful, but perhaps on this path there will be little more happiness than constantly experiencing new feelings, pain and disappointments.

In my opinion, the person you love, you feel with all your heart. I want to live not only for my own pleasure, but also for him. Love, in principle, like falling in love, transforms a person, makes him better, but with love this passes, but with true love it remains. Why true love is realized mainly in the mature phase, simply because by this time people have learned to respect each other, respect relationships, respect deeds, appreciate what they do for you, give something in return.

Long and full-fledged relationships, love will not work if you use your partner to your advantage, you can’t take it all the time, learn to put yourself in the place of others, to experience the feelings that you make your soul mate feel.
True love comes to someone earlier to someone later, probably, it depends on when we meet our soul mate. Falling in love, disappointments are necessary for us so that we learn to love, so that we do not repeat our mistakes.

We often hear that love arises suddenly, at first sight and words. But do not our feelings deceive us, is there something else hiding behind a beautiful and bright feeling? How to distinguish love from falling in love or ordinary sympathy?

The answers to these questions should be sought within yourself, relying entirely on your own intuition. We will try to identify the main similarities and differences between these similar, but still different feelings.

Sympathy

Sympathy is an emotional positive reaction to another person. It is expressed in a friendly and benevolent attitude, admiration for a person and a desire to interact with him. Sympathy can be caused by such factors:

• similarity of characters and worldview;
• external attractiveness;
• the presence of converging factors (age, neighborhood, place of work, etc.);
• reciprocal feelings (often sympathy arises in response to a similar feeling of another person).

Love

This is a sparkling feeling that has a number of features:

• appears suddenly and disappears just as quickly;
• accompanied by vivid emotions and literally "turns the head";
• all attention is focused on one person, often a woman looks at everything through “rose-colored glasses”;
• often based only on sexual attraction;
• often accompanied by self-doubt, dissatisfaction with their own appearance, status, etc., there is a desire to radically change in order to attract attention;
• the object of falling in love is not even the person himself, but a certain image;
• the leading feeling during this period is euphoria, it seems that it is impossible to live a single day without another person.

Love

True love between a man and a woman is the highest form of manifestation of feelings. But it should be noted that not everyone is able to achieve true love. Love has a number of distinctive features that together do not allow it to be confused with any other feeling:

• the physical imperfections of a loved one are perceived as an integral part of him and even a kind of "zest";
• the spiritual qualities of a partner are also highly valued;
• existing shortcomings are taken for granted, without the desire to immediately eliminate them;
• a high feeling can “ripen” for years, because it is based on the intimacy that occurs after a long acquaintance;
• separation is very difficult, because you don’t want to part with your loved one for a long time, but no distance can destroy a real feeling;
• love reveals all the most beautiful qualities of people, pushing them to self-improvement and struggle with internal shortcomings;
• the feeling does not pass suddenly, it binds people with an invisible thread for many years and helps to overcome all hardships and sorrows;
• people are able to make concessions and find a compromise;
• love always goes hand in hand with respect and mutual understanding, it is selfless, it is impossible to love for any benefit.

Similarities and differences

Summarizing the above, we note how the two feelings are similar and how they differ from each other. They are brought together by such features:

• The presence of sympathy. It was not in vain that we paid special attention to this feeling, because it is on it that both love and falling in love are based.
• Passion. The first strong feeling often arises in a fit of passion, but without passion, although less pronounced, love is also impossible.
• Proximity. Mental and physical intimacy is the basis of these feelings. We are unlikely to turn our attention to a person who is far from our worldview.
• Desire to change. For the sake of a loved one, a person is ready to change and become better.

There are much more differences:

• The power of attachment. Love is distinguished by a less strong sense of affection, while the lover is ready to bind the object of adoration to himself, almost literally.
• duration. Love does not appear and disappear suddenly. It is born gradually, slowly gaining strength and becoming stronger. Falling in love is a kind of chemistry, a sudden feeling that quickly fades when people “get enough” of each other.
• Perception of shortcomings. They love a person, accepting all his shortcomings and virtues, weaknesses and strengths. When falling in love, a person is idealized, flaws are ignored and not noticed at all.
• Relationship work. The first vivid feeling does not require any effort, it is based on instinct. Love is exactly what the creative work of two people implies: the ability to empathize and support, trust and respect, make concessions and organize joint life and leisure.
• Work on yourself. We have already said that the two feelings are united by the willingness to change. The difference lies only in the fact that the lover wants to achieve external improvements, creating a beautiful image, and the lover tries to work on his human qualities.
• The seriousness of intentions. Overwhelmed by passions, they usually do not build far-reaching plans, enjoying only the present moment. Loving people discuss a joint future, think about the near and far future.
• Willingness to share. Love involves generosity (but not extravagance) and the ability to distinguish true values ​​​​from temporary goods. Falling in love is often associated with extravagance, which afterward causes nothing but regret.
• Partnership. To experience a strong feeling means to feel on an equal footing with a partner. Lovers feel needed and significant, they have one “we” for two. The lover wants to control every action of the object of adoration.

At first sight

Love at first sight is more of a myth than a reality. Falling in love can happen right away. But sometimes it happens that passion and bright sympathy develop into something more stable and even.

Only time will allow us to answer the question of how to distinguish true love from a fleeting infatuation. Do not rush to make hasty conclusions, and then a real and sincere feeling will surely knock on your heart.

Absolutely everyone dreams of finding that one and only person and spending their life with him. And this happens, we meet our unique and unique, fall in love with him at first sight. What is our feeling? How stable is it?

Feeling in love

The first time we think, what will love forever this person, however later some time it reveals hidden flaws that were not visible before, and habits that we started to annoy. Why did we make a mistake and in what exactly? How long it will be going on? Is this going to happen all the time?

But everything is much easier - we do not understand what love and love are, and how they differ. Many are mistaken, thinking that falling in love will eventually develop into love, but they develop in a completely opposite direction, and we eventually part with a partner.

Falling in love and love are quite different concepts. We are unlikely to fall in love with the one we once fell in love with.

"Terms" of feelings:

Love-very happy and warm feeling. It cannot arise at one moment and also cannot instantly disappear. To love a person, it takes time to get to know each other well. It also passes slowly.

Love ends quickly and rather it fits the definition - sympathy. We do not yet know a person very well, but we admire his manners, appearance, behavior. At the same time, she disappears after the partner shows his worst side

Number of partners:

When we love, then we experience a disinterested feeling of everything to only one to a person.

You can fall in love straightaway in several.

If you have several partners and choose between them, then it is better to part with both, because the person you love is accepted with all the shortcomings and at the same time they are not looking for the best.

Impact on a person:

Love causes idealization of a partner we see him as if wearing rose-colored glasses. Reason is started by dreams of a future life together and a person forgets about his daily life, it is more difficult for him to work and he does not experience creative inspiration. We can say that love is blind.

Love It has the exact opposite effect on a person. She develops and fills with his energy. If a person is truly loved, then they are perceived as a whole person and allows you to be yourself.

When falling in love very separation is difficult, but the real love only grows stronger when a loved one is far away. It is these moments that make us understand how dear this or that person is.

Feeling basics:

But what then is the basis of love? Why is she, being so unreliable, able to bind two people for a long time?

The foundation of love is physical intimacy.. While enjoying sexual contacts, partners may not notice for a long time that nothing else connects them. They look at life differently, have different habits and social circles.

Sex, of course, is also present in happy relationships, but for loving people this is not the main thing, because they have enough common interests. It can be said that love is based on spiritual intimacy.

Loving a person, we are ready for many actions for his sake. And when in love - on the contrary, we are trying to benefit from.

Feelings detection method:

Costs introduce one's soul mate with your friends and loved ones. And if you “shine with happiness”, then the people around you who know you well will surely approve of your choice.

If friends and parents discourage relationships, that is reason to think. They may have noticed something you can't see, such as a change not for the better. This means that love is not real. There are many marriages based on love and, as a rule, only a few are happy and not divorced.