Infatuation is when you think you’re in love but you just have a deep lust and sexual desire for another person. This happens pretty much all the time. Just ask all the people who get engaged after only knowing each other for a few months or all the people who ended up divorced because they didn’t really know what they were getting into when they got engaged after only knowing each other after a few months. It’s amazing how many individuals in relationships make life long commitments to each other in front of their friends and families and communities and sometimes religious leaders because they want to bang the shit out of each other.
Let’s talk about religion for a second. In spite of the fact that I’m not religious at all, I seem to have an extremely religious extended family. We’re taking fundamental Christians all over the place. Pentecostal, Mennonite, all raising their hands and praising Jesus and asking for miracles and being ‘saved’. A few years ago I went to my cousin’s wedding. We were late for the ceremony but just in time for the extremely creepy prayer circle that had surrounded my cousin and his new wife. They had members from their church standing around them, each with a hand on either my cousin’s back or his wife’s back and they were all eyes closed and praying. And then they turned to the front and sang songs about Jesus. It was massively uncomfortable. My cousin was twenty-four. A twenty-four year old pastor who was most definitely a virgin. And we wonder why people rush into marriage, an institution that has a horrible success rate. Combine infatuation with religious ‘morality’ and you have a recipe for marriage. But not the kind of marriage that’s based on growth and friendship and learning about each other, but the kind of marriage that’s based on an extreme desire to get into that person’s pants already for fuck sakes.
I’ve definitely experienced infatuation, we all have. I don’t think I confused it terribly for love but there were times when I wondered if it was love. The thing is, love is less dramatic. If you’re ever unsure as to whether what you’re experiencing is love or lust, take a step back and look at your life. Is your heart racing and do you flip flop between extreme anxiety and extreme giddiness? Can you eat normally or are you too excited to even swallow? Are you able to think about yourself, your life, your friends and their lives, your family? Or are you just obsessed with seeing that person. Lust dies. Not forever, but it comes and goes, for sure, and the lust you have at the beginning is never the same as the lust you have later on in your relationships. If love is nurtured, it won’t die. But only if it’s nurtured.
1. I’m infatuated with him.
2. My infatuation is so intense that I might have to throw myself off the Lions Gate Bridge if he doesn’t want to marry me.
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