by Jo Anne-Patricia Piccarillo

Created on: November 27, 2009

Unfortunately for us, human nature makes it quite hard sometimes to differentiate between love and infatuation. Personally, looking at any relationship from an outside perspective, it's actually quite easy to determine the difference! If you love someone with all your heart and that person has either never loved you back or stopped loving you back (and you continue to convince yourself otherwise) you, my dear, are infatuated! Love is a two way street, anything less is not only borderline dangerous, but it could be borderline obsession!

There is not one person in this world that loves themselves enough that they could "make up for" that mutual love between two people. I've found that in relationships which are based on infatuation rather than true love, you will witness much more jealousy and attachment than you would in a healthy relationship. Becoming too "clingy" to a person usually goes hand in hand with being infatuated with them. Relationships that start out healthy, based on moral reason, could take a gradual turn for the worse as one party become more attached to the other. Again, our human nature forces us to act out in certain ways based on our emotions. In most scenarios, this could be a sad ending to a story once compared to a fairy tale.

In attempts to keep ourselves in line and far from falling victim of infatuation, we need to maintain self control; see things for what they really are. Everyone wants to be happy, but happiness can only be forced for so long, if it's possible at all. Of course, we are all happy when we see the people we love happy. Yet even that happiness can only fulfill us for so long before realizing, we are always giving and never receiving. Although the responsibilities of most relationships are not equally divided 50/50, the main objective is to maintain 50/50 effort at all times. Try not to get too caught up in materialistic efforts or results.

Being a woman myself, I am confident (but not proud) to say that we tend to find ourselves on the "clingy" end much more than men do! Why, you ask? Because men are built to think with their minds and not their emotions. Thus making it much easier to keep their eyes on reality instead of what their heart has already pre-determined was"meant to be."

Although these opinions are just that, opinions, and they are not rules written in stone, I think it's safe to say we can chose what side of the love spectrum we find ourselves on by paying attention to our surroundings. know yourself and the person you are with. It is up to no one else but the two of you to pave the path. There is a fork in the road of every relationship, just remember that simple decisions could lead you towards the wrong side of the fork!

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