Note the caps lock. In this case, it doesn’t mean shouting. It means INTENSITY. The kind of INTENSITY you feel when you are newly IN LOVE.
This feeling is called infatuation and although it may feel intoxicating, it often leads to trouble because you don’t make good decisions in this state. Instead, you make spectacularly dumb ones.
Author Elizabeth Gilbert has written about this in her new book, Committed, the follow-up to the best-selling Eat, Pray, Love. The title refers to marriage rather than mental illness although in the infatuation chapter, the two sort of collide.
Reading it, I learned that the brain scans and mood swings of a cocaine addict are startlingly similar to those of an infatuated lover. Yes, infatuation is an addiction complete with chemical effects on the brain, measurable by scientists.
And just like a junkie, an infatuated person is blind to their future welfare. Physical and emotional risks? No problem. Whatever it takes. Love is the drug and they need some more.
In the past year, a number of my male and female friends have begun new relationships. Bright, shiny, new relationships that make them EXTREMELY HAPPY.
This is a marvellous thing although it can be a little disconcerting to eat at restaurants with people who pash between courses and think they can put their hands up each other’s clothes without anyone noticing. I noticed.
Anyway, I’m genuinely happy for my friends and their hands and all their other happy parts. So why do I find myself trying not to frown as they giggle about not having spent a single night apart since they hooked up? Why do I silently ‘tsk tsk’ when they excitedly mention moving in together after two months? Or confess to being careless with contraception because ‘it just feels so right’?
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My boyfriend and I had been dating for over a year and a half, when he suddenly called it off over TEXT.
Within two weeks, I had already kissed two guys, and the second became a quick rebounding relationship. Within two weeks, I moved so fast with this second guy. The things I did with him took my ex several months to even start at; AKA I almost hit freaking third base.
Luckily, I came into contact with my ex after two months of zero communication. It was truly amazing; it makes me tear up thinking about it cause we now are better than we have ever been.
It's been a couple months since we've gotten back together, but I definitely know I was hurting emotionally, and I experienced some nasty, tricky, fault-bearing, infatuation.
I am glad to have my high school sweetheart back. :)
So you said you were moving really fast with the second guy, but not having having sex within two weeks that is what I would say taking it slow.
Having sex on the first date or in 2-3 dates is what I would call moving fast.
I have definitely mistaken infactuation for love. I've blurted the words out after a month simply because I thought it felt "right", only to find it wasn't. Ah, wisdom of hindsight right! In fact I've done that a couple of times, once as a teenager and once last year, though I doubt I was ever actually in love, in the true sense of the word, with either of them. It didn't help that the recent guy was himself very forward and romantic initially (evidentally lulling me into a false sense of security) but he choked at the finishline and the relationship crashed and burned soon after.
Does that make me weird that I perhaps haven't been "in love", just infactuation every time? I'm 25...hmmm....now it's got me worrying...