The distinction between Love and Infatuation, why are divorce rates on the rise today?
As a little girl, before I knew the magic attached to romantic relationships, I used to wonder why every single song was about love… Why did boys sing about girls and girls sing about boys, why was nobody interested in all the other things in life? Having posed this question to an older girl just entering her twenties, her answer was simple: nothing else is worth singing about. Since nothing else could ever compare, is it any wonder that popular music, media and literature are littered left, right and centre with star-crossed lovers, childhood sweethearts and broken-hearted souls armed with a never-ending supply of Ben & Jerry’s?
I now fully appreciate her wise words; indeed, I have been touched once by the magic of the rhapsody of being in love, when both your eyes and mind are blinded to everything else. It becomes increasingly difficult to tell the difference between reality and the thoughts in your head…what did she mean? Did I imagine that look on his face?
But it also makes me wonder, the reality is that divorce rates are higher than they ever used to be. Social norms have been smashed, popular opinion has shifted, both Disney and Hollywood have their parts to answer for in advocating the principle of love marriages, where lovers at a stage where they would die for one another pledge their lives blindly to each other. Yet if one day, they wake up to find that the love is gone, it is perfectly acceptable in our day and age to let the marriage be free to dissolve…
This modern phenomenon is surely a product of liberal western attitudes to love and marriage; moreover, it is spreading rapidly across the world. Historically, in nearly every culture, parents have played a more significant role (or even played the sole role) in choosing the lifelong companion with whom their children are to raise their own families and spend the rest of their lives with. Of course, there is a much greater romanticism involved with the idea of being able to determine one’s own fate and choosing your life partner for yourself, but what could the consequences of that blind pursuit of a ‘happily ever after’ potentially be?
Perhaps this argument is far too crude, after all, as cliché as it sounds, love is most definitely irrational – everybody knows that one needs no reason more than the sumptuous smell of her hair or the adorable slight upturn at the corner of his lips to fall hopelessly for that special someone. In fact, modern relationships are characterised by a lack of reason, a lack of logic, a lack of explanation… Have we all gone mad? Or perhaps, are some of us mistaking love for something far more fickle, far more temporary, and far more dangerous?
…Infatuation
The Oxford dictionary defines Infatuation as ‘an intense but short-lived passion or admiration for someone/thing’. Perhaps the key part of that definition is the emphasis on the short duration, but also the blinding intensity, which knocks all common sense and reason out of the window. However, it was the trusty Wikipedia definition that I felt embodied everything that billions of people, including myself feel… Wiki defines infatuation as ‘the state of being completely carried away by unreasoned passion or love; addictive love’, it goes on to characterise infatuation by ‘unrealistic expectations of blissful passion without positive relationship growth or development’, other features include ‘a lack of trust, loyalty, commitment, and reciprocity’.
…Addiction, unrealistic expectations, blissful passion, a lack of real development of the positive relationship…all of these are hauntingly reminiscent of the modern romantic fantasy – the sexy stranger on the train/in the cafe, a glance from the most irresistible pair of eyes across the room, the so-called phenomenon of love at first sight.
Two of the happiest people in the world having found one another at a particular point in time, may find it difficult to remain in the same room a few years down the line. After all, divorcees look back on their wedding day and can only chuckle at their own naivety and idealism when they thought, as newlyweds that divorce would never happen to them.
So I came to the conclusion that popular media, instead of referring to love in those power ballads, were in fact consistently referring to infatuation. Yet defining the word ‘Love’ is a notoriously difficult task and the attempts I found were all fraught with vagueness and a lack of clarity. The Oxford dictionary emphasised all sorts of ‘affection’, the English language is clearly not extensive enough to fully embody the meaning of the word, even the trusted Wikipedia could only describe it as ‘the emotion of strong affection and personal attachment’ before going on to describe its religious and philosophical connotations. Although unsatisfied, I get the feeling that the idea of love is simply too large for us to define, it transcends borders, it transcends time, it is a word used to describe what we cannot find words for, in fact, some sources describe love as ‘everything that is good’, other sources embody the meaning of the word in their loved ones, ‘for me, my son is love’. Us humans are innately social creatures, yet the evolution of our temporal lobes has also given us the ability to care for other member of our species in a way that animals simply cannot manage. Love is indeed a fundamental aspect of our emotion and is one that we cannot do without, but surely, it is not the irrational overwhelming desire that popular film and music would have us believe.
Despite taking the meaning conveyed in song lyrics with a pinch of salt, I am a romantic at heart…nothing warms me more than seeing a old couple walking hand in hand down the road, or sitting together on the park bench, being totally comfortable in one another’s presence, having perfected the art of doing so for as long as they can remember. The lines on their faces are war marks from the years and decades they have braved together, they have survived the tests that married life presents, they have together faced the greatest challenge of their lives in raising children, they have overcome the possibility of separation and faced the tough world as stronger people with their partner at their side.
Although the intensity and enchantment of the sensation means that it is most talked about, it takes only very little to be swept off your feet on a whirlwind romance that takes you to the edge of your emotions and causes you to experience the seemingly impossible, but it takes more work than one can imagine to earn the right to enjoy that park bench with your other half on your golden anniversary.
