Love is a feeling that comes from the soul and the heart while infatuation is a feeling or emotion that necessarily has hormonal triggers. For example, you can always be infatuated with someone when you see them without really understanding them or connecting to them. However, to truly love someone you will need to understand their hopes, dreams and aspirations along with connecting to them in some individual way. You are generally infatuated with someone of the opposite sex while you can love just anyone.

Infatuation comes with a fleeting feeling that often evaporates when you are required to sacrifice something precious to you or it simply fades away with time. Love, on the other hand, can make you sacrifice absolutely anything without a second thought and only grows stronger with time.

Often, young people confuse infatuation and love. Most marriages that are based on initial attraction fail while those that are founded on the emotion of love last a lifetime. Infatuation focuses on the growth and satisfaction of the self while love focuses on the growth and satisfaction of the other.

Infatuation is completely based on a physical need and dissipates once that is over while love encompasses a sharing that may or may not include some sort of physical interaction. Infatuation leads to materialistic goals while love leads to spiritual ones.

There is a great deal of discipline and concern involved in partnerships based on love where mutual growth is the pivotal goal around which the two people function. In infatuation, there is absolutely no long-term concern about any kind of growth of either person involved.

As you mature you don’t tend to get infatuated easily. In fact, you may not get infatuated at all as you move on into adulthood and become a senior citizen. However, you never lose your capacity to love no matter how old you become.