Infatuation

An illustrated depiction of Mahābhārata character Ulupi becoming infatuated with Arjuna

Infatuation refers to being "in love" or intensely love smitten, with possible connotations of youth, irrationality, foolishness, or capriciousness. An individual may be considered infatuated with a person they do not know well yet, or whom others view as unsuitable. In the triangular theory of love, infatuation refers to romantic passion in the absence of intimacy or commitment, as in love at first sight and limerence. A simple infatuation which is more short-lived may be referred to as a crush, or puppy love in adolescence. Infatuation might also be compared to the honeymoon phase of a relationship.

The word infatuated appeared in the mid-17th century, taking its root from fatuus (Latin, meaning "foolish"), and has carried the connotation of irrationality ever since. The psychology professor Dorothy Tennov considered "infatuation" to be among pejorative labels for intense romantic attachments.

Features

Individuals who are infatuated may exhibit a variety of psychological features, for example:

The more acute an infatuation is, the more likely it is that these features will be present.

Scientific data collection on the psychological, behavioral and physiological traits of infatuation largely began with Dorothy Tennov's now-classic 1979 book, Love and Limerence. Tennov invented the term "limerence" to refer to a state of infatuation involving obsessional features, because according to in-person interviews conducted by her, terms like "infatuation" and "being in love" were not actually useful for identifying which mental states people were talking about. Informants Tennov spoke to would claim to be "in love" (or even speak of "obsession") while not reporting intrusive thoughts, or they would claim to be "in love" with several people at a time—therefore having wildly different impressions of the meaning of words, depending on whether or not they had actually experienced the state. A survey reported in 2025 indicated that 64% of people had experienced the state, and only 32% experienced distress that made it "hard to enjoy life".

Other researchers such as Helen Fisher and Lisa Diamond have continued to use "infatuation" to refer to the state identified by Tennov, despite Tennov's objection over semantic ambiguity.

Love versus infatuation

Classically, infatuation is said to be contrasted with love, in a "love versus infatuation" distinction. In this type of distinction, the implication is that infatuation is supposedly "counterfeit", or often "mistaken" for love. Love might be described as "true" love, "mature" love, "real", or "realistic" love.

Features of the two may be presented as dichotomous, for example:

The "love versus infatuation" distinction (where only one kind or degree of love is supposedly true) has been critiqued as failing to acknowledge the full possible range of love experiences, and being largely semantic, because infatuation corresponds to passionate love (or being in love), which is regarded as a basic type of love among numerous researchers.

Another type of distinction contrasts being "in love" (as a state one endures) with love as concern for another (loving as an act).

Conceptual research history

In 1949, Albert Ellis published a research survey of young women, which found they reported differences when asked about their experience of infatuation and falling in love. For example, women reported being first infatuated at a younger median age (12) than falling in love (17), reported more adolescent infatuations than loves, and more often reported being infatuated with more than one man at a time (58%) versus being in love (25%). Infatuations were also reportedly shorter than loves, with the median girl reporting infatuation remaining for about six weeks, versus being in love for about 36 weeks (approx. 8 months). Only 3% stated their infatuations lasted more than a year, while 24% stated their loves lasted more than a year.

Ellis concludes that while it is tempting to think that infatuations may therefore be defined as being "relatively brief, light, and varietist" compared to loves, another explanation is that subjects may have consciously or unconsciously thought of their lighter and briefer loves as "infatuations", as an ego defense, while reserving "love" for longer, stronger involvements. Some evidence of this is the fact that subjects tended to identify their more recent involvements as "love" rather than "infatuation". The difference between infatuation and love might therefore be relative to how one's perception changes of past relationships as one gets older.

In 1961, Ellis later wrote than he found this use of "infatuation" among his survey respondents to be "confused" and "quite at variance" with a dictionary definition of infatuation (involving "extravagant passion")—suggesting the word actually came to lose its original meaning. Ellis believes this occurred because monogamy is so enforced through social norms (where "true" love is defined as enduring, and conflated with marriage) that individuals came to label virtually all of their past involvements as "infatuation", to avoid feelings of shame over falling in love as frequently as they did. According to Ellis, this is a conceptual error, and there is no such thing as "true" love. Instead, the experience of love encompasses innumerable differences in kind and degree, all of which are "true" as long as they are still occurring.

On the basis of this observation, that the distinction being made is seemingly semantic, the researcher Elaine Hatfield later argued that infatuation is the same as what she calls "passionate love". Passionate love is "a state of intense longing for union with another", contrasted with companionate love, "the affection we feel for those with whom our lives are deeply entwined". In contrast to infatuation, companionate love is the one sometimes labeled "true love", or compared to secure attachment.

According to Hatfield, in 1978:

The solution to the love-versus-infatuation riddle seems to be, quite simply, that there is no difference. Psychologists have become increasingly skeptical that passionate love and infatuation differ in any way—at the time one is experiencing them.

Hatfield says that "romantic love" might be used by lovers for relationships which are still in progress, and "infatuation" for those which become terminated; the distinction might therefore be only identifiable in hindsight. Furthermore, when parents or friends say somebody is "just infatuated", they are actually just expressing disapproval.

Among researchers, it became generally accepted that passionate and companionate love are the only two important types of love to distinguish, despite subsuming the differences of other, more precise taxonomies. Modern research has often used terms like "infatuation", "passionate love", "being in love" and "limerence" interchangeably, despite their other connotations. "Romantic love" might be a further synonym for this concept, but its cultural history also makes it hard to define.

A further distinction emerged in the 2000s that passionate love (or infatuation) is different from sexual desire. Later research also discovered that love feelings can actually take on a form which lacks the obsessional features of infatuation or limerence, as in the phenomenon of long-term intense romantic love which involved study participants who claimed to be "madly in love" but had been married on average for 21 years.

Youth

Adolescents often make people an object of extravagant, short-lived passion or temporary love.[citation needed]

A study of Indian students (aged 13 to 18) found infatuation negatively impacted their learning experience for many of them, according to the following percentages of those surveyed:

Impact of infatuation on learning
Impact Male (%) Female (%)
Past experience of distraction 48% 26%
Distracted learning 36% 18%
Lost learning interest 52% 48%
Feeling bored with attending class 58% 44%
Skipping class 20% 12%
Low academic performance 44% 26%
Experienced stress 36% 38%

Types

Robert Brown lists three types of infatuation (of which he says there are various):

  1. In the first, as in falling in love, a blind desire overtakes the individual, from forces of their own character which the infatuated person is unaware of, overriding their better judgment or insight.
  2. In the second, which is related to the first, the infatuated individual is compelled to desire or crave an object of love which they consider unworthy, and prefer not to want or love. In this case, their evaluative judgment may be sound, but the craving is unaffected.
  3. In the third, the infatuated individual exhibits poor judgment and evaluation because of ignorance and recklessness.

Other infatuations

Transference

In psychoanalysis, a sign that the method is taking hold[citation needed] is "the initial infatuation to be observed at the beginning of treatment",[original research?] the beginning of transference. The patient, in Freud's words, "develops a special interest in the person of the doctor ... never tires in his home of praising the doctor and of extolling ever new qualities in him".

What occurs, "it is usually maintained ... is a sort of false love, a shadow of love". However, psychoanalyst Janet Malcolm claims that it is wrong to convince the patient "that their love is an illusion ... that it's not you she loves. Freud was off base when he wrote that. It is you. Who else could it be?"

Intellectual infatuation

For example Jung's initial "'unconditional devotion' to Freud's theories and his 'no less unconditional veneration' of Freud's person" was seen at the time by both men as a "quasi-religious infatuation"; while Freud in turn was "very attracted by Jung's personality", perhaps "saw in Jung an idealized version of himself": they were "intellectually infatuated with one another".

Collective infatuation

But there are also collective infatuations. Thus, for instance, "the recent intellectual infatuation with structuralism and post-structuralism" arguably lasted at least until[improper synthesis?] "September 11 ended intellectual infatuation with postmodernism" as a whole.

Literary depictions

Shakespeare's sonnets have been described by R. P. Blackmur as "a poetics for infatuation", dominated by infatuation as a theme: "its initiation, cultivation, and history, together with its peaks of triumph and devastation".

Ivan Turgenev's novella First Love is based on the trauma of Turgenev's own adolescent infatuation with a neighbor girl, who was slightly older than him—and turned out to be having an affair with his father.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Eastwick, Paul; Finkel, Eli (2009). "Infatuation". In Reis, Harry; Sprecher, Susan (eds.). Encyclopedia of Human Relationships. Sage Publishing. pp. 843–846. ISBN 9781506320403. The term infatuation typically refers to the early stages of romantic love, before the infatuated individual has had a chance to get to know or develop an intimate relationship with the love object. Colloquially, infatuation is frequently associated with youth and suggests an irrational, capricious approach to love. Although some consider infatuation to be a special, perhaps early or intense form of passionate love, researchers often use the term infatuation interchangeably with passion, passionate love, limerence, or being in love.
  2. 1 2 Money 1997, p. 308: "infatuation: a state of being intensely love smitten at an age or with a partner which others in authority deem unsuitable."
  3. 1 2 Branden & Branden 1982, pp. 23–24: "The literal meaning of infatuation is 'to be made foolish or fatuous, to be deprived of sound judgment.' In the context of relationships, infatuation means an intense attraction to another arising from our focusing on one or two aspects of the other as if those aspects represented the whole. [...] If we are confused about whether our feelings are infatuation or love, it is useful to ask some questions. How much do I really know about this person? [...] What do we have in common—and what makes me think so? An impulse to rush past these questions is reason enough to suspect infatuation."
  4. ↑ Knox & Schacht 2009, pp. 45, 48: "[...] infatuation is about emotional feelings based on little actual exposure to the love object. [...] Infatuation is sometimes regarded as synonymous with romantic love. Infatuation comes from the same root as fatuous, meaning 'silly' or 'foolish,' and refers to a state of passion or attraction that is not based on reason."
  5. ↑ "infatuation". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Merriam-Webster. OCLC 1032680871.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Hatfield & Walster 1985, pp. 51–53
  7. ↑ Sternberg, Robert (1986). "A triangular theory of love". Psychological Review. 93 (2): 119–135. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.93.2.119.
  8. ↑ Sternberg, Robert (1987). "Liking versus loving: A comparative evaluation of theories". Psychological Bulletin. 102 (3): 331–345. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.102.3.331.
  9. 1 2 3 Short 2004, pp. 16–18: "Simple infatuation is often called a 'crush' or 'puppy love.' It commonly strikes those in the early teens or younger. [...] Simple infatuations seldom last long. But when you have one, you may be greatly moved with emotion. You'll spend much time in daydreams and wishful fantasies. [...] Romantic infatuation is what most people mean when they speak of 'romantic love.' Unfortunately, they often drop 'romantic' and just call it 'love,' which is most confusing. Romantic infatuation is the same as being 'in love.' It is what is meant when people speak of 'falling in love.'"
  10. 1 2 Morton 2009, p. 46: "The word infatuated, too, has denoted a kind of irrational love since it appeared in the mid seventeenth century. That sense is reflected in the word's etymology, which goes back to the Latin fatuus, meaning foolish.
    Usually an infatuation is fleeting. At first you might feel a tightness in your chest, but that physical symptom usually goes away in a few weeks. If it does, what you experienced was probably a crush, so called because of the feeling of thoracic constriction. [...] Sometimes this kind of infatuated love is referred to as limerence, a term coined in 1976 by psychologist Dorothy Tennov."
  11. ↑ Tyyskä, Vappu (2014-01-02). Youth and Society: The Long and Winding Road, Third Edition. Canadian Scholars’ Press. p. 162. ISBN 978-1-55130-543-1. It is customary to view young people's dating relationships and first relationships as 'puppy love' or 'infatuation' in contrast with adults' presumably deeper and more committed relationships.
  12. 1 2 3 Adebowale, Temi (28 June 2019). "What's the Difference Between Love and Infatuation?". Men's Health. Archived from the original on 28 September 2026. Retrieved 27 October 2019.
  13. ↑ Tennov 1999, pp. 85, 167
  14. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Fisher 1992, pp. 38–39: "Tennov identified a constellation of characteristics common to this condition of 'being in love,' a state she calls limerence, which some psychiatrists call attraction and I will call infatuation."
  15. ↑ Murray, Sandra; Holmes, John; Griffin, Dale (January 1996). "The Benefits of Positive Illusions: Idealization and the Construction of Satisfaction in Close Relationships". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 70 (1): 79–98. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.70.1.79.
  16. ↑ Fisher, Helen (March 1998). "Lust, attraction, and attachment in mammalian reproduction". Human Nature. 9 (1): 23–52. doi:10.1007/s12110-998-1010-5. PMID 26197356. Retrieved 18 February 2024.
  17. ↑ Fisher 2016, pp. 19, 20: "Romantic love, obsessive love, passionate love, being in love, infatuation, call it what you will[.] [...] Romantic attraction is now associated with a suite of psychological, behavioral, and physiological traits. Data collection largely began with the now classic dissection of this madness, found in Love and Limerence, by Dorothy Tennov."
  18. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Diamond, Lisa (Jan 2003). "What does sexual orientation orient? A biobehavioral model distinguishing romantic love and sexual desire". Psychological Review. 110 (1): 173–92. doi:10.1037/0033-295x.110.1.173. PMID 12529061. Numerous researchers accord with a basic distinction between infatuation (also known as passionate love, falling in love, or limerence) and attachment (also known as companionate love). [...] Tennov (1979) found that infatuation was characterized by intense desires for proximity and physical contact, resistance to separation, feelings of excitement and euphoria when receiving attention and affection from the partner, fascination with the partner's behavior and appearance, extreme sensitivity to his or her moods and signs of interest, and intrusive thoughts of the partner.
  19. ↑ Bellamy 2025, pp. 2–3
  20. ↑ Tennov 2005, p. 375: "Some writers have made much of differentiations between 'infatuation', 'being in love', 'puppy love', and so forth. I have not found these terms useful in distinguishing limerence from other states."
  21. 1 2 Tennov 2007, p. 5: "[My data confirms that] infatuation is an entirely inadequate term. It took me the first six years of collecting romantic love self reports to realize what people were saying to me. It was the discovery of nonlimerence that led me to [create] a new term in order to differentiate this state from what others meant when they claim to be 'in love,' 'infatuated,' 'passionate,' or 'sexually attracted.'"
  22. ↑ Tennov 1999, pp. 13–16, 114–116, 118
  23. ↑ Bellamy 2025, p. 80
  24. ↑ Frankel, Valerie (2002). "The Love Drug" (web). Oprah. Archived from the original on 20 March 2024. Retrieved 19 March 2024.
  25. ↑ Tennov 2005, p. 28: "Incidentally, the confusion shown by professionals was revealed in an email correspondence in 2000 with the well-known evolutionary anthropologist, Helen Fisher. She has written several books on what she considers to be the evolutionary aspects of romantic love and has cited Love and Limerence. However, in her books she uses 'infatuation' never 'limerence'. Since, she explains, she writes for a popular audience, she declines to use 'unknown' terms."
  26. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Webb, Frances Sizer; Whitney, Eleanor Noss; DeBruyne, Linda K. (2001). Health: Making Life Choices 2e Edition Teacher Edi. McGraw-Hill Education. pp. 494–496. ISBN 978-0-658-01119-1. Infatuation is an all-consuming desire for a partner. It is based on fantasy and is often mistaken for love. Mature love is a strong attachment to someone a person knows very well. It is based on psychological intimacy.
  27. 1 2 3 4 Ellis & Harper 1961, pp. 88–89
  28. ↑ Knox & Schacht 2009, pp. 46–49
  29. 1 2 3 4 Saint Thomas, Sophie (2024-05-30). "Is It Love? Or Infatuation? Here's How to Tell". Cosmopolitan. Archived from the original on 2026-09-13. Retrieved 2026-09-28.
  30. 1 2 3 Schaltegger, Megan (2023-04-22). "The Difference Between Love And Infatuation, Explained". Women's Health. Archived from the original on 2026-09-28. Retrieved 2026-09-28.
  31. ↑ Baba, Meher (1967). Discourses. Sufism Reoriented Incorporated. p. 159. ISBN 978-0-915828-03-6. Readable online
  32. 1 2 3 4 Hatfield 1988, p. 191
  33. ↑ Tennov 1999, p. 15: "Acknowledgment of a distinction between love as a verb, as an action taken by the individual, and love as a state is awkward. Never having fallen in love is not at all a matter of not loving, if love is defined as caring. Furthermore, this state of 'being in love' included feelings that do not properly fit with love defined as concern."
  34. ↑ Rougemont, Denis de (21 August 1983). Love in the Western World. Princeton University Press. p. 310. ISBN 978-0-691-01393-0. To be in love is not necessarily to love. To be in love is a state; to love, an act. A state is suffered or undergone; but an act has to be decided upon.
  35. ↑ Peele, Stanton (1988). "Fools for Love". In Sternberg, Robert (ed.). The Psychology of Love. Yale University Press. pp. 161, 164–165. ISBN 978-0-300-04589-5. Archived from the original on 2024-05-25. Retrieved 2025-12-09.
  36. ↑ Berscheid, Ellen (2010). "Love in the Fourth Dimension". Annual Review of Psychology. 61: 1–25. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.093008.100318. PMID 19575626.
  37. 1 2 3 Ellis, Albert (1949). "A Study of Human Love Relationships". The Pedagogical Seminary and Journal of Genetic Psychology. 75 (1): 61–71. doi:10.1080/08856559.1949.10533509. ISSN 0885-6559.
  38. ↑ Ellis & Harper 1961, pp. 89–90
  39. 1 2 Berscheid & Walster 1974, pp. 375–376
  40. ↑ Hatfield & Walster 1985, p. 9
  41. ↑ Langeslag, Sandra; Muris, Peter; Franken, Ingmar (25 Oct 2012). "Measuring Romantic Love: Psychometric Properties of the Infatuation and Attachment Scales". The Journal of Sex Research. 50 (8): 739–747. doi:10.1080/00224499.2012.714011. PMID 23098269.
  42. ↑ Walster & Walster 1978, pp. 51–53
  43. ↑ Tallis 2005, pp. 47–48
  44. 1 2 Fisher, Helen; Aron, Arthur; Mashek, Debra; Li, Haifang; Brown, Lucy (October 2002). "Defining the Brain Systems of Lust, Romantic Attraction, and Attachment". Archives of Sexual Behavior. 31 (5): 413–419. doi:10.1023/A:1019888024255. PMID 12238608.
  45. ↑ Tallis 2005, pp. 87–88, 106: "English dictionaries distinguish 'romantic' with several definitions, but in reality, such tidy divisions are misleading. When we use the word, these different meanings bleed into each other." (p. 87); "The cultural history of 'romance' and various meanings of the word 'romantic' make it extremely difficult to define 'romantic love'. Academic psychology—usually quite pedantic about its terminology—has been unable to establish a consensus. Some psychologists use the term in accordance with its courtly origins, whereas others use it interchangeably with 'passionate love'. As a culture, we seem to have settled on the latter usage, viewing 'romantic love' and 'falling in love' as much the same thing." (p. 106)
  46. ↑ Diamond, Lisa M. (2004). "Emerging Perspectives on Distinctions Between Romantic Love and Sexual Desire". Current Directions in Psychological Science. 13 (3): 116–119. doi:10.1111/j.0963-7214.2004.00287.x.
  47. ↑ Acevedo, Bianca; Aron, Arthur (1 March 2009). "Does a Long-Term Relationship Kill Romantic Love?". Review of General Psychology. 13 (1): 59–65. doi:10.1037/a0014226.
  48. ↑ Acevedo, Bianca; Aron, Arthur; Fisher, Helen; Brown, Lucy (5 January 2011). "Neural correlates of long-term intense romantic love". Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. 7 (2): 145–159. doi:10.1093/scan/nsq092. PMC 3277362. PMID 21208991.
  49. ↑ Fisher 2016, pp. 41–42, 307–308, 350, 381: "[I]n another of our brain scanning experiments, led this time by psychologist Bianca Acevedo, we put seventeen long-married women and men into the fMRI scanner. (pp. 41–42) [...] On average, these participants had been married twenty-one years, and all maintained that they were still madly in love with their wedded mate. (p. 307)
  50. ↑ Gouda, Gururaj Ganapati; D’Mello, Laveena (2021-02-22). "Infatuation, Romantic Relationship and Learning Behaviour among School Going Adolescents". International Journal of Management, Technology, and Social Sciences. 6 (1): 71–82. doi:10.47992/ijmts.2581.6012.0130. ISSN 2581-6012.
  51. ↑ Brown 1987, p. 38
  52. ↑ Jacques Lacan, Ecrits: A Selection (London 1997) p. 241.
  53. ↑ Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures in Psychoanalysis (PFL 1) p. 491.
  54. ↑ Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis (London 1993) p. 123.
  55. ↑ Janet Malcolm, Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession (London 1988) p. 149.
  56. ↑ Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Time (London 1989) p. 204.
  57. ↑ Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (Penguin 1964) p. 328.
  58. ↑ Frank McLynn, Carl Gustav Jung (London 1996) p. 157.
  59. ↑ Anthony Stevens, Jung (Oxford 1994) p. 12.
  60. ↑ Sally Banes, Terpsichore in Sneakers (1980) p. xxviii.
  61. ↑ David Stoesz, Quixote's Ghost (2005).
  62. ↑ R. P. Blackmur, J. T Jones, Outsider at the Heart of Things (1989) p. 242.
  63. ↑ Wilkinson, Sue (12 June 2020). "Ten of the best BBC audio books available free - what's on the list?". Blackpool Gazette. Archived from the original on 22 June 2021. Retrieved 21 September 2026.
  64. ↑ Schapiro, Leonard (1978). Turgenev: His Life and Times. Oxford University Press. p. 10. ISBN 978-0-19-211732-8.
  65. ↑ Battersby, Eileen (9 November 2018). "Melancholic Narratives: On the Bicentennial of Ivan Turgenev". Los Angeles Review of Books. Archived from the original on 21 September 2026. Retrieved 21 September 2026.

Sources