From the Heart (part 1 of a 4 part series on Love and Romance)
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In Love or In fatuation?

Mate love also includes passion -physical attraction and sexual activity. Asked to define what love is, people in one study ranked trust as the most important element of love, followed by caring, honesty, friendship and respect. They defined commitment as loyalty, responsibility, reliability, faithfulness and trust. Love is not and cannot be a substitute for self-confidence, self-respect, or a reason to live. Unless you're a character in Dangerous Liaisons, love is not sufficient as a career.

What's the Difference?

While romance can happen very quickly, love often develops more slowly. It often begins as a friendship and grows into love as the partners come to know and appreciate one another better. There is no compulsive need for exclusivity and reciprocity, but gradually the partners form a deep commitment to one another.

Real love is characterized by thinking of the loved one often, but not obsessively. It is an emotional interdependence that is consciously chosen; not a symbiotic dependence formed out of necessity.

Romance (or infatuation), on the other hand, is characterized by:

• obsessive thinking about the other person
• fear of rejection or abandonment
• emotional dependency: if your lover is attentive, you're euphoric; if not, you're despondent
• rose-colored glasses that accentuate the loved one's positive attributes and ignore negative traits
• suffering due to unrequited love, separation, betrayal, outside interference, or a love doomed to failure
• lack of interest in other areas of life (e.g. work, friendships, home).

Infatuation involves falling in love with your own creation: what you need (or hope for) the other person to be, rather than with the reality of who that person actually is. Romance is often based on a love deficit from childhood that you try to fill with an adult relationship. If so, it is doomed to failure, since another adult won't give you the unconditional, indulgent love that a parent might. Romance is like champagne - a delicious treat, but nutritionally empty.