Articles
By Dana Peach
Infatuation... we're in love with it! Millions of men and women live in
anxious hope of experiencing it as soon as possible... and over and over
again... if necessary. Come to think of it, infatuation has become a popular
model for love itself, and at this very moment, infatuation fever is directing
the most critical intimate choices of an enormous sub-culture of singles.
But wait! Before you rush to your
next rapture, consider some of the following viewpoints on this most popular of
all feeling states. Think about what it really is to be infatuated.
Plainly, the word itself is
officially defined as a kind of affliction. In common parlance, infatuation is
known as "being a fool for love". Most of us recognize it as a state
in which a person's normal ability to think clearly and act rationally is flung
aside with suspicious eagerness. Desire focuses on a particular someone and
suddenly nothing matters but that compelling attraction. The dictionary strongly
suggests that the overt result of infatuation is a reduction in mental capacity.
A frequent synonym given for infatuation is "folly", predicting grave
consequences to follow from stupidity resulting from fixated passion.
Sounds ominous. Nonetheless,
there must be something about infatuation that accounts for the hold it has over
our imaginations... and our choices. Most of us know the feelings of infatuation
from direct personal experience. Certainly we've all been introduced to Love
Fever through stories told in pajama party whispers, fairy tales, the anguished
confidences of dear friends, through cartoons and fine literature, B-movies and
cinematic art, TV sitcoms and soap operas, and romantic novels. Wherever and
however reported, though, the sensate phenomenon are remarkably similar.
The first act in the life of an
infatuation is that magic moment when someone suddenly takes on
"special" meaning for us.
You hear a phrase or a particular
inflection in someone's voice that strikes a chord in your heart. You are struck
by the exact tilt of his head. A gaze or an unexpected tenderness warms you. An
intriguing remark goes straight to your soul. Or, perhaps from a respectable
distance, you notice legs or skin or hair (or a more private physical trait) to
die for. Lightning has struck.
After the bolt of lightening
comes a storm of intrusive thinking about the desired one.
Every experience you now have
seems interwoven with their qualities, every shared moment weighted with new
meaning. When apart from them, you review and relish each moment spent in their
presence and ruminates on their flavor. In fact, many infatuation informants
report spending 80 to 100 percent of their time compulsively trying to
crystallize the vision of their new love, living in vigilant expectation of the
next contact.
Early in the intrusive thinking
phase, idealization sets in. The erotic sizzle permeates everything and creates
that famous halo with which we love to blind ourselves. For a while, the
infatuee sees no flaws in the beloved and admits to no blocks to forward
progress.
From this high intensity
anticipation comes the primary emotional dynamic of infatuation: an exquisite
combination of hope and uncertainty, which has funded libraries of poetry.
At this point, life becomes that
famous roller coaster ride: precious moments of delightful reciprocity (real or
imagined) followed by agonizing doubts of ultimate success. Infatuation is now
more consciously driven by simple fear. In fact, The Nagging Fear of Not Getting
What You Have Begun to Desire is the unique torment reserved for the infatuated
elite.
This pattern of human experience
is as well documented as any emotional experience has ever been. You can find
poignant elaborations on the process incised upon clay tablets, etched in
marble, painted on papyrus, fixed in celluloid, playing on the radio, and
filtering through the voices all around you. It is a famous and favorite form of
anguish.
But how can something so
uncomfortable be so irresistible?
Research has confirmed the
existence of an amphetamine-like chemical, which is rapidly activated (like
lightning!) when we begin to feel attracted to someone. This chemical is called
phenylethylamine (PEA), that famous substance that makes laboratory rats press
levers until they drop dead from exhaustion.
Diane Ackerman, author of The
Nature of Love and A Natural History of the Senses, describes PEA as a
"molecule that speeds up the flow of information between nerve cells",
whipping the brain into a frenzy of excitement, sending ordinary attraction into
overdrive and providing the assertive oomph! Needed to take social risks and
overcome any obstacles to mating. We can consider this a well-designed molecule
from the point of view of species survival.
But... some other researchers at
the New York State Psychiatric Institute claim to have discovered that PEA has a
tendency to pave the way for that peculiar contemporary disorder, The
Relationship Addiction. They point out that this internally generated
infatuation drug acts a lot like speed. Some people (and a lot of rats) not used
to the rush begin to crave it.
In other words, some people are
always infatuated, but not necessarily with the same person, and not long enough
to develop a relationship that makes them really happy or leads to lasting
happiness.
Is this what it means to be A
Fool For Love? A Fool for Phenylethylamine? By many indications, once the arrow
of attraction pierces us, the biologically compelling quality of infatuation
insures for many people a helpless emotional state.
Biological models explain a lot
about the "how" of infatuation, the mechanism governing the actual
phenomenology of love foolishness. The social sciences have a lot to tell us
about the "why". Why this particular man, why that woman?
Naturally, Freud would have said
that it is all in your head. What else? His most profound contribution to modern
thought was to show us the extent to which our behavior, especially our love
behavior, is guided by unconscious processes. He might further have emphasized
that we are attracted (compelled?) to experience specific relationships in an
attempt to meet intimacy needs shaped in our earliest years, with our first love
objects: Mom and Dad. (Just the basic meat and potatoes of attraction dynamics,
folks!)
Carl Jung popularized the idea
that opposites attract, and for very good reasons. He theorized that we are
unconsciously drawn to those who exhibit qualities we find lacking - or somehow
undeveloped - in our own psyches and that we always seek to complete or balance
ourselves somehow through intimate attachments. In the state of infatuation,
then, we are pulled like a moth toward the flame we wish to acquire for our
permanent warmth.
Harville Hendrix, author of
Keeping the Love You Find: A Guide For Singles, has one of the best explanations
I've heard for why we tend to fall so heavily and helplessly, if sometimes so
briefly, into the infatuated state.
He says we each have in our
memory banks a highly individual imprint, a mental construct called an imago, in
which the best and worst attributes of our earliest caretakers have been
crystallized.
The imago we have of our dream
lover is like an intimacy template. It influences and filters our perception so
that we are particularly attentive and sensitized to those who match our private
patterns. This then accounts for the highly specific nature of our infatuations.
Dr. Hendrix thinks we have
something like psychic receptor-sites for certain people who evoke highly
idiosyncratic responses in us. He argues - as do many others - that we are
unconsciously attracted to people who help us recreate early relationship
dynamics in the (also unconscious) hope that things will turn out better and we
will have a lot more control this time around.
The perception of strong
attraction then acts as an internal signal, which flips the PEA switch (remember
the infatuation drug?). Apparently, such attraction is relatively involuntary,
primitively driven, and seemingly beyond our control. Just like the drug itself.
The deeper we go into this
matter, the more infatuation seems to reflect its dictionary definition as the
epitome of foolishness. The experience seems to take conscious choice right out
of the picture. When we are infatuated with someone - or something - it is as
though we become little love robots, biochemical puppets with no will of our
own, without a rational thought in our heads! And what is the stupendous pay-off
for what seems to be a love offering of mindless surrender?
Answer truthfully, now: How often
have you experienced highly erotic and deeply gratifying lovemaking with someone
with whom you were infatuated? How often has the object of your feverish desire
turned out to be as you imagined him or her? How many smoldering, daydreamed
passions have actually burst into flame for you? How many times have you been a
Fool For Love only to realize within weeks (if you are lucky) or months that
there was no love there, only helpless yearning? How many sunny, companionable
days have you actually spent with someone you worshipped and longed to possess?
In short, how many times has infatuation worked for you?
The answers to these questions
will tell you there is little happiness in infatuation itself, precious little
daily satisfaction is possible while we are acting the Fool For Love. That is
because the state of infatuation thrives on distance and frustration.
It flourishes under difficult circumstances. It is not magnified by consummation
and familiarity.
Please note: Infatuation
cannot exceed its own expectations. It is the spark and the emotional kindling,
not a steady, warming fire. It is an appetizer that makes you anticipate the
full banquet. But it will not keep you warm and it will not fill you up.
Infatuation begins as an
important emotional signal to point you in the direction of desire and get you
moving. But it is not yet love and its impetus will never take the place of
thinking about what you want and acting persistently on that intention.
Still and all... there is no
reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater!
When all is said and done, we
will always want to fall in love with the pull of a potent attraction. We will
always want to love infatuation and we will always reserve our right to be a
Fool For Love. And that is as it should be. Who does not want to feel moved by
the thrill of a profound, mysterious attraction that is able to overpower our
ego defenses and cause us to open our soul to another with the impetuosity of a
child? The state of infatuation is so powerful that we want infatuation to have
a meaning beyond that of a chemically induced trance phenomenon. And that is
possible, but with just one little catch.
In order to make certain that infatuation can fulfill its true role in the natural discovery and growth of love, we have to stay semi-conscious and aware of our choices. Only conscious surrender and sustained attachment can make the original spark of infatuation eventually work to our benefit.
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