Love or Infatuation

This was given to me by a friend and is something that I thought was worth sharing... I hope you will read it. This chapter gives you 12 test to show you the difference between love and infatuation. I thought it was really good...
It is from a book called: Love, Sex, and Lasting Relationships
(Chp. 5: How to know if your in love)
Please note: All of this is directly from the author, all I did was cut and paste.

Twelve Tests of Love:

1. Test of Time
-Love benefits and grows through time; infatuation ebbs and diminishes with time. We can fall into infatuation, we can fall into lust, but we most truthfully grow into love. Love develops out of relationship and caring and core personal character traits, not our instant impression or perception of another person. Infatuation can explode at any moment, but real love takes time.

2. Test of Knowledge
- Love grows out of an appraisal of all the known characteristics of the other person. Infatuation may grow out of an acquaintance with only one of these characteristics known about the other person. Love longs to know well. Love wants to study the other person's needs, desires, dreams, and hopes because it want to do everything to make them a reality. Love is interested, not in what it can get, but in what it can give. Infatuation quickly decides it knows everything it needs to know, Genuine love creates an atmosphere of such interest that the other person opens like a flower.

3. Test of Focus
- Genuine love is other-person centered. Infatuation is self-centered. In your most important relationships, to what degree is your attention focused on what you are receiving from them and to what degree is your attention focused on meeting the other's needs?

4. Test of Singularity
-Genuine love is focused on only one person. An infatuated individual may be "in love" with two or more persons simultaneously.
-Circumstances, changes, and mistakes add up to make relationships an enterprise of ongoing work.
- One of the side effects of stale times in a marriage is vulnerability to infatuation. The great majority of affairs rarely occur solely on the basis of physical attraction. They usually start out with a little chemistry during a time of vulnerability. But families break up because very good, godly people confuse infatuation with love and make foolish decisions. If you don't know the difference between infatuation and love, you'll destroy others' lives and your own.

5. Test of Security
-Genuine love requires and fosters a sense of security and feelings of trust. Security grows and flows out of deep awareness of the other person's character, values, and track record. You know who he or she really is. And when you know who they really are, you trust them. You are not jealous because you know their heart is yours. Jealousy is often a sign of a lack of trust, and a lack of trust is usually a sign of infatuation in real life.

6. Test of Work
- An individual in love works for the other person, for his or her mutual benefit. By contrast, an infatuated person loses his or her ambition, appetite, and interest in everyday affairs. When you love someone, you have an accurate appraisal of the relationship and you work at it. Infatuation lives off the relationship; love builds into the relationship.

7. Test of Problem Solving
-A couple in love faces problems frankly and tries to solve them. Infatuated people tend to disregard or try to ignore problems. Genuine love, contrary to popular belief, isn't blind. It sees very clearly. Infatuation, on the other side, exists almost completely in the dark.

8. Test of Distance
-Love knows the importance of distance. Infatuation imagines love to be intense closeness. 24/7, all the time. If there is not a sense of separateness, a distinct life, relationships with other people, and healthy balance, then the relationship is probably a lot more infatuation than it is love. Because genuine love is not based just on emotions, some distance will often let you know what it really in your heart.

9. Test of Physical Attraction
- Physical attraction is a relatively small part of genuine love, but it is the central focus of infatuation. Let's not make genuine love so spiritual that we deny reality and God's Word. Sexual attraction definitely has a part in love. However, our culture tells us that to take the shortest and quickest route to sexual fulfillment as the best way to find love. But that route is a destructive detour. By leaving out the other two foundational components of giving love and friendship love, we miss much of the fullness and sustainable aspects of physical attraction. Genuine love requires all three kinds of love, but physical attraction takes relatively smaller role when a couple is building a healthy relationship. Infatuation, however, makes physical attraction the very test of love itself. In infatuation, direct, continual, physical contact tends to be an end in and of itself. Time together requires only pleasurable experiences. Infatuation tends to produce a relationship that attempts to exist on the emotional equivalent of a continual sugar rush. People in genuine love aren't trying to get their own lustful fulfillment. Their words and actions tell the other, "I have your best interests in mind."
-What we have in our day is just the opposite. People are bonding physically before they even know each other and then trying to work through all the struggles that get bypassed along the way. The results are disastrous. People get wounded. Relationships disintegrate. People learn not to trust--the very foundation needed for love to grow.

10. Test of Affection
-In love affection is expressed later in the relationship, involving the external expression of the physical attraction. In infatuation affection is expressed earlier, sometimes at the very beginning. Affection tends to push toward greater and greater physical intimacy. It gives the appearance of making the relationship "close", but the closeness is artificial and fragile. When affection flows out of deep understanding and growing friendship, it gains in meaning and value.

11. Test of Stability
-Love tends to endure. Infatuation may change suddenly and unpredictably. Real love is stable. There is commitment. The best way to test stability in a new relationship comes through knowing that person in the context of his or her other relationships (parents, friends, and siblings).

12. Test of Delayed Gratification
- A couple in genuine love is not indifferent to the timing of their wedding, but they do not feel an irresistible drive toward it. An infatuated couple tends to feel an urge to get married--instantly. As you enter into a potentially serious relationship, ask yourself if your pace is based in fear or faith. Is your pace based on anxiety over deprivation and physical drives, or is your pace the result of a desire for careful and thorough preparation for marriage?

Conclusion

Love in a lasting relationship is not a long, gradual decline from the peak of our heady initial romance. Lasting love is more like standing where the ocean meets the shore--the waves keep coming in. Not every wave of emotion is the same, and that turns out to be very interesting and exciting. But it takes time and commitment to discover the wonder of a lasting relationship. Yes, the waves and tides ebb and flow. But when we know what love really is, we know that the waves and the tide will return. Work through the relational issues and enjoy the varied sounds and passions of the crashing or softly lapping surf. Too many people walk away from relationships without ever getting their feet wet!

Many people make the mistake of thinking that real love is like a swimming pool--something they fall or jump into. Rather than having the dynamic and varied experience of the oceanfront love, they leap right into the deep end of the pool, thinking that strong feelings, light-headed-ness, and physical attraction must be sure signs of love. They discover sooner or later that a great desire to swim doesn't mean much if we've never learned how to swim.