Infatuation refers to being "in love" or intensely "love smitten", with possible connotations of youth, irrationality, foolishness, or capriciousness.: "infatuation: a state of being intensely love smitten at an age or with a partner which others in authority deem unsuitable.": "[...] 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." An individual may be considered infatuated with a person they do not know well yet,: "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." 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,: "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.: "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." 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 (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:
They experience persistent, intrusive thoughts about the love object; these might be either fantasy-like, or take the form of anxious rumination which is distracting and distressing. These thoughts may flow continually, alternating over the possibility that one's feelings are reciprocated or not, contributing to the overall volatility of the emotional experience. At the height of obsession, individuals who are infatuated can spend upwards of 85% of their waking hours doting or brooding in this fashion. They idealize the love object, worshipping their positive qualities, and responding only indifferently to negatives. This is also called "crystallization" or "positive illusions". In general, infatuation is directed towards only one potential partner at a time.
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 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.": "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." 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.: "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.": "[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. 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.: "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."
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:
Infatuation is based in fantasy, whereas love is based in reality. Infatuation is shallow, whereas love is deep. Infatuation is intense while a relationship is new, whereas love develops over time. Infatuation is obsessive, whereas love is not. Infatuation is urgent and anxious, whereas love is calm and secure. Infatuation is consuming or exhausting, whereas love is energizing or healthy. Infatuation makes one a passive victim of its spell, whereas love entails active appreciation. Readable online
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).: "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."
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, and being in love for about 36 weeks. 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:
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.