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LOVE IS NOT BLIND, INFATUATION IS.
IF IT'S LOVE, YOU ADMIT THEIR FAULTS BUT LOVE THE PERSON IN SPITE OF THEM. You see the person's real merits and build on that. A mutual process is set in motion. Your love <leads you to appreciate the best in the other
Real Love: as with infatuation, in real love the beloved may well be the most important person in the world to you. But there's the big difference. In real love, you expand your world to include the beloved. If you really love each other, you don't abandon or neglect your other relationships. Instead, you just add this wonderful new relationship to all the others you have. It becomes a plus, not a replacement. You still maintain good ties with your family, your friends, your teachers. You retain your interest in your work or studies - assuming that you had such an interest in the first place. Things that you liked to do before, you still like to do. Your world grows larger, not narrower.
IS LOVE BLIND?
No, but infatuation is. Infatuation, like other extreme emotions such as anger, hate, and fear, distorts thinking. Only the passing of time will bring about gradual return to reality. When the ideal bubble bursts - and burst it will - pain and disillusionment sets in.
Again, it pays to be honest. Much of the pain and tragedy of romantic infatuation could be avoided if the couple would level with themselves and with each other. Instead, they hide their faults and misled the other into thinking they are something they are not.
For this they pay an awful price. Perhaps the most important reason for self-disclosure is that without it we cannot truly love. How can I love a person I don't know? How can the other person love me if he doesn't know me? The answer: HONESTY IS A MUST.
We should behave like small children and "act our real selves." Perhaps this is what Jesus meant when he said one must become as a little child to enter the kingdom of God.
Time is the infatuated person's best friend. It is both the great revealer and the great healer. When your heart has been broken, time will heal the hurt.
Time also is the best antidote for the deadly poison of idealization. As interaction increases, knowledge converts the dream image into awareness of the real partner. Awareness puncturesthe dream bubble and brings the relationship down to earth. Time can shield you from plunging into an unsound marriage on the strength of a mere infatuation. Love that is time tested is the real thing.
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