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Former Infatuation Junkie

I remember being 17 and heartbroken. It was the end of my world as I knew it. I wasn’t just sad and moody for a few days; I was totally shaken from the darkest corners of my inner core all the way out to the tiny hang nail on my little finger.

I remember taking refuge in my bedroom – the teenage sanctuary. I remember closing the door and simply sliding down it, unable to move for hours. I remember my mum telling me that I was only 17. I remember hearing, “There are plenty more fish in the sea” and “You’re young. You’ve got no idea what love is.” I remember wanting to punch them all in the face because I might have only been 17, but I knew what love was. Damn it I did! I had never been more certain of anything in my life.

The one and only thing that gave me comfort at the time was something my sister said. (This has since been a running theme in my life; my sister always seems to know what the right thing to say is often, in more recent years, washed down by a kick-ass vodka tonic). While I wallowed in my treacle-like misery and got increasingly angry at those people who pitifully looked down on my first experience of tortuous love with a patronising glance and a knowing look, my sister simply turned to me and said, “There is nothing I can say to you to make you feel any better right now. All I can promise you is that it will get better. You won’t feel like this forever.”

There are some things that stay with you and her words resonated in me for a long time to come. In fact, they still do. I’ve said those same words myself. When girls (and boys) that I teach get themselves trapped in the unforgiving web of teenage love and playgrounds, those are the only words I feel worthy of saying. Anything else diminishes their feelings. All you want when you feel like that is for someone to say, “It’s OK. Those feelings are real.”

And, my god, they are real. I don’t think we feel anything in the same way we felt that first heartbreak. When it happens for the first time, there’s no perspective or comparison. The newness of those feelings and the power of them, knock you off your feet. And, when they’ve done that, they kick you in the shins, jump on your chest to squeeze all the air out and take up residence in your every waking moment and sleepless dream.

But is it love?

Sometimes, yes it is. But my argument here today is that actually those patronising pillars of superiority that hounded me when I was 17 were more than likely right. I was 17. I really had no idea what love was and I think it’s taken me until I was 28 to fully realise that and to fully understand it. I’m not saying that my early relationships were any less valid, or real. I’m just saying that, like everything else, you learn how to love. Babies don’t get up and start sprinting one day. Young children don’t run straight to the bookshelf and pick up Henry James and we don’t run into our first relationship and get true love right first time. Or at least, most of us don’t…

I need to explain an important belief I hold to be true. Firstly, there is love and then there is infatuation. Again, my sister rears her oh so beautiful head here because this is another life lesson that she passed on to me. In fact, I wish she were here with her wallet and the article that she carries around in it to make sure I get this right, but I will try my best.

Distinguishing between love and infatuation is particularly tricky because, in my view, they both inevitably start in a similar way. There’s the breathless excitement and the pulsing feeling that happens in all the right places. There’s the overwhelming addiction to thinking about that person. There’s the warm feeling that envelops your whole soul when you hear their voice, when you get an email or when you catch them looking at you. All of that whirlwind chemistry that your body magically produces and throws around your insides at random, while sprinkling a little in your brain for good measure, is that feeling you get when you meet someone that excites you. At this point the path is yet to fork. At this point, you’re still on a one-way road to instant gratification and year round sunshine and rainbows.

And then, I think, there comes a point where your feelings come up for air. After drifting on a metaphorical cloud of honey-coloured kisses, your feelings begin to settle and it is at this point where you stand at the fork in the road. Do you wander down Up and Down Highway, through Insecurity Alley and end up in Infatuation City? Or, do you drift off along the street of Pure Contentment, take a right down Sense of Calm Avenue and end up in Love’s Corner?

Because, in my opinion, that’s the difference. Infatuation will inevitably be exciting but it will also be painful and those two things often come in equal measure. Infatuation will be made up of a healthy balance of ‘Ok this is fine’ (generally when you’re with the other person) and ravaging insecurity (often when you’re not with that person). Infatuation is exhausting. Infatuation will feel overwhelmingly powerful, it may even feel like love, but there’s too many negatives for this to be good enough to call love.

I have been infatuated. My sister told me it was infatuation at the time. I didn’t listen to her and I didn’t like hearing her say it…probably because I knew it was true. Those who are infatuated are often defined by their brilliant skills of defence. The amount of times I’ve heard girlfriends say, “Yes, but you don’t know him…” or “No, he’s really not that type of guy…” or “But the things he says to me when we’re on our own…” I’ve said them all. More than once. About more than one guy. Infatuation was my speciality and it’s landed me in more than enough heart-related trouble.

So, if that’s infatuation, what’s love? In one word and in my opinion only? Calm. Love is the excitement, but it’s also the quiet, inalienable faith that fills a gap in your soul that you didn’t even know was there. It’s more than ‘This is fine’; it’s ‘I can’t believe I lived without this.’ It’s the secret and unshakeable knowledge that, even when you’re not with that person, you’re still ever-present in their mind consciously or not. It’s the freedom that comes with being able to get on with your own life, in your own way and know that this relationship can handle that. It doesn’t force you to fundamentally change or constantly check if you’re doing everything right. You are right and it is right. It’s all the fun and warm feelings without any of those deep, underlying, often ignored itches and scratches of the soul. It’s being able to say no, or to say you’re not happy about this or that, without worrying whether he or she will walk out the door and not look back. It’s security. It’s warmth. It’s simply calm.

And the only time it’s not calm? When you think for some uncontrollable or inconceivable reason that you might lose them. When I asked my sister what she would do if she lost her husband she replied, “Oh god. It would be like the air had been taken away. Don’t even ask me to think about it.”

OK, I won’t.