Existence without love is meaningless. Even if people claim that they do not need love at all, the reality is somewhat different. This is simply a defensive reaction of a person who has never encountered a great feeling and does not know what it is like. Every person wants to love and be loved, but the desire to meet a soul mate often leads to disastrous results. Hoping to find happiness, people can confuse ordinary sympathy with true love.
Many films have been made about love, countless books have been written, but no one still knows how to correctly recognize this feeling. A bad experience can lead to disappointment in life. In order to protect yourself from unnecessary shocks, you need to be able to soberly assess the situation.
What is sympathy?
Sympathy is a stable, favorable attitude towards someone or something. The object of sympathy can be a specific person, a certain social group or a community of people. Its main manifestations are friendliness, goodwill, affection, a sense of emotional kinship, the desire to communicate and spend time together.
The term "sympathy" is derived from the Greek word συμπάθεια (sympatheia). In Greek, this word denotes an emotional predisposition towards a person, due not to external attractiveness, but to spiritual qualities.
Sympathy arises for various reasons. These could be common interests, views on life, values or moral principles. The emergence of sympathy is facilitated by attractive appearance, pronounced feminine or masculine features (even if we are talking exclusively about friendly sympathy). Often the reason for sympathy is the presence of a common feature of appearance (especially if we are talking about some unusual feature).
The opposite feeling to sympathy is antipathy - a persistent dislike of someone or something. Personal sympathy in the absence of reciprocity often turns into antipathy.
Sympathy can be romantic in nature and over time develop into love or infatuation. But in general, this is simply a good attitude, implying a positive perception of another person and not depending on his gender and age. One form of sympathy is attraction - interpersonal attraction that makes people want to spend time together and engage in joint activities (for example, work together).
Love and infatuation...
Many men, having fallen in love with a dimple, mistakenly marry the whole girl.
Stephen Leacock
Love and infatuation are two very similar feelings that are sometimes difficult to distinguish from each other. Therefore, very often, when we feel a sudden spark lit by someone inside us, we think that it is forever. Or we often begin to say that we love, without understanding ourselves and without attaching importance to the impulses that feelings give to our heart.
This is fraught with consequences: you can get married mistakenly and rashly, and mess up your relationships with the opposite sex by making premature conclusions.
Such mistakes lead to the fact that we waste precious days of life on the wrong people, and our dear and only little person at this moment is somewhere far away and not with us.
So today we are learning to answer the question that often torments us at the beginning of a relationship: how to distinguish infatuation from love, so as not to deceive yourself? Love and infatuation are feelings that are completely different in their nature, manifestations and signs, duration and coloring, as well as the impressions left in the soul.
What are the differences between love and infatuation?
Signs of sympathy
The presence of sympathy is usually clearly visible from the outside, since a person involuntarily demonstrates its main signs. Most often it manifests itself in the form of actions such as:
- Attentiveness. If we like another person, we treat him more attentively than others. We notice all his actions, readily answer his questions, laugh at his jokes and surround him with care. These manifestations of sympathy are clearly visible from the outside, which is why they are often used in films and TV series to create comic scenes. If you notice that a new acquaintance is attentive to your words and actions, this also means that he likes you.
- Initiative in communication. Feeling sympathy, a person looks for reasons to communicate and spend time together. He tries to spend more time with the object of his affection, periodically reminds him of himself, takes the initiative, offering to meet or go somewhere together.
- Demonstration of a sense of humor. Appropriate jokes are one of the best ways to “build rapport.” Therefore, trying to please the object of their sympathy, people begin to joke more and attract attention to themselves. But since not everyone knows how to make appropriate jokes, quite often the effect turns out to be the opposite (which is also often used in films).
- Seeking advice. People tend to trust those they like. So if someone you've met relatively recently comes to you for advice, it means they like you. At a minimum, he trusts you, and your opinion is important to him. In addition, if a person is clearly looking for a reason to chat with you, this also indicates sympathy on his part.
- Willingness to help. People generally enjoy helping those they like. Sometimes, for the sake of such help, a person is even ready to sacrifice his own interests. It happens that helping a person against one's own interests can cause discomfort, but in this case it does not work. As a rule, a person can easily hurt himself a little in some way in order to help someone he likes, and will only experience a feeling of joy from this.
Obviously, there are many more signs of sympathy. But these 5 are the most obvious and most common. Having memorized them, you will be able to notice that someone you know liked them. In addition, these signs can also be used to subtly demonstrate your own benevolence to someone else.
Important Elements of Love
An analysis of the main components of true love will help you distinguish love from infatuation.
Deep and genuine feelings are based on:
In sympathy there is only physical attraction and loyalty, but there is no open communication and mutual understanding. Falling in love involves passion and frankness, but if partners do not make efforts to overcome difficulties and remain faithful to each other, then over time it will pass.
Factors of sympathy
Sympathy arises under the influence of a large number of different reasons. Psychologists consider the following factors to be the most important:
- Similarity. The phrase “you and I have a lot in common” is one of the most common declarations of affection. Our psyche is structured in such a way that we like people who are similar to us. And the less often a common trait occurs, the stronger the sympathy it evokes. However, this does not necessarily have to be some kind of physical feature. In particular, sometimes people who have the same birth dates become friends.
- Social and territorial proximity. With the advent of the Internet, distance has ceased to be an obstacle to friendship and even to love. And yet sympathy more often arises in relation to those who are nearby. In addition, the emergence of sympathy is influenced by belonging to the same social group, work in the same field, a common profession, the same tastes in music and other unifying factors.
- Reciprocity. Sympathy is a mutual feeling. If we know that another person likes us, we begin to like him back. Conversely, if our sympathy does not resonate with another person, it weakens and may disappear completely over time. Of course, everyone knows about the existence of unrequited love. But in the case of ordinary sympathy, regardless of its nature, such situations are practically excluded.
- External attractiveness. The phrase “appearance is not the main thing” is said quite sincerely by many people. And yet its influence cannot be completely ruled out. External attractiveness is an important factor on which depends whether sympathy can arise at all. And even if we are talking about ordinary friendship, we still prefer to have people nearby who are attractive in a universal and aesthetic sense.
From a psychological point of view, these four factors are fundamental. If you know and use them correctly, it will be much easier to please another person.
The second triad “love-infatuation-passion”
From the previous comparison of the characteristics of love and falling in love, it is clear that in the normal course of events, love arises on the basis of passion and falling in love.
When people finish the period of erotic intoxication with each other, they have time to look at their partner with an unclouded gaze and understand whether there is something in common between them, not only in a sexual, but also in a human sense, and also to realize what it was: love , love, passion?
The answer to the question determines the strategy and direction of the relationship, its prospects.
Differences between sympathy and falling in love
The main difference between sympathy and love or falling in love is that it does not imply obligatory attachment. We may sympathize with someone from a distance or seek a way to get closer to that person in order to build a friendship or romantic relationship with them. But if for some reason it doesn’t work out to get close, it won’t cause much upset. At the same time, such feelings as falling in love and love urgently require the development of relationships.
For example, if a man liked a woman, he develops sympathy. He is interested in getting to know her better and getting to know her better, he wants to communicate with her and, perhaps, get closer. But if it doesn’t work out to build a relationship, he won’t be upset, but will invite another woman he likes on a date. If he experiences love, or at least falling in love, he will put much more effort into building a relationship, and if it fails, he will experience painful discomfort and disappointment.
Happy ending
Correctly assessing the situation, you can avoid dashed hopes and disappointments. Often, supposed love can turn out to be sympathy or develop into a strong friendship. However, it should be remembered that excessive caution can also lead to negative consequences. In matters of the heart, you should trust only yourself and not listen to the opinions of others.
Don’t be afraid to make a mistake; the main thing is to always be aware of your own actions. Sympathy is a slight feeling that can appear suddenly and disappear in the same way. But love is something else that is not given to every person. Only by listening to your heart can you find out the true nature of your feelings.
Types of sympathy
Sympathy is a multifaceted concept that has a large number of different forms of manifestation. Both the subject and the object of sympathy can be an individual person, or it can be a group of people. For example, a certain social group may sympathize with a certain politician (political sympathy). And one fan can simultaneously sympathize with the entire sports team.
If we are talking about the sympathy of one person for another, this is personal (or interpersonal) sympathy. There are usually 2 distinctly different forms:
- Physical sympathy. This is a predisposition caused by attractive appearance, beautiful figure, clothing style, well-groomed appearance, pleasant voice, smell and other physical signs that form the first impression.
- Spiritual sympathy. This is sympathy that arises on a deeper level when people discover the similarity of their interests, views and moral principles. It can become the basis for both friendly and romantic relationships.
Also, examples include audience and reader sympathy (goodwill on the part of viewers or readers towards a participant in the show who did not win, or a minor character in a film or book). Sympathy can be one-sided (towards a favorite artist) or mutual (between friends). Depending on the subject, sympathy can be personal, public or popular.
Opinions of others
An important test of true feelings is the opinion of close people about the chosen one. An enthusiastic person tends to idealize another, not paying attention to serious shortcomings. Friends or family may not approve of the choice made because they look at things realistically and see dangerous signals.
When a girl truly loves, then more often her parents and friends do not oppose such a relationship. They will see the same good qualities and actions for which she fell in love with the man, they will be able to make sure that she knows about his shortcomings and is ready to put up with them all her life.
