How to distinguish love from passion and build a happy relationship

1. The essence of passion and love
2. 3 main signs by which you can distinguish love from passion
3. 5 more differences between love and passion
4. 5 tips on what to do if it’s difficult to understand your feelings – yours and your partner’s
5. The path from passion to love

How to distinguish passion from love? Some are sure that these two feelings are one and the same. In fact, this is far from true; the difference between them is huge. And if you don’t realize it in time, then in the end everything can end in very painful experiences: both your own and your partner’s.

Of course, determining the true essence of your feelings is not so easy. Especially for a person experiencing a storm of emotions, as always happens at the beginning of a new relationship. However, there are ways to understand yourself and your partner. You just need to pull yourself together at least for a while and try to think everything over carefully. Believe me, this will benefit you in any case.

The essence of passion and love

Passion is an attraction to another person that is almost impossible to control. This feeling is not based on rational thinking. Emotions and the erotic component reign here. An interesting analogy can be given to make it easier to distinguish passion from love.

Love can be compared to traveling in a comfortable, reliable car, in which no vicissitudes of the road are scary. No matter how hard the weather or road conditions try to ruin your trip, you will get there in maximum comfort.

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But passion is like a crazy ride on a motorcycle racing at breathtaking speed. It is exciting, breathtaking, but not at all safe.

Passion begins with increased interest in another person. A distinctive feature of passion is the desire to be with your beloved at any cost. Forgetting about other matters, a man or woman, absorbed in the madness of passion, spends long hours thinking about the object of desire. By overworking themselves with emotions, people become more sensitive and are subject to mood swings, which are quite exhausting. It is quite difficult to get rid of this condition.

When passion overshadows all other sensations, a person is filled with self-confidence and does not see any interference with his own feelings. It seems to him that fate ordered him to connect his life with the object of strong attraction. No doubts about the lover’s unworthiness even arise.

Love differs from passion in that it does not deprive a person of sanity and a sense of security, and does not give false hopes. But it gives real happiness.

Another visual comparison can be made. Imagine a living fire engulfing a resin-rich pine tree. The flame is sparkling and bright, but its heat does not last long - this wood burns too quickly. Its opposite is the burning oak. The fire burns the tree slowly, slowly spreading throughout the entire trunk. At first there will be very little flame and fire, but when it burns up, the oak will give exactly the warmth that will warm you for a very long time.

Love and social roles.

Sometimes a young man can see in a woman something that does not belong to her social role. In the process of filming videos, I also play a certain social role of an intelligent, well-read psychologist, although in reality I have not read all my books. What roles do we all have, we work, and at work we are not the same as at home.

Here is an example of the situation of one of my clients. He gave me permission to disclose this. This client, by our standards, earns a lot - several million a month. He has a wife with whom he lived for 10 or 15 years. At one point she begins to nag him for not washing the dishes after himself. They have this kind of family ritual. This man begins to complain to me that he earns millions, his wife sits at home, but nags him for the dishes.

This is what love is. The wife in this case sees him as a person, not a millionaire with his social role, but a man who didn’t wash the dishes. These are real love relationships in which something always doesn’t work out. If she understood that a millionaire could wash the dishes herself, then there would be no love, there would be something else. This woman sees a man in her millionaire.

5 more differences between love and passion

1. One of the main things is the power of emotions, which distinguishes passion from love. If the first feeling is characterized by violence, power, and lack of restraint, then the second is characterized by calmness, rationality and gentle warmth.
2. Passion seeks to quench itself faster, without caring about the desires of the partner. In love, you want to know as much as possible about your other half. Sincere affection sees shortcomings, but can find the strength to accept and forgive them.
3. When the presence of a lover prevents you from concentrating to the point of physical discomfort, when your heart is ready to jump out of your chest, this indicates a painful dependence on the object of your passion. If you cannot get out of such a state for a long time, then this is a reason to think about how to save yourself from such a relationship. Love is the deepest feeling that will never harm a loved one.

4. One of the differences between love and passion is patience. A person overcome by passion lives one day at a time, trying to satisfy his desire. He doesn't care about the future, he doesn't care what awaits the relationship next. And, on the contrary, whoever loves is patient and filled with thoughts about the future, doing everything in his power for this.
5. If a person experiences strong emotions for several people, then it is impossible to talk about love in this case. True love will not be wasted on a few objects

Forced love

Cinema, advertising, fashion and consumerism introduce ideas into the human unconscious that shape needs, including sexual ones. Advertising for tights, lipstick, mascara, clothing, and shoes often uses the image of a sensual woman. At the same time, her pose is usually provocative; her clothes emphasize the features of her anatomical structure. This superwoman is unusually attractive thanks to the art of advertising. All women immediately begin to imitate her, use advertised products, trying to increase their attractiveness in the eyes of men. Certain types of tights, types of skirts, brands of lipstick have become synonymous with sexual attractiveness. The problem is not so much the abuse and manipulation of male hormones to subordinate them to certain stimuli, but that all this display heats the cauldron of sexual passions, creating over time a false psychological sexual appetite that is not biological.

Loving does not mean going with the flow, giving in to passions, since love cannot be passive. On the contrary, the essence of true love is activity and willpower. A person must create and nourish love himself, and not rely on tired, erroneous and useless generally accepted schemes. Love is not a passive imitation, but an act of creation.

Unfortunately, many men are looking for the ideal woman, that is, a woman on whom they would project their fantasy. But as soon as a man gets to know a woman better, he loses interest in her and thinks that he was mistaken. And he transfers his sweet but destructive fantasy to the next woman, and this can be repeated endlessly.

The same thing happens with a woman. From an early age, she dreams of an ideal man or a fairy-tale prince. The sources of her fantasies are romance novels, cinema, television, and magazines. In search of a fairy-tale prince, a woman wastes her life, and giving herself to one or another man in pursuit of her fantasy, she can even become a prostitute. As soon as she feels attracted, she is sure that she has found the ideal man, but she soon becomes disappointed in him and, thinking that she was mistaken, resumes her search. After some time, a new man appears who captivates her, but also not for long. Perhaps in old age she will understand that it was a fruitless pursuit of mirages that did not allow her to have a real partner.

The path from passion to love

When a man and a woman begin a relationship, the very first thing that appears between them is passion. This is what they call love at first sight. This is only a name, but not yet love. The difference between passion is that it is based on sexual attraction

In the future, you get to know your partner from different sides (intellectual, emotional, psychological, etc.), passion develops into deeper feelings - falling in love. The physical side, of course, does not fade into the background, but sympathy for a person is complemented by his views on life and character traits. Don't forget that people who are passionate about something can arouse greater interest in themselves than those who have a limited range of activities.

When responsibility for a partner appears in a relationship, it is safe to say that passion and infatuation have grown into love. There is no love where there is no desire to be together as long as possible, to lead a common life, to build a common future. If you and your significant other have achieved this in your relationship and are carefully building it together, then you definitely don’t need to worry. Your romance is not devoid of passion, but is based on higher-quality and long-lasting feelings.

By starting a love affair, both a man and a woman cease to exist each on their own. Together they are responsible for the harmony of their life together. How long their love will last depends only on these two people.

Passion, love and infatuation are three different feelings. If you want a happy life as a couple, then learn to distinguish one from the other so as not to be misled. It often happens that a woman hopes for marriage, while a man only needs to be in her bed.

We wish that, after reading this article, you will always be able to navigate in any relationship and not make unnecessary mistakes in a situation where passion was mistaken for love.

How to distinguish feelings from each other and protect yourself from mistakes

To better understand your feelings, it is necessary and important to conduct a thorough analysis and think carefully about them.

• The question you need to ask yourself is: “Am I definitely ready to live with this person all my life?”, “Will I be able to accept him with all his shortcomings?”
• Try to “monitor” all the negative qualities of your partner, write them down and imagine that someone else has them. Will it be easy to tolerate this person, will the desire to have something in common with him disappear?
• Tell your loved one about what you would like your relationship to be like, what is most important to you in it, what you expect from him.
• Think, has a man matured to love, sublime feelings? Or is passion the height of his spiritual capabilities at a given period?
• Open up to your partner what you want in a relationship, tell him directly what you expect from him in love. Maybe the man is trying to understand what exactly you need, so he demonstrates it in all available ways. And passion is the most common thing, what lies on the surface.
• In the first months it is very easy to make a lot of mistakes, since this is still the initial stage of falling in love. Our brain obeys hormones, and we see the chosen one through the prism of rose-colored glasses, completely devoid of flaws (even if this is not the case, and his behavior is far from ideal).
• There is no optimal recipe for how to guarantee not to make mistakes in determining your feelings. Isn't it true that life is unpredictable? And a person with exemplary behavior can have “breakdowns” when he shows himself from a very unsightly side. You need to realize that in romantic relationships there is a lot of trial and error.

It is important not to miss the moment when the relationship begins to bring only pain instead of pleasure, warmth and peace. In this case, discard them immediately. If you know what real, and most importantly, mutual love is, then you need to try to preserve it for the rest of your life.

Thank you for reading this article to the end.

Hello, my name is Yaroslav Samoilov. I am an expert in the psychology of relationships and over the years of practice I have helped more than 10,000 girls meet worthy soul mates, build harmonious relationships and return love and understanding to families that were on the verge of divorce.

More than anything, I am inspired by the happy eyes of students who meet the people of their dreams and enjoy a truly vibrant life.

My goal is to show women a way to develop relationships that will help them create a synergy of success and happiness!

How to prevent passion from becoming a destructive force

1. Use this bright feeling to develop yourself . A swift impulse often awakens hidden forces in a person to perform tasks for which he previously lacked energy and desire. So that passion does not deplete you, but, on the contrary, develops you, use it to implement new plans, look for any opportunities for your own development.
2. Add emotions to your relationship . If you want your relationship, based only on physical intimacy, to grow into something more, add more emotions, feelings, and warmth to the relationship. A person cannot live by passion alone, otherwise it will begin to devastate him. To avoid this, focus not only on intimacy, but also on emotional attachment.
3. Talk to each other more . See your partner not only as an object of attraction, but also as a person with whom you can have a heart-to-heart talk.
4. Reconsider the role that physical intimacy plays in your relationship . Has intimacy become the solution to all your problems? Indeed, after satisfying physical desire, everything else may seem less significant - but this does not solve the problem, it only postpones it.

It is important not to let passion destroy relationships.
Passion is an involuntary, uncontrollable impulse, sometimes destructive, but bright and strong. Love is a conscious and creative feeling. Although these two feelings are opposite, the other can be born from one. That's why passion is worth giving it a chance.

Results

Love and passion are practically the same thing. There are simply certain facets and degrees of love that I experience. I can love more or less. For there to be passion, there must be some feelings and emotions.

There are sexual couples for whom everything is tied up around sex, but they break up quickly. Love is when you see in a person a lack of something in yourself. This lack is usually socially uncomfortable.

This is something you need to remember to stop struggling to create your ideal life. Ideals simply do not exist.