Philosophy
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There are, as everyone knows, different kinds of falling in love, different degrees of love itself; but of one thing we may be quite certain. Romantic love, as distinct from affection, however strong, always includes what we may call an emotional storm. This fact has a double importance. On the one hand it may help to distinguish love from such things as respect, admiration, affection, etc.; on the other hand it may easily foster the fatal suggestion that the presence of such an emotional storm is by itself a guarantee of the presence of romantic love. That such is by no means the case, many have found to their cost. . . .

The thing that is likely to be encountered is what has been called ‘love’s terrible twin-brother’; in other words, infatuation. This is something at which we may have to look a little closer later on; here it is enough to say that it is usually compounded, as to ninety percent, of merely sexual attraction. To say this is not to condemn it. But it is important to realise that, because genuine love also includes sex, and the emotions of sex are always more or less the same, infatuation can, in the early stages at least, look remarkably like the real thing. But infatuation is a deceiver whom only time and common sense can hope to unmask.

William P. Wylie (from The Pattern of Love, 1958)

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