Quote:
Originally Posted by WhiteOwl
But how do you tell the difference between love and just infatuation? Can you truly love someone, if you're not happy with yourself and have so many issues? Or am I just using people to try to fill a void, to get validation and make myself feel better? Scary thought.
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This early on it's 100% infatuation, love takes a lot longer to develop. Love is not a volatile feeling, it's stable and solid and you feel it deep in your body. It doesn't actively affect your mood much at all. Infatuation is that high and happy feeling that you're having right now.
There's nothing wrong with infatuation, in fact, if you didn't feel it in the beginning there's a very good chance there would be no love following it, because you wouldn't stay together long enough to fall in love. It's the natural early stages of a relationship, that's all. It's amazing, exciting, terrifying and all sorts of other things all at once. Its effects fade to a large extent with time, but in a real good relationship you will always have a (healthy) bit of it.
Long explanation short: if it feels like a love song it's infatuation.
As for the rest of your questions, I do think you can love someone while you're not happy with yourself. I think it's important that you don't use him as your main source of validation however, because that's not fair to him and it's going to put too much of a strain on the relationship for it to last. You will need to keep working on yourself and loving yourself independent of him and the relationship, but I think using it as a source of inspiration can be helpful if you lacked some before. Learning to love yourself independently will make you an easier partner to be with.
