Hi Amanda,
It's a very interesting issue -- I enjoyed reading your post very much as I was thinking recently, somewhat rhetorically, about the role infatuation plays in one's life (which I wrote about in this post).
I certainly agree that it's not the best basis for rational decision-making, and tends to make the person involved feel vulnerable in a curious way: one's thrown so off balance in a certain way, and so much is at stake for one personally swept up in this whirlwind, that it's hard to retain one's hard-won adult objectivity.

At the same time, I wonder why you give infatuation such a negative slant? Perhaps it's just my reading, but it does seem like you are careful to frame it in terms of the potentially destructive and illusory aspects and to warn people of the influence. I certainly see this aspect operating and it's important to point out, but there are also very different readings: it's an experience which often heightens one's feeling of aliveness, which awakens one's own sense of meaning and potential, reminds one of people's basic goodness and altruism, etc etc. Why privilege one aspect over another?

You mention that infatuation is something that women (in your family) are particularly prone to. So I'd ask the following: Would it be reasonable to suggest that infatuation, like intuition, is one of those potentially deep forces, typically associated with women, which in our own culture tend to be skewed into strange self-destructive, escapist or irrational behavior, when really their power is much stronger and much more neutral?

It sounds like you've thought about this quite seriously, so would be very interested to hear your thoughts on this, as these are issues I'm interested in understanding, or at least sifting through.

Dear Solveig,

Thank you for your reply. I enjoyed your notion falling in love as awakening.

It's a long story, but my mother's infatuations were extremely destructive. So I learned early on to be wary. On the other hand, when I was researching my book I noticed that people who experienced infatuation after the age of 80 were very...alive - filled with zest - lots of fun to be around. This supports your awakening metaphor. Like so many aspects of life I'm sure infatuation can bring us to life even as it destroys us. I think that our cultural response to infatuation, which is partly due to the commercialization of sex and romance, heightens its destructive potential. So, when I speak and write on the topic I try to counter that.

Your message alerts me to my own bias. But here's the thing - infatuation is based on illusion. It feeds on fantasy. It doesn't awaken us to truth or reality. It feels like we're discovering new aspects of ourselves and our world, but this is a delusion. Infatuation isn't love - it's a rush of chemicals running through our systems and making us feel wonderful - for a while. I guess it awakens us into a dream - an altered state of reality that isn't based on the world as it is.

Now I wonder, as you did in your post, could reality generate this sense of awakening? Could we cultivate a heightened awareness based on sensitive observation?  Is that what some seek through meditation?  Someone (a Jungian named Moore, I think) suggested that we should fall in love every day. Then let it go. The problem comes when we try to capture and prolong the feeling. If we could "embrace impermanence" might we come awake to each moment? Might we learn to truly love? As in, to love truth? I think to love another person we have to know the person. To know, we must be quiet and observe.

We might also ask what puts us to sleep? What dulls our awareness? Why do we need to be awakened? One psychiatrist --whose name eludes me though I wrote about him - he died young -- anyway, he suggested that the security of long-term relationships is as much an illusion as the fantasies beneath our infatuations. Everything's ephemeral, but when we pretend otherwise we tune out. Sometimes people call this "taking for granted..." or "tuning out." As in, "don't tune me out!"

On gender - I don't know. In my interviews I met several people who were infatuated after age 80 - only one was a man, Further,  the only person I met who had never been infatuated was a man... In our internet survey there was no gender difference in the likelihood of a person saying he/she was "in love." So I'm inclined to think men are more intuitive than most people credit.

Thanks again, for your interesting comments.

Hi again, and thanks for all of the food for thought!

So there's much to think about in what you've written, but if we are hoping to understand to what extent infatuation can be an experience which connects us deeply to things as they are, the issue which seems to me to stand out is the question of illusion. Faced with a situation which is (at least presumed to be) deceptive -- which is in some sense about reality and in some sense not -- how are we to function reasonably when under the influence, and indeed, how are we to know when we are under the influence at all? Many people (religious mystics? extreme athletes? children?) have been known to experience reality in a much more profound way than many ordinary adults -- as Mia describes...

It is not unlike worrying the border between sleep and waking, which reminds me of the wonderful if curious story in Benjamin (who I see Margaret was just reading  -- must be something in the water), which seems to me a quite prophetic description of a person stumbling out of fantasy but resisting the pull of reality:

"A popular tradition warns against recounting dreams on an empty stomach. In this state, though awake, one remains under the sway of the dream. For washing brings only the surface of the body and the visible motor functions into the light, while in the deeper strata, even during the morning ablution, the grey penumbra of dream persists and, indeed, in the solitude of the first waking hour, consolidates itself. He who shuns contact with the day... is unwilling to eat and disdains his breakfast. He thus avoids a rupture between the nocturnal and the daytime worlds... The narration of dreams brings calamity, because a person still half in league with the dream world betrays it in his words and must incur its revenge. Expressed in more modern terms: he betrays himself. He has outgrown the protection of dreaming naivete, and in laying clumsy hands on his dream vision he surrenders himself. For only from the far bank, from broad daylight, may the dream be recalled with impunity..." (Reflections, p. 62 of the Jephcott translation)

What is beautiful about this description, I think, is its insistence on the danger of the liminal states where one has one foot in each world and thus can drown.

In the discussion on thinking clearly when upset, Franis asks the important and subtle question: post "How do you know you're thinking clearly enough to make an agreement when you know that you are also upset?" Obviously, this seems relevant here too.

Looking forwards to your thoughts.