Talk:Infatuation

From Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion

Admin: material incorporated into talk page for limerance. Please delete this page

RFD resolution

I have resolved the discussion at RFD on this redirect (suggested for deletion 2004-11-22) as no consensus. Here is an archive of the discussion:

• Infatuation -> Limerence: a real word redirects to a neologism... something's wrong with that picture. --Joy [shallot] 01:10, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
  • Yeah, it is a neologism, but it's one that is i) not super new, ii) not found only on Wikipedia, and iii) seems to have gained a certain amount of usage - Google shows 1,330 hits, some on serious pages (e.g. Yahoo health pages). Now, maybe the article should be at Infatuation, with a redir from Limerance, but if so someone needs to look at it to make any needed changes in the article text. Noel (talk) 14:49, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)
    • Regardless, I'm not arguing against the existence of the article on Limerence. I'm saying that infatuation should be relegated to non-existence (and an automatic link to wiktionary) because it's not the same thing. --Joy [shallot] 14:52, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
    • That's fine with me; I'll delete the redir in a little bit. Noel (talk) 23:55, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
    • Now that I look at it, there are a number of pages which reference infatuation, and this page seems to describe that as well as limerence. Should we try and make a real infatuation article (perhaps using in part e.g. the last paragraph from this), or what? Noel (talk) 17:42, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
      • WIth a little luck User:Abexy will rewrite Limerance and move the infatuation related material to Infatuation. Rich Farmbrough 20:03, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Removed subpage from RFD. Demi ^T/_C 18:41, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Circular Link

This page directs to "Limerance", saying infatuation is a form of limerance. But the second paragraph of the target page quotes: "infatuation... [does] not refer to limerence" and directs back to this page. Predawn 19:18, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Redirect to limerence

• Providing an accurate definition and stubbing the section is preferable to redirecting to a (very) vague approximation.
• Limerence is expressly defined as being distinct from infatuation (indeed, that's the whole rationale for its existence), which leads to a direct contradiction between articles.
• A broader, established concept should never, ever, ever redirect to a narrower, unstable neologism.

204.161.5.200 18:36, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

• Solution: write a page on Infatuation that will pass an afd and move this page to Infatuation (disambiguation). Until then "Providing an accurate definition" is not a solution because disambiguation pages are for disambiguating, not for informing or defining or anything of that nature. Disambiguation.--Hraefen ^Talk 19:13, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Redirecting to limerence is a far less acceptable solution, as it's contradictory, circular and the limerence article is riddled with problems. A definition to determine context and a link to the wiktionary article will suffice for now.204.161.5.200 02:01, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Agreeing on an Infatuation Page

Well, I believe that a page should be created on "infatuation," and that at the top of the page a link should be created that the reader can click on to visit the disambiguation stub for infatuation. As with any article, an article on infatuation would require information. Anyone care to visit their local library in search of that information? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Knightskye (talk • contribs) 18:49, 4 November 2006

I added "see also" limerance because the two concepts are supposedly related (although after reading the article on limerence I can't say that I really know). 68.49.208.76 02:36, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

court case?

What is the significance of the court case [426 N.W.2d 459 (Minn. 1988)] that is listed as a reference for this article? 69.140.164.142 10:32, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

No relationship between court case and infatuation

reference removed —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Hengsheng120 (talk • contribs) 22:40, 11 April 2007 (UTC).

Improvements

I think they should add in ways people with infatuations can control them in their daily lives if it is an issue. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lindsayhawkin17 (talk • contribs) 21:35, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

delete or not?

I'm not sure if this article is that important, possibly redirect to crushes. Can you tell me what to do as quick as possible? Again, maybe this article is good to keep? ChocolateLover193 (talk) 20:52, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

• It's different enough from crushes to keep, it just needs to be TOTALLY overhauled. Quoting novels ("Corridors of Power", "Flight of the Stone Angel") as if they're credible sources of information?! The pages on love are among wiki's worst. I cannot even believe someone wrote all this. -12/16/2013 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.190.68.157 (talk) 22:36, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

• Completely agree. In fact, the excessive number of references indicates to me that the entire article is a joke/prank: Put nonsense and doubletalk in Wikipedia, and nobody can delete it because every (nearly random) sentence is individually sourced.

Example (with two refs in a single sentence):

" Of course 'sex may come into this...with an infatuated schoolgirl or schoolboy'[10] as well, producing the 'stricken gaze, a compulsive movement of the throat...an "I'm lying down and I don't care if you walk on me, babe", expression'[11] of infatuation. "

Verdana♥Bøld 05:03, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

So you suggest we remove some references?--RainbowsAndPonies (talk) 15:19, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Question for Wikipedia

Wikipedia, who do you have a crush on? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikipedia has a crush on (talk • contribs) 23:38, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

What the heck is wrong with this guy?--RainbowsAndPonies (talk) 15:37, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Comparison of terms

This is kind of a comment on Crush (slang) being made a redirect. I don't really disagree with that, and Puppy love should possibly be made a redirect to this article as well.

I've been researching this for a couple years, and the terminology is all very confusing. (Love research papers are not even necessarily all that helpful in this regard. In many ways their use of terminology is just as confusing as the colloquial use.) I haven't had a chance to think about revising this article, but I want to quickly outline a few points.

First of all, all love-related terms are polysemous, which means they do not refer to a singular concept. They always refer to multiple concepts. When somebody says they have a "crush" or they're "infatuated" they might mean several different things.

If somebody says they have a crush, for example, they might or might not be in love with the person. Some people seem to use this to refer to sexual attraction or liking. Others are definitely using it to refer to an obsession as in this Reddit poll. The term "crush" has also been used in several studies on unrequited love.

"Infatuation" is the same way, where people can be talking about several things, except generally a person is only considered to be "infatuated" once they're "in love" with a person, unlike a "crush" which people might use to refer to weaker attraction.

Another issue is there are at least two ways people can be in love, a distinction between "obsessive passion" and "harmonious passion", and this distinction is also found with passionate love as measured by the PLS.

Acevedo & Aron give the impression that "infatuation" only refers to obsessive passion, but this is actually not a universal distinction. In fact, it's really only that specific paper that attempts to make a distinction like this.

So "infatuation" when it's taken to be synonymous with "being in love" or Elaine Hatfield's concept of "passionate love" might refer to a couple different things.

Outside of that, the terms "crush", "puppy love" and "infatuation" are closely related as having a connotation of referring to an attraction which has a shallow basis (or even "childish"), based on not really knowing the person, or contradicting social context.

If somebody has an obsessive infatuation absent a relationship, it's called limerence. Obsessive love and love addiction might refer to obsessive passion either inside or outside a relationship, with additional connotations.

Inside a relationship, there's also a use of the term as referring to an "infatuation stage" in the early period of a relationship, but this might be obsessive or harmonious.

All of these terms also have a lot of overlap and crossover. In love research, many terms became conflated starting around the time of a 1988 book chapter by Elaine Hatfield, because of her taxonomical theory. It can be difficult to understand what any of the terms are supposed to mean, if you only read certain papers like the ones about Fisher's theory. It often looks like "infatuation", "passionate love" and "romantic love" are synonymous in certain contexts, but they are different concepts. Hatfield wrote about this very early on, basically acknowledging the connotation of "infatuation", and her claim that there's no actual difference makes sense in context of the argument she's making, but they are still supposed to be different things.

This article (Infatuation) should probably focus on the connotations of "crush", "puppy love" and "infatuation" as being shallow, and then have a comparison listing similar to Obsessive love#Comparison.

These are definitions from John Money that I would consider to be "classical" or generally correct.

crush

an intense infatuation usually in early adolescence and often focused on an older person. (p. 300)

infatuation

a state of being intensely love smitten at an age or with a partner which others in authority deem unsuitable. (p. 308)

limerence

the personal experience of having fallen in love and of being irrationally and fixatedly love stricken or love smitten, irrespective of the degree to which one’s love is requited or unrequited. (p. 310)

Here is also a similar definition of a "crush", from Barry Farber.

Crushes are feelings of infatuation, with strong elements of idealization, directed toward either peers or older, emulated adult figures. (p. 48)

ShiveryPeaks (talk) 13:55, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

The polysemy is really important to understand, because it's confusing a lot of people. This is why people keep wondering about certain redirects (like between infatuation and limerence), but they are actually all different concepts. It's only in certain taxonomies that they are grouped together. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 14:01, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

Adding a couple other useful sources.

Reis & Sprecher actually compare "obsessive love" to a crush, using a definition like what's used in the Obsessive love article:

Obsessive love is similar to infatuation, lust, a “crush,” and limerence, all of which are viewed as an involuntary and emotional state of intense romantic desire for another person.

Reis & Sprecher must be aware that people use the term "crush" to refer to an obsessional state. Elaine Hatfield also compares these terms in her famous book chapter in The Psychology of Love (1988):

In the literature, a recurring distinction is made between two types of love—passionate love (sometimes termed "puppy love," "a crush," "lovesickness," "obsessive love," "infatuation," or "being in love") versus companionate love (sometimes termed "true love") ... Researchers have labeled these two types of love in various ways—passionate versus companionate love (Hatfield & Walster, 1978), romantic versus conjugal love (Burgess, 1926), eros/mania versus storge/pragma (Lee, 1977), unreasonable versus unreasonable love (Lilar, 1965), and deficiency love versus being love (Maslow, 1954).

There are a ton of people who don't understand that the term "crush" is being used to refer to the obsessional state, though. There are a lot of articles now on limerence, for example, which claim that crushes and limerence are different, but this is wrong.

From what I reviewed earlier, some people probably have a more "harmonious crush" while others are having an "obsessive crush", and only an obsessive crush would be the same as limerence. It's just confusing because colloquially people will use terms like "crush" or "infatuation" to refer to both things, and even other things like romantic liking or lust as well.

Tom Bellamy has a useful article about this, although I think people always misread his article. In his article, he's actually also saying that he's encountered people who identify the obsessional state as a crush:

From time to time I get invited to contribute to a podcast or article about obsessive love, and one of the questions about limerence that is pretty much guaranteed to come up is:

“Isn’t that just a crush?”

To my regret, I have not yet come up with a concise, clear answer for this.

If Tom had known about Robert Vallerand's concept (obsessive & harmonious passion) when he wrote that article he might have said something like what I said here, that an obsessive crush ("when a crush has taken over your life") can be called "limerence", whereas a more harmonious crush is not.

When it lasts a longer time (because it's been reinforced, according to current theories), it wouldn't be called a "crush" anymore, just "limerence" or even a love addiction.

Here is also Mark Morton (The Lover's Tongue) comparing limerence to a crush:

Usually an infatuation is fleeting. At first you might feel a tightness in your chest, but that physical symptom usually goes away in a few weeks. If it does, what you experienced was probably a crush, so called because of the feeling of thoracic construction. ... Sometimes this kind of infatuated love is referred to as limerence, a term coined in 1976 by psychologist Dorothy Tennov. (p. 46)

Tennov actually corresponded with this author (mentioned in her 2005 eBook), so this might even be correct according to her ideas. Sometimes crushes are limerence.

But the intensity of the obsessional state is not just related to uncertainty (often interpreted as attachment anxiety or intermittent reinforcement). There is e.g. a study which correlated self-expansion with the mania love attitude, which is a measure of obsessive passion. Self-expansion is ostensibly a metaphor for the type of rewarding experience which intensifies romantic love feelings.

Tom Bellamy has an article which is still a pretty good overview of this. There's a component of uncertainty, but also a component of reward. Tom's book also says the right thing about this. Many sources right now are getting it wrong.

It's very confusing, but there are a bunch of different concepts which are interrelated here. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 13:39, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

Here is another source for a definition.

The literal meaning of infatuation is "to be made foolish or fatuous, to be deprived of sound judgment."

In the context of relationships, infatuation means an intense attraction to another arising from our focusing on one or two aspects of the other as if those aspects represented the whole.

— Branden & Brandon, 1992, p. 23

ShiveryPeaks (talk) 01:22, 3 July 2026 (UTC)