What is the difference between love and passion? First of all what is passion? The word passion comes from the latin passio which means suffering. As we will see, this kind of relationship cannot lead to happiness.
Difference between love and passion
Passion
It’s an emotion that takes possession of you after experiencing love at first sight with meteoric power! Without so much as a warning, desire massively takes over and sets in motion an irrepressible attraction. The object of passion is totally idealized by your thoughts and desires. Reality has no place in passion because you are like two actors in a movie created every time on cue.
Know that it is not at all love : this loss of control can lead you to make foolish decisions because you fall victim to your impulses. Work won’t matter anymore, family will no longer exist and friends will appear as optional. The only importance, the only priority, is the other whom you adulate and idealize just as much as you hate him.
Everything is increased tenfold and feelings end up losing touch with reason. You become the shadow of your shadow and it doesn’t even matter because the object of your desires is the only thing that counts. The other people’s judgement no longer matters, their opinion is as insignificant as the rest of the universe : we are two against the rest of the world.
The end of passion is horribly painful
When passion ends, you experience symptoms that are as strong as what a drug addict without his dose can feel. A real dependency to the object of desire is created. All is brutal in passion because everything is increased in a state of exaltation : you don’t control anything, enslaved as you are by a love at first sight that has disabled your brain. You lose contact with the logical world and have the feeling of living on another planet where everything, sensations or feelings, is experienced at it’s paroxysm.
In true passion there is no desire but a real need for the other, who becomes the one and only reason to live and to hope. When you live passion, you are always tired because you are constantly torn between arguments, cries and theatrical outbursts. That‘s because one of the partners feels the other must belong to him! You feel that this ideal being, whom you have a perfect image of, must be with you because without him you are nothing and won’t be able to live.
As you can see, passion is not very exciting when you realize that it leads to nothing but the tearing of hearts that will take weeks, even months to recover.
Love
Love is first and foremost an affective attraction. To truly love you must have taken the time to know yourself in order to have a feeling of interior completeness. The other is an unknown and will gradually find its lover’s place. In love there is no violence but respect and attention to the other who is there to bring a little more happiness in your life.
In love you give a bit of yourself unconditionally. Things happen freely and sincerely and the only point is to give to your partner whom you love and respect.
Someone in love won’t let his emotions dictate every one of his actions, there won’t be the constant overflow you find in passion because you have two well built and differentiated entities.
In a love relationship, you don’t overthink things, you stay yourself whatever happens with mutual respect. All of this will take the necessary time to allow your union to grow and to learn to know each other.
It’s a durable feeling based on true knowledge and not on a fantasized version of the loved one. You see the other as he is with his qualities as well as his flaws. There is no idealization or fantasy : the reality stays as it is. And as you love and respect your partner, you accept him/her without wanting to shape him/her according to a dream image.
Last but not least, love gives you good energy and permits you to move forward in life.
Conclusion
As a conclusion, I want to tell you this : WARNING! Experiencing passion is no walk in the park, it’s destructive. It comes into your life when you suffer from a lack of love and it hurts so bad inside that you must find somebody to fill up the void fast. Know that such a relationship is purely selfish because you are looking in the other for what you don’t have in yourself. This adulated being whom you live passion with is no more than a regular guy like you and I, only your phantasmagoria pushes you to raise him high in the heavens on the same level as the Gods of Olympus.
Wake up and learn to love yourself because you are the most important person in your life.
Differences between passion and love
| Differences between passion and love | |
| Passion | Love |
| It’s an emotion | It’s a feeling |
| Everything goes fast | Things take their time |
| Feelings increased | Feelings are born gradually |
| Fantasy | Reality |
| Burns up your energy | Gives you energy |
| Selfishness | Sharing |
