Day Three - Friendship, Infatuation and Love

‘Do not run behind any girl. You might overtake her. Then she will have to run behind you’

- Leo da Mirci in his book “Running, Jogging and Blogging”


If every person in this world understands this concept nobody will have a problem with girls/love. Here in my MBA School I come across a lot of couples, triples and polyples. It has actually made me think a lot about love, infatuation and friendship. What is the exact difference between all these?

When I was in my college I had been with one of my close friends who fell in love and couldn’t succeed in getting the girl to accept him. He couldn’t even succeed in love, for he fell in love with another girl in a year. So how much does love really mean to people in this world?

Love vs. Infatuation

Physical attraction is where ‘infatuation’ starts.

The way a person

• Looks


• Dresses


• Speaks and


• Behaves

gives us an impression of the person. If only the above factors and the impression thus created give rise to a feeling, I call it infatuation. Since infatuation is based on how a person is perceived and not on what really a person is, infatuation stays only as long as the above factors remain the same. Infatuation ends when

• There is a change in the above factors


• You lose touch with the above factors(basically the person)


• You realize what a person really is and further realize that what is more important than how.

Some of the people in my B-school, I hear had a relationship before coming to campus and another here on campus. The relationship was disturbed/ got broken in a few months. The reason for the break and the new start, I believe is because they lost touch with the guy/girl. Infatuation needs constant reinforcement of the above factors to sustain. Even a small change creates a big difference.

Love, if true cannot be expressed and described. It needs nothing except one person to sustain.

Friendship vs. (True) Love

The most important difference between friendship and love is that ‘a person can have more than one friend but only one lover’. I am not joking. Only a few things fall under the ‘only’ category for a person. Mostly parents and sometimes siblings, school and job fall under this category. However one does not have a say in choosing most of these. The only ‘only’ thing whom you get to choose is your lover / life partner. The feeling of ‘He/She is my ………..’ is true for both friendship and love. But the feeling of ‘He/She is only mine’ is true only for love. Love gives you a special happiness of owning a person. The responsibility of owning a person and the happiness of somebody owning you is there only in love. True love never departs. It might be lingering around somewhere in some corner of your mind throughout your life.

Before writing this blog, I asked Leo da Mirci about what he fells about friends who fall in love (Piriyatha varam vendum style) and the only thing he told me was

‘If your love is reciprocated, he/she will be your best friend for life. If your love is not reciprocated you can/should never be friends again.’