Everything about this feels intense and I cannot tell whether it is love or just infatuation. How do I know the difference?

“I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please.”

The Song of Solomon is love poetry that is entirely unembarrassed about desire, which makes its one repeated warning worth noticing. Three times the woman tells her friends not to stir up love before it is ready. The book that celebrates passion most openly is also the one insisting that passion has a right time, and that forcing it early damages the very thing you are trying to have.

“Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;”

Paul wrote this to a church that was competitive, showy and quarrelling, so his description of love reads as a rebuke as much as a poem. What is striking is how little of it concerns feeling. He lists patience, kindness, an absence of envy and self-seeking, all of which take ordinary time to observe in someone. Infatuation can be tested against that list, and it rarely survives the testing.