The projections we place on our partner, which I wrote about last time, are most active at the start of a relationship, when we see them through the filter of everything we hope they will be. And this transition, from the infatuation that blinds us to the love that sees with open eyes, is one of the least prepared for and most misunderstood stages in the life of a couple.

Many people believe this transition means love has died. It has not. It has reached maturity.

Falling in love is real, but it is not complete. It is a documented neurobiological state: dopamine, noradrenaline, and serotonin create a cocktail that produces euphoria, obsession, and a selective perception of reality. We see what we want to see. We ignore what does not fit. We project qualities onto the other that they may not fully or at all possess.

This is not a mistake. It is a mechanism through which nature secures initial closeness. But it is not a foundation on which a life can be built. It is a springboard, not a house.

The problem arises when people treat the state of being in love as the standard against which they measure love going forward. When they decide that if the butterflies are gone, something has broken. That if they can think critically about their partner, they no longer love them. That if there is a conflict, the relationship is in danger.

What is conscious love compared to infatuation? Something more sober and, if you look at it honestly, more valuable.

Falling in love is passive. It happens to you. You do not choose to fall in love any more than you choose to sneeze.

Conscious love is active. It is a repeated decision. It is the choice to be present, to work with difficulties, to choose the other not because you cannot do otherwise, but because you want to.

Infatuation sees an ideal person. Conscious love sees a real person and stays.

Infatuation produces intensity. Conscious love produces depth.

The transition from one to the other is usually uncomfortable. The first real conflict appears, the first moment of genuine disappointment, the first time your partner does something that does not fit the image built during the euphoric phase. And there, many people make one of two mistakes.

The first is believing that disappointment signals they chose wrong. So they either leave, or stay with the resentment that this is not what they thought. The second is denying the disappointment, suppressing it, continuing to idealise, postponing the recognition of reality at an ever-higher cost.

The path that works is different: recognising that disappointment is normal, that the person in front of you is human, with limitations and contradictions, and that the love which follows this recognition is more real than any love that preceded it.

What makes the transition possible? A few concrete things.

The first is releasing the narrative that true love requires no work. It does. Anything valuable does. The idea that if it is real love everything comes naturally is perhaps the most damaging story our culture tells about relationships.

The second is learning to be curious about the other rather than assuming you already know them. People change. Your partner now is not identical to who they were at the start of the relationship. Curiosity about who they are now, not who they were when you fell in love, is one of the engines of conscious love.

The third is recognising that attraction can be actively maintained, not passively waited for. Attraction does not disappear simply because of time. It disappears because of absent attention, unchecked routine, because you have stopped investing in the relationship as something alive.

I believe conscious love is harder than infatuation, but more honest. It is choosing every day, not from inertia, not from fear of loneliness, but from the recognition that the person beside you deserves your present choice, not only the one made at the beginning.

If you look at your relationship now, where are you? Still in the euphoria of infatuation, or have you moved into something deeper? And if you have made that move, did you treat the transition as a loss or as an opening?