How do I know if what I'm feeling is real love or just infatuation?

Mirabai spent her life asking this question too—not in a confused way, but with fierce honesty. Infatuation is often about projection: you're in love with who you think someone is, or who they make you feel like being. Real love, the kind Mirabai knew, is about seeing someone clearly—their smallness and vastness both—and choosing them anyway. Here's what to notice: Does this person's actual life, their struggles and contradictions, draw you in? Or are you more invested in the feeling they give you? When they disappoint you (and they will), does your heart break open with compassion, or does it close with resentment? Infatuation is urgent and consuming. Love is patient in a way that doesn't mean passive—it's the willingness to show up when showing up is inconvenient. Mirabai's devotion wasn't easy or dreamlike. It was examined, daily, through doubt and longing and grief. So ask yourself: Can you love this person *and* see them clearly? Can you stay present to the real human, not the fantasy? If yes, you might be in love. If you need them to be a certain way to keep loving them, you're probably still in infatuation. Both are real feelings. Only one is sustainable.