Have you ever felt the kind of love that leaves you feeling dizzy, exhilarated, and wild? Here’s everything you need to know about crazy, passionate love.

Passion is an extremely strong emotion. You can feel it in your very bones, and it’s not easy to get rid of once it’s there. It can even be addicting at times, which is why people say that love can be just like a drug.

Everyone should, at some point in their lifetime, experience this kind of love in one form or another. Unfortunately, not everyone gets to experience it, and this is truly sad, as this kind of passionate love is extremely powerful.

What is passionate love?

Passionate love is different from your average romantic love because passion is a ridiculously strong emotion. In fact, passion is defined as a “strong and barely controllable emotion.”

For this reason, I’m sure you can imagine just how powerful and even dangerous this kind of love can be. However, it’s often short-lived and dwindles down with time until the love either fizzles out completely or it slows down into a long-burning love.

Why passionate love can be the strongest love of all

With passion being one of the strongest emotions a person can feel, and love being right up there with it, putting these two feelings together can make for one hell of an unbreakable pairing. Here’s why passionate love can be the strongest love you’ll ever experience.

#1 It inhibits your logical thinking. It’s actually been scientifically proven that when you fall in love with someone, your frontal lobe basically shuts down. This part of the brain is responsible for your logical thinking and decision-making skills, so quite literally, you don’t even know what you’re thinking or deciding when you’re overcome with passionate love. [Read: What are you feeling? Is it love or lust?]

#2 It’s short… so you make the most of it. Passionate love in particular is so strong because most relationships built on a ton of passion are the ones that both parties know won’t last forever. As a result, you both do whatever you can to make the most of it.

This allows both of you to really open up to each other in ways that you normally wouldn’t so early on in a relationship. It’s powerful in the way that makes the two of you put everything aside in order to focus on each other, even if for only a fleeting moment in the grand scheme of things.

#3 You almost turn into a different person. Due to the logical thinking portion of your brain taking a vacation when you fall in passionate love, you often behave like someone else completely. You begin saying and doing things that you normally wouldn’t do in a million years.

#4 You don’t make the best decisions. You can probably see how the above reason could lead to your making some not-so-great decisions when you’re struck with passionate love. Since your brain has basically turned into mush when you have so much passion running through your veins, your decision-making skills aren’t exactly up to par.

This means that you could make some terrible decisions *like getting married after only a couple of weeks* that you would normally avoid if you were thinking clearly.

#5 You risk a lot more when you’re in passionate love. The dangers of passionate love really come to light when you start taking more risks with your new significant other. And this doesn’t just include marrying someone you barely know.

You could also forgo protection during sex and could end up having a child with someone, only to realize that the two of you could never work out. Unfortunately, this realization comes only after the passion has subsided.

#6 You’re more vulnerable. Another danger of passionate love is how vulnerable you can become. Passion can make you unlock all the barriers to your deepest, darkest secrets. This could leave you completely vulnerable to this new person.

In the same respect, this could also lead to other complications and even heartbreak if the other person doesn’t have the best intentions. And we all know that some people will use passion to their advantage in order to get what they really want.

#7 You can mistake fleeting, passionate love for the real thing. Passion is so strong that it can actually trick you into thinking that you’re truly in love with someone when, in reality, it’s just passion heightening those feelings. The truth is that sometimes, the most passionate love you can have isn’t really love at all.

This can be terrible because you can make decisions with your significant other, thinking that they’re the one you’re going to be with forever *like getting married*, only to find out that it wasn’t true love at all. It was just passion masking your true feelings.

#8 You can ruin a great thing if you go too hard too soon. It’s no secret that passion drives relationship. It’s the force behind the first move, the first kiss, and getting in the sheets for the first time. And with passionate love, all of these can happen REALLY quickly, sometimes all within the first night.

But moving too fast can ruin a relationship that could otherwise be fantastic. If there’s too much passion behind your actions, you could end up ruining the relationship before it truly has time to develop into something beautiful.

#9 It can completely change your perception of love. Some people have a hard time finding love. Because of this, they even go so far as to say that love doesn’t exist at all. But those people have probably never felt the full effects of passionate love.

After someone falls so passionately in love, they will have a completely different perception of what love truly is. They will start believing in love 100%, because passion has that much power. Passion can make you understand love on a whole different level—one that you may not have even known existed.

#10 Passionate love can drive the longest relationships *with the right person*. The best and most powerful thing about passion is that if you’re with the right person, it can fuel a relationship to last longer than you’d ever imagined. Passion isn’t always a fleeting emotion in a relationship.

If you’re with the right person and the passion transitions from a flaming fire to a slow, burning love, it can last longer than a lifetime. It can last an eternity.

Passionate love isn’t always the best thing for your relationship. But while it has its dangers, it can also transform into something truly beautiful. Heed our warnings and tread lightly, but don’t be afraid to embrace your passion if the right one comes along.