With every emotion a person can feel, comes a false feeling similar to it. There is false anger, false pride and even false happiness. But the most common is false love, or infatuation.

Infatuation usually occurs when one person sees a quality in another person that they find attractive. Often times the other person does not feel that way. The attraction can grow and grow, and can sometimes lead to unhealthy behaviors, according to TheTeenCentre.com, a website for teens that offers discussion on issues facing teens. Infatuation is usually thought to be caused by such things as peer pressure, romance novels or movies.

Eighth-grader Skye, who asked that her last name not be used, is aware that popular movies and books can encourage teens to move into relationships they aren’t ready for. “ ‘Twilight’ and Nicholas Sparks books have fakey relationships, and I don’t want to be in one of those,” she says.

According to TheTeenCentre.com’s list of qualities in healthy and unhealthy relationships, a person feels like they cannot live without their partner in an unhealthy relationship; they stop wanting to see friends and family and stop doing things they like because their partner doesn’t like them.

Another sign of an unhealthy relationship is if a person feels like they have to walk on eggshells to keep a partner from becoming angry.

“Infatuation stimulates the same area of the brain stimulated by a roller coaster ride – the nucleus accumbens, which is smaller than a pea,” says Dr. Jay Fawver, a psychiatrist at Fawver Wellness Clinic in Fort Wayne. “This area fires the ‘feel good’ chemical, dopamine, during periods of excitement and pleasure. Early during a dating relationship, this area of the brain is shown to be much more active compared to later in the relationship. Dopamine is the same chemical stimulated when a person uses alcohol, nicotine, or cocaine – with that in mind, infatuation could be considered to be somewhat of a stimulating ‘drug’ that provides only temporary excitement that fades with continued exposure.”

Infatuation can happen to anyone. It existed before romantic novels and passionate movie kisses, and it’s generally harmless. But sometimes, infatuation can create expectations too high for anyone to meet.

“Infatuation is unhealthy only if it distorts your expectations of relationships to the extent that you are no longer able to develop mature relationships. For instance, if you terminate relationships due to your lack of anticipated perfection in the other person, you will grow disappointed and lonely,” Fawver says. “The TV series ‘Seinfeld’ nicely poked fun at the characteristic with George Castanza, who was always striving for perfection in his dating relationships only to become disappointed.”

Infatuation is normal, and could even help teens build better relationships in the future.

If a teen is infatuated with someone and that person is not interested, then this might be helpful because, according to Fawver, “If your relationships with others always have happy endings, you don’t appreciate the occasional challenges and disappointments that may eventually strengthen your personal character.”