Attraction to someone usually occurs out of nowhere for no rhyme or reason. You happen to encounter someone who catches your eye and you're captivated. You instantly want to know more about him or her and dream of spending time with him or her. You may be bold enough to go right up to that person and introduce yourself and talk to him or her. You may be more of the shy type where you look in his or her direction and just hope for a glance in your direction. Or you may just hope that this person may some day pay you some attention.

Attraction is often confused with love. We like the way someone looks, how someone talks, what someone does etc. and instantly believe we're in love with them. However, unfortunately, love isn't so simple.

Real love involves knowing and loving a person for who they are, both for the characteristics that they possess that you desire and the negative attitudes they display that you don't particular care for. Real love is about acceptance and understanding and being there emotionally and mentally for the other person, often putting ourselves and our interests aside and being willing to compromise to make decisions based on the interests of both ourselves and the one we love. Real love is not easy and takes time to develop; it is not as instantaneous as attraction is.

Blind love is very different from real love. While real love is accepting, blind love is blocking out the parts that we don't particularly like about the one we love and living in a fantasy world. We only focus on what we like and do everything we can to keep the person of our desire happy. In blind love, one partner usually revolves his or her life completely around another person without expecting or receiving any of the same in return from the other partner. The obsessed partner or the partner who is blindly in love, does not want to know anything negative about his or her partner and wishes to hide away anything about the person that may not be so desirable. They are convinced that this is the only man or woman for them and that they can make this relationship work if they just ignore their lovers’ imperfections.

Lovers, who are blind to the beloved's negative traits, tend to create an idealised image of the beloved. They often love the idealised person rather than the real one. When lovers are unwilling to face reality, self-deception and mistakes are likely to occur. They can be wrong in identifying the beloved's attitude since the person can easily fake or hide it.

Hurt and pain are generally the eventual result of a relationship based on blind love. In many cases, the partner who is being treated like a king or queen gets bored with the relationship and moves on as he or she does not love his or her partner as much as his or her partner thinks he or she loves him or her. If that doesn't happen, it's common that the partner who is blindly in love will be treated poorly by his or her partner and will eventually either believe that he or she just has to put up with it or realise that the relationship just isn't worth it.

Blind love, which is as easily developed as attraction, varies vastly from real love and can have very undesirable consequences. It’s important to analyse our attraction to others and our relationships with them to assure that the love we feel is not blind and to realise that real love takes time and the continued efforts of both partners, not just one.