Here is an excerpt from an makala written kwa A. De Witt, a professional counselor, discussing infatuation and true love. I read several other makala on this topic (written kwa psychologists, medical professionals, and theological experts)and many say much of the same thing (except those who are zaidi medical in their approach and tend to talk about dopamine, adrenaline, and brain activities as related to infatuation and love). I found it fascinating as it related to the relationships found in the Twilight series:

"Infatuation is like a drug, au a form of madness. wewe are taken over kwa a whirlwind, wewe are consumed kwa thoughts of the other person and nothing else matters. Your life suddenly revolves around this person and wewe want to spend every waking moment with him au her. wewe are in a dream, dizzy with bliss. True love, on the other hand, is zaidi a sense of friendship and respect."

Like a “drug”. In the Twilight series, only one character was referred to as being like a “drug”. It wasn’t an adjective that was randomly pulled out of thin air. There is a reason why Edward was compared to narcotics; there is a reason why, every time Bella was with Edward, she felt a high, and every time he breathed upon her, she felt blissful. There is a reason why Bella considered Jacob as her best friend, and not Edward.

De Witt brings up ten basic maswali to ask oneself in order to dinstinguish whether one is feeling 'infatuation' au feeling 'true love'. After readin those questions, it became painfully clear that both Edward and Bella are very much infatuated with each other.

One swali was "Do wewe have a life of your own?" De Witt goes on to say that with real love, wewe don't live for the other person completely. kwa that definition, and from what we saw in New Moon, neither Bella nor Edward were willing to "live" without the other. It's terribly romantic, but it's also "infatuation".

Another swali was "How would wewe feel if your upendo was unrequited? Could wewe upendo the other person enough to respect his au her choices, even if those choices exclude you?" Real upendo needs nothing in return. Here again, when Bella believed that Edward no longer wanted her, her life as she knew it "ended". She was addicted to Edward and needed his "love" in order to survive, but, again, this is an example of infatuation. A person who truly loves another can function even if he/she is not loved back, and he/she will continue to upendo that person no matter what the circumstances.

One of the most important maswali asked kwa De Witt (along with his comments) was this:
“Can wewe be open and honest with your partner without fear of rejection? Are wewe able to be yourself? au do wewe hide your weaknesses and try only to onyesha your strengths? When wewe truly upendo another, wewe don't concern yourself with impressing your beloved. Rather, wewe are zaidi interested in serving your lover and wewe know that is easier to do when wewe are honest.”
Just taking this one point, it already tells us that Jacob was on the right track with Bella. He always believed honesty was the best policy when it came to Bella. Edward took it upon himself to decide when to be honest with her and when not to be.

Naturally, how brutally honest wewe want to be may depend upon the person receiving the information. Jacob understood Bella’s emotional strength and understood how much information she could take without having a nervous breakdown. He was all for telling Bella about Victoria and knew she would be able to handle it internally. Edward decided that he should simply take Bella to Florida without telling her that a killer vampire was after her. Ultimately, Bella was upset that she was the last to be informed about this while Paul, Jasper, and her dear Marafiki risked their lives to find Victoria. Even though Edward had noble intentions, he did not understand Bella’s capacity to handle her fears against the threat upon her life, whereas Jacob did.

In essence, Edward wants to keep Bella from the “evils of the world” and have her experience only the good as much as possible. Although this is idealistic, it is far from realistic and definitely unbalanced. wewe just cannot avoid the yin and have just the yang. Edward also thought Bella should be spared any information that would hurt her emotionally. Constantly sheltering someone from hurting is not doing a person any good, and in many cases, it is actually zaidi harmful. Take a child who is vaccinated continuously every mwaka and a child who is minimally vaccinated and is often exposed to small doses of viruses in the air in everyday life. In the end, the latter will be physically stronger because the small doses of virus serve as a form of immunity for the body. Protecting a person from being hurt is going to make the person emotionally vulnerable in the long run and it is less healthy.

Taking all this in and seeing how evident it is that what Edward and Bella have is infatuation, whereas what she has with Jacob is love, why do the majority root for Edward and Bella? Simple. We, as humans, upendo infatuation, also known as “romantic love”. If asked to name some of the greatest upendo stories in history, we come up with stories like “Romeo and Juliet”, “Wuthering Heights”, “Moulin Rouge”, “Somewhere in Time”, etc. There is a recurring pattern in these types of stories. The “love” between the lovers is like fireworks – they’re grand, they make a bang, they are romantically showy, and then they die. True love, which is based on friendship and reality, is boring to read about. Humans have to live with daily stress of daily life and we want to at least escape that when we’re relaxing and enjoying a book. We want the ndoto and the “obsessive (albeit unhealthy) love” because “true love” is not flashy enough to make us turn the pages. It doesn’t matter that one au both of the lovers end up dead – they had that moment of pure bliss and passion!

One professional matchmaker noted “it’s not so much that we really adore those grand upendo stories. Rather, it's that we're thankful that all the bad stuff is not happening to us.” With stories like Romeo and Juliet, we don’t have to deal with reality that might have taken place had both of them lived. Their passions would have cooled off, and as one writer of ‘love and infatuation’ put it, “Romeo would have started spending too much time with his pals and not enough on the balcony. Juliet's pushy mother would have started nagging for her to have a baby.” Who wants to read about that?

The upendo between Jacob and Bella is too rooted in reality. Their upendo is comfortable and honest; it would have been the normal route for Bella in a normal world; Jacob is her best friend and her sun. Edward is sheer bliss and passion; he is the eclipse that hides the sun and pulls us into the mysterious realms; he is the dangerous adventure readers want to take but cannot do so in reality because of grades, school, college, mortgage, children, what have you. It is no wonder Edward has a much bigger following, even if, in reality, Jacob Black would have been the right choice.