You’re an average-aged person in a committed relationship but one day you suddenly discover you’ve got a crush on somebody. You’re infatuated by a co-worker, a student, or even—why now?—an old friend. Life gets a little fizzy and a little fuzzy. You’re checking electronic devices for cute text-messages and searching for nuances in e-mails. You discover flirtatious implications whether or not they’re actually there; that’s the foolish part. Like the flu or a bout of colitis, the best thing to do is to sit tight and hope it passes quickly before too many people notice and before anybody else is infected.

What you are, of course, is infatuated. The word “infatuated” is derived from the Latin “fatuus” meaning “foolish” or, as some linguists argue, “too heavy in the thigh area for an assignation” ( a term, by the way, closely related to the Greek word for �…

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