You can feel it but is it actually there?

Being in love is more of relationship kind of love
Loving someone can be family love, friends love, etc…

Being in love means the strings of your heart go zing when you see them. Loving someone is caring for them, trusting them, counting on them, forgiving them and doing anything you can to help them.

You can feel both forms of love for your mate, but really only the second form for your children and friends.

I just told someone recently that I love them but not in love with them – it made sense to them…it means that I can live without them but that I do miss them and wish they were in my life after all

Love is a fairly inadequate word to represent the range of situations and feelings that it encompasses. The ancient Greeks discerned several types of love, and distinguished among them. There was agape, storge, eros, philia and thelema. You could look them up.

What if you actually do love someone but you aren’t in love with them? Not in a friend kind of way.

That would be Agape, would it not?

@pdworkin I guess so.

Loving someone can just refer to a physical act and can be an empty experience. Of course, as empty experiences go it’s one of the best.

Being in love on the other hand can be a real and rewarding experience. I’ve been lucky enough to be in love with the same woman now for nearly 23 years. If my wife finds out, she’ll kill me.

the only difference is your perception of it…

I think of being in love as a reciprocal love and loving someone not necessarily reciprocal.

Love the feeling, which you can further split into romantic love and platonic love.

And love the choice, the way of acting and treating someone. Putting them before yourself.

See the aft quoted bible verse from bible 1st Corinthians 13:4–7

Lurve for the phrasing of the question. It’s like a song lyric!

@aprilsimnel I actually made one with that lyric :)

To love someone is never want to see that person harmed in any way and to protect them to be in love is this and so much more x

@sakura Someone once actually told me that :(
if I could give you more lurve I would :)

@Tink1113 that’s unreal to know someone else has said the same thing! But its so true, to love some one is easy as it seems to natural to care and protect (to most normal people anyway!) But to be in love is a feeling so hard to describe as it is so individual to each person and what they want from life why I am in love with my husband may be completly different to why someone else is in love with their partner!

@sakura Yeah, the person was right about it too. I know what you mean. Except I don’t have a husband. lol.

lol Partner/ boyfriend same difference love is love xx

Yeah x

Romantic love versus companionate love.

1. It’s only ‘there’ BECAUSE you feel it.
2. You’ll always know when you’re IN love; your body will tell you. Whether you love someone doesn’t have that kind of visceral certainty.

Your perceptions are your reality. Others might not see your perceptions as an accurate reflection of reality. You can choose to be influenced by what others say, or not. If you worry about whether your perceptions of reality are consonant with others, then you will be less happy in life, I think. If you want more comfort with your life, you need to be committed to your perceptions.

I am not committed to my perceptions. I worry about what others think all the time. I try to change my perceptions to become more consonant with others’ perceptions all the time. I only can “speak my truth” if no one knows who I really am. That’s better than never being able to speak my truth, but it’s not as good as always being able to do that.

In matters of love, however, it is difficult to establish reality. You can pretty much know your reality. You can know what other people say about your reality. If you are self-sufficient, you will go with your reality. If not, you will doubt yourself. There is no knowing if either is more real. If I had a choice, I’d go with my own reality and ignore what others tell me.

The best discussion of this that I have seen as it applies to love between peers, as opposed to parental love, is in Scott Peck’s book, The Road Less Traveled. He talks about how we may initially fall in love with someone and how we may have this romantic notion that this feeling should last forever without effort. It does not work that way. As he expresses it, love expresses itself as action, not as feeling. Like anything else that is worthwhile it can only be sustained by active effort.