Suggested by thisthread.
When considering the question in the next paragraph, please confine yourself to talking about your feelings for other persons. I think we can all agree that loving chocolate or Star Trek: DS9 is just a more intense version of lking vanilla or Next Generation.
When you say you love someone, how is that different from saying you simply like them? Is it a difference of intensity, quality, or kind?
There is some overlap in my experience, but it is not necessary, and I love most people in my family without really liking (but not disliking) a whole lot of them due to us being totally different people.
Love, to me, is an ineffable camaraderie, sympathy, or sense of concern for another being.
Well, I go by C.S. Lewis’ definitions of love for the most part, separating it into storge, eros, philos, and agape. I highly recommend his book “The Four Loves.” It’s witty and while it’s overwhelmingly Christian that doesn’t prevent it from being a good read for the atheist crowd.
Anyway, I try to practice agape with people. While if I’m not careful this has a tendency to lead to “Nice Guy” syndrome, (whiny, inappropriate martydom, emotional blackmail…etc), when done correctly it leads to beautiful relationships. It means valuing the other person as much as one values oneself. It means doing the right thing for the other person even if it’s difficult.
I suck at describing it. It’s basically 1 Corinthians 13.
In any case, yes, it’s totally not an intense form of like, and it’s opposite is not hate but apathy.
There’s “like,” “like like,” and “love.”
These are easily categorized into what you have to say to elementary, middle, and high school girls to get them to pay you attention.
Once you’re in college, it takes alcohol and/or drugs.
Heinlein once defined love as “what goes on when you’re not horny”. Elsewhere,e defined it as “The condition where another person’s happiness is essential to your own”.
Both of those seem to work.
No. Not in my opinion, anyway. Liking someone is conditional, and usually reciprocal. Loving them is not.
I think its a different thing. I have liked all the friends I’ve ever had, but I’ve lost track of most of them and don’t really care. The one girl I was ever in love with, who I’m lucky enough to still be friends with after we broke up, I would be quite upset to lose her as a friend. Obviously the nature of our love changed, we’re basically like family now and I’m even the godfather to her kid. The depth of our relationship is definitely different than with my other friends though.
Yesterday, for me, that consisted of talking to them. Which was unfortunate, because they were freshman, and I’m a sophomore in college.
Like is driving them to the emergency room.
Love is donating organs.
There is no one that I like enough to kill or be killed for.
There are a few that I love that much.
Well, there are a few that I would kill for, but if it comes down to them or me, I’ll send some lovely flowers.
I knew that I was truely in love with my girlfriend (until she broke my heart…) when I knew that I loved her more than anyone in the world, and at the same time I still had the biggest crush in the world on her
There’s many kinds of love. But the best kind requires liking each other.
You love a baby that’s “yours” without having to particularly like him. I loved my brothers since they were in diapers. But I definitely love them more now that they’ve grown into people I also like (even if sometimes I want to give them a smack - and no, I never gave them one when we were kids).
“Being in love” is all “smoke gets in your eyes,” “loving” involves clear vision. It involves knowing the other person or group (for example a country or culture) and enjoying their virtues more than you dislike their defects. If you insist that the other person doesn’t have defects, you don’t love them: you’re in love (and in denial).
I don’t think it’s possible to love someone or something that’s toxic to you. You can be in love with them, but not love them, because you’re not seeing the damage they cause you; you’re not seeing the whole.