How to differentiate between love and friendship

What is love and friendship? What is the difference between both? In this article, we tell you.

Would you know how to differentiate between love and friendship? It may seem simple, but in reality, it is not. Many of you will think that there can be love and friendship at the same time or that, on the other hand, without love there can be no friendship. But what can be said in relation to these beliefs?

“Love” is one of those words loaded with the most varied meanings., so explaining it with a certain rigor is not easy, since there is a real abuse of it. The word love brings together a set of meanings that need to be clarified.

The use, abuse, falsification, manipulation and adulteration of the term “love” requires a special effort to prevent it from being trivialized. Thus, We must rediscover its authentic greatness, but also its demands.

Love: the word of a thousand faces

Love is a fundamental theme in human life. However, today it has become a product of the industry and, specifically, gossip magazines. In them, there is a lot of talk about emotional relationships (not friendship), physical relationships and contacts, but very little love in the authentic sense.

Love derives from Latin love, -orisbut also I will love, on the one hand, and smileys for another. Amare comes from the Etruscan term Not me (genius of love), and is applied interchangeably to animals and men, given that it has a very broad meaning: “to love by inclination, by sympathy”, since it is born from an inner movement. Its opposite is I hate (hate).

In Spanish, the perimeter of the word “love” shows great richness: love, affection, esteem, predilection, infatuation, propensity, enthusiasm, rapture, fervor, admiration, effusion, reverence…

In all of them there is something that repeats itself as a constant. What is repeated is neither more nor less than the trend based on the choice of something that makes us desire your company and your good. This dimension of “tending towards” is nothing more than predilection: preferring, selecting, choosing among many things one that is valid for that person.

The love of friendship

Love also refers to the relationship of friendship or sympathy that occurs towards another person.. In the words of Enrique Rojas «This must be of a certain intensity, which implies a certain level of ideological and functional understanding.».

The love of friendship is one of the best gifts of life, since thanks to it we can perceive the human relationship as close, close and full of understanding. Laín Entralgo has defined it as «“a peculiar loving relationship that involves self-donation and confidence.”

According to Laín Entralgo, Friendship is psychologically constituted by the succession of acts of benevolence, beneficence and confidence that give communication its own material.. In friendship there is not as much intensity as in love. To love someone is to need them.

Love and friendship

Is loving a person the same as being their friend? To love a person is to need them, to look for them, to go after them, to wish them the best, to aspire to share everything.. Love has a calling to be absolute, unfathomable. Likewise, an intimate communication full of mystery is born from this encounter, because loving someone is communicating in a deep way.

Love, understood as infatuation, produces a kind of enchantment. The other’s personality becomes our own and one begins to live in the other and from the other. Time seems to stop and the need to share everything is perceived: words, facts, memories, thoughts… Every moment with the person you love is intense, alive and full.

On the other hand, having a friend is not the same as having a partner. In fact, Having a good friend is having a very valuable treasure that is compatible with your relationship. However, it is possible to confuse the feelings of love and friendship, since there are love relationships that arise from friendship.

Read Also: 6 curiosities about famous works of art that you probably don't know

What do they have in common?

Some points in common between love and friendship are:

The intimacy: There is an emotional connection that motivates us to share secrets with complete trust in the other, verbalize feelings and be happy with that person’s company.The respect: In both there is mutual respect and admiration.Compatibility: There is an affinity of interests and tastes that strengthen the emotional bond. When there are common interests, the exchange flows naturally and the moments shared with each other are usually very special.

Is it friendship or am I falling in love?

Love as a couple includes friendship, however, the friendship relationship does not include the relationship as a couple.. It is not uncommon to realize that there are couples who also have a great friendship.

When we are faced with love, We share more time and more moments of intimacy than with a friendship. With a friend you also share moments as perfect as with your partner, but they are moments unrelated to living together at home. Other central differences between friendship and love are:

The exclusivity: Most couples demand exclusivity, which does not happen in a friendship, since we can have many friends.The relationship: Love is a feeling of attraction towards another person that does not need a relationship. On the other hand, there can be no friendship without relationship. We cannot consider someone with whom we do not have a relationship with as a friend.The attachment: Love entails a deeper sense of attachment and attraction towards the other person. While friendship does not include such a deep-rooted attachment.The life project: In a loving relationship there are short, medium and long-term plans. When you love it is natural to create a common life project.

Read Also: Moral relativism: differentiating between good and evil

Although there is no single way to fall in love, there are usually some key manifestations that can help us differentiate being in love from friendship:

We think a lot about the person we like.We feel like talking to each other all the time and telling them about our experiences of the day. We feel safe and relaxed in their company. We perceive that time runs quickly when we are next to the person we like.Life seems more exciting to us. The hormones associated with love make everything seem more exciting.We want to spend a lot of time with you.We feel a greater need for physical contact and intimacy. We talk a lot about that person with our friends.

Finally, we can also affirm that In love there are enemies that do not exist in the same way as in friendship.. In the love of a couple there is jealousy, routine, fear of abandonment, be without the other person, loss of passion, sex, infidelity, etc.

As we see, it is not easy to differentiate love and friendship, since it all depends on how we define love. And there are so many definitions that the task becomes complex.. What does seem clear is that friendship is not the same as a relationship. We have that clear…, or not?