How to differentiate between love and friendship

Would you know what friendship vs love is? It may seem easy but, in reality, it is not. Many 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 senses, so explaining it with some rigor is not easy since there is a genuine abuse of it. In the word love, a set of meanings that would be necessary to clarify come together.

The use, abuse, falsification, manipulation, and adulteration of the term love require a special effort to prevent it from being trivialized. Therefore, we must rediscover its authentic greatness, but also its demands.

Love: the word of a thousand faces

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

Love derives from the Latin word, -oris, but also from amare, on the one hand, and smiles on the other. Amare applies interchangeably to animals and men as it has a very broad meaning: "love by inclination, by sympathy", because it is born from an inner movement.

Friendship love

Love also refers to the relationship of friendship or sympathy that occurs towards another person. 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. The great philosopher has defined it as «a peculiar love relationship that implies the donation of oneself and confidence».

Friendship is psychologically constituted by the succession of acts of benevolence, and confidence that give their own matter to communication. In friendship, there is not as much intensity as in love. To love someone is to need it.

Try some quiz questions about friendship

Love VS friendship

Is loving the same as being your 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 vocation of absolute, unattainable. Also, from this meeting, intimate and mysterious communication is born, since loving someone is communicating deeply.

Love understood as falling in love, produces a kind of enchantment. The alien personality becomes ours 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, deeds, memories, thoughts ... Every moment with the loved one 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 valuable treasure that is compatible with the relationship. However, it is possible to confuse feelings of love and friendship, because there are love relationships that arise from friendship.