Difference between love and in love
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PloverWing
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I would say that being in love is the wonderful warm fuzzy feeling of delighting in the person's company and wanting to be with them all the time (usually mixed in with a feeling that I want to kiss this person).
Loving a person is wanting their good as much as you want your own good, valuing the person and their well-being, and making choices that benefit the other person and work towards their well-being.
They can be related -- it's easier to work for the other person's good when you're feeling the romantic warm fuzzies -- but they're different. And, you can love people (like your children or your friends) that you're not in love with.
Loving a person is wanting their good as much as you want your own good, valuing the person and their well-being, and making choices that benefit the other person and work towards their well-being.
They can be related -- it's easier to work for the other person's good when you're feeling the romantic warm fuzzies -- but they're different. And, you can love people (like your children or your friends) that you're not in love with.
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plain jayne
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Being "in love" can be superficial, giddy, based on YOUR wants and needs, and be very fickle.
Someone who is "in love" may give or receive frivolous presents, spend heart-melting time together, giggle a lot, and look for what the significant other does for their emotional state.
There is nothing wrong with being "in love", but it isn't the foundation of a long-term relationship nor the cement of the protection of a long-term relationship.
My parents were married for 58.5 years and never lost the teen-age giddiness.
I walked in their house one day when they were in their late sixties and they were sitting at the kitchen table with their faces very close to each other and make popping noises with their lips at each other. I apparently walked in on a personal moment, but nonetheless asked "What ARE y'all doing?!?"
My dad looked at me as if he were very insulted and said, "Why, we are seeing who can make the loudest popping sounds with our mouths."
Genuine love has more depth. More action. More selflessness.
Someone who loves deeply will sincerely and out of affection for their spouse rush them to the bathroom in the middle of the night when they are sick and puking in the bed. Then rush back to the bed quickly to clear the sheets off so the puke won't soak into the mattress. Then rush back to find the nausea medicine, help their spouse clean up, clean up the toilet bowl and floor, remake the bed with fresh sheets, give them the medicine, double up a couple of towels and put on the floor by their spouse in case it happens again, put their spouse back in the bed, go and put the dirty sheets in the washing machine, and go back and lie with him/her gently patting him/her until it all subsides and both can sleep again.
You see, this was my father's actions to my mother when she had the occasional, but horrid migraine.
He was both in love with my mother and genuinely and deeply loved her more than any man I have known to love a woman.
Someone who is "in love" may give or receive frivolous presents, spend heart-melting time together, giggle a lot, and look for what the significant other does for their emotional state.
There is nothing wrong with being "in love", but it isn't the foundation of a long-term relationship nor the cement of the protection of a long-term relationship.
My parents were married for 58.5 years and never lost the teen-age giddiness.
I walked in their house one day when they were in their late sixties and they were sitting at the kitchen table with their faces very close to each other and make popping noises with their lips at each other. I apparently walked in on a personal moment, but nonetheless asked "What ARE y'all doing?!?"
My dad looked at me as if he were very insulted and said, "Why, we are seeing who can make the loudest popping sounds with our mouths."
Genuine love has more depth. More action. More selflessness.
Someone who loves deeply will sincerely and out of affection for their spouse rush them to the bathroom in the middle of the night when they are sick and puking in the bed. Then rush back to the bed quickly to clear the sheets off so the puke won't soak into the mattress. Then rush back to find the nausea medicine, help their spouse clean up, clean up the toilet bowl and floor, remake the bed with fresh sheets, give them the medicine, double up a couple of towels and put on the floor by their spouse in case it happens again, put their spouse back in the bed, go and put the dirty sheets in the washing machine, and go back and lie with him/her gently patting him/her until it all subsides and both can sleep again.
You see, this was my father's actions to my mother when she had the occasional, but horrid migraine.
He was both in love with my mother and genuinely and deeply loved her more than any man I have known to love a woman.
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adderbolt
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How do you define 'love'? To this untrained eye the differences in the forms of love revolve around the amount of selfishness in a relationship. The more pure the love the more unselfish the lover. This is how we should desire Christ and his Kingdom; with a pure selfless love:
"Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” - Mark 10.
"Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” - Mark 10.
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Love is doing the right thing, or as someone sang. Love is not a feeling, it's an act of your will. The Greek have several words for love. I grabbed this from Here.
1. Eros: romantic, passionate love
Eros is passion, lust, pleasure. It’s an appreciation for one’s physical being or beauty, and is driven by attraction and sexual longing. It describes desire and obsession and is most similar to what we think of as romantic, passionate love between life partners. At least in the earlier stages of courtship, when everything is crazy-hot and you can’t get enough of each other, that is.
2. Philia: intimate, authentic friendship
Philia is characterized by intimacy, knowing, and soul-to-soul bonds. It’s encouraging, kind, and authentic; the stuff from which great friendship is made, regardless of whether it’s with a platonic best friend or a romantic partner. This love is also based in goodwill, or wanting what’s best for the other person. Philia is a connection akin to that of soul mates; it’s one part destiny, another part choice.
3. Ludus: playful, flirtatious love
Ludus is infatuation, toying, flirtation. It describes the situation of having a crush and acting on it. It’s rooted in having fun, whatever that means specifically to you. Ludus is definitely the love you’d experience with a fling—casual, sexual, exciting, and with zero implications of obligation. Of all the Greek words for love, this one more than others comes without any eros or philia attachment.
4. Storge: unconditional, familial love
Storge is the protective, kinship-based love you likely experience with family members. You might love your sister, even if you don’t like her, for instance, and you might love your dad, despite the mistakes he made in raising you. Storge is driven by familiarity and need and is sometimes thought of as a one-way love. For instance, consider a mother loving her baby before the baby is aware enough to love her back. Storge can also describe a sense of patriotism toward a country or allegiance to the same team.
5. Philautia: self-love
Self-love is hardly a new concept, as evidenced by the ancient Greeks having a word to describe it: philautia. It encompasses two concepts: The first is that healthy, feelin’-myself, care-based love that reinforces self-esteem, like buying yourself a new book as a gift for completing a big work project or putting on a face mask to relax and take care of your skin. The other concept is one of selfishness that can be pleasure- and fame-seeking and highly concerned with status. (It can even be the foundation of narcissism.)
6. Pragma: committed, companionate love
Pragma is love built on commitment, understanding and long-term best interests, like building a family. Over time, eros can turn into pragma as a couple grows to honor, respect, and cherish each other, accepting of differences and learning to compromise. It is everlasting love rooted in romantic feelings and companion.
7. Agápe: empathetic, universal love
Agápe is love for others that’s inclusive of a love for God, nature, strangers, or the less fortunate. It’s generally an empathetic love toward humanity itself and is sometimes connected to altruism since it involves caring for and loving others without expecting anything in return. This sort of pay-it-forward love—people helping others selflessly—is the foundation of great societies and communities.
1. Eros: romantic, passionate love
Eros is passion, lust, pleasure. It’s an appreciation for one’s physical being or beauty, and is driven by attraction and sexual longing. It describes desire and obsession and is most similar to what we think of as romantic, passionate love between life partners. At least in the earlier stages of courtship, when everything is crazy-hot and you can’t get enough of each other, that is.
2. Philia: intimate, authentic friendship
Philia is characterized by intimacy, knowing, and soul-to-soul bonds. It’s encouraging, kind, and authentic; the stuff from which great friendship is made, regardless of whether it’s with a platonic best friend or a romantic partner. This love is also based in goodwill, or wanting what’s best for the other person. Philia is a connection akin to that of soul mates; it’s one part destiny, another part choice.
3. Ludus: playful, flirtatious love
Ludus is infatuation, toying, flirtation. It describes the situation of having a crush and acting on it. It’s rooted in having fun, whatever that means specifically to you. Ludus is definitely the love you’d experience with a fling—casual, sexual, exciting, and with zero implications of obligation. Of all the Greek words for love, this one more than others comes without any eros or philia attachment.
4. Storge: unconditional, familial love
Storge is the protective, kinship-based love you likely experience with family members. You might love your sister, even if you don’t like her, for instance, and you might love your dad, despite the mistakes he made in raising you. Storge is driven by familiarity and need and is sometimes thought of as a one-way love. For instance, consider a mother loving her baby before the baby is aware enough to love her back. Storge can also describe a sense of patriotism toward a country or allegiance to the same team.
5. Philautia: self-love
Self-love is hardly a new concept, as evidenced by the ancient Greeks having a word to describe it: philautia. It encompasses two concepts: The first is that healthy, feelin’-myself, care-based love that reinforces self-esteem, like buying yourself a new book as a gift for completing a big work project or putting on a face mask to relax and take care of your skin. The other concept is one of selfishness that can be pleasure- and fame-seeking and highly concerned with status. (It can even be the foundation of narcissism.)
6. Pragma: committed, companionate love
Pragma is love built on commitment, understanding and long-term best interests, like building a family. Over time, eros can turn into pragma as a couple grows to honor, respect, and cherish each other, accepting of differences and learning to compromise. It is everlasting love rooted in romantic feelings and companion.
7. Agápe: empathetic, universal love
Agápe is love for others that’s inclusive of a love for God, nature, strangers, or the less fortunate. It’s generally an empathetic love toward humanity itself and is sometimes connected to altruism since it involves caring for and loving others without expecting anything in return. This sort of pay-it-forward love—people helping others selflessly—is the foundation of great societies and communities.
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ViaCrucis
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There's no singular kind of "love". In English we use this singular word to cover virtually all bases, all expressions of interest, affection, care, etc. It's why we can just as easily say "I love pizza" as "I love my wife".
We innately know that there are different kinds of love, we don't get confused when someone tells us that they love to play sports that they are referring to the same sort of love as the love between a parent and a child.
In other language, these distinctions are sometimes made more obvious, because there is more clear language. Greek is an example of this, the language of the New Testament.
In Greek there are four words that we can translate as "love" in English:
1) Eros
2) Philos
3) Storge
4) Agape
The word eros is the origin of our English words for "erotic" and similar, but eros isn't necessarily "sexual" love. But it can be compared to romantic or passionate love. It is the love expressed through desire, the affection that arises between lovers. It can be sexual, but is not necessarily sexual. Indeed eros, desiring love, can also describe things like our love of pizza, or our love of sports, or our love of science, mathematics, history, knowledge, or any number of things. Eros is desiring love. As such, this is the kind of love we might say is "being in love", at least that initial "being in love" feeling.
The word philo or philos is sometimes called "brotherly love"; but more specifically philos is belovedness. Philos is natural affection, such as the affection between siblings, or the affection between parents and children. Philos is familial love, tenderness, compassion.
The word storge was, by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, considered the chief of the loves. Philo is a great love--the love between kin--but Aristotle regarded storge greater. Storge was choice-love, when two people commit to walk down the same path together, that is storge. A biblical example would be the love between Jonathan and David, though not related by blood, they were close friends, closer than brothers. Philo arises naturally, but storge is intentional. Storge makes bonds with people, even when no blood relationship, or other natural affection should arise.
The word agape is special. It is exceedingly uncommon outside of Christian writers, to the point that its recorded uses among Pagan Greeks was almost nil. Nothing. But this is the word that Christians latched on to. This is the word St. John uses in his Gospel when he quotes the Lord Jesus, "For God so loved the world..." (John 3:16). The earliest name Christians gave to the Holy Eucharist, or Lord's Supper (aka Holy Communion) was Agape. This Agape was the sacred meal, the Lord's Supper, in which we receive and partake of Christ's body and blood in and with the bread and wine (1 Corinthians 10:16). By itself agape can mean something as simple as affection; but in Christianity the word agape took on a whole new level and dimension: Agape was God's love, the love that originates from God, by which He freely offers and gives Himself to all in Jesus Christ. When St. John in his letter writes, "God is love" he uses the word agape, God is agape. In this, then, agape has become understood in Christianity as the love which is freely given, without condition--it is love freely given and expressed. It is the love by which we throw ourselves away for others, give ourselves away. Even as God has given Himself away in Jesus, it is the love Christ has for you and me when He hangs on the cross, it is the love He shows when He prays, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do."
In the context of our love toward our spouse, being in love may begin as eros--the mutual affectionate desire between two people for one another. That, "I want to be with you" and "I want you to be with me" love. But eros itself probably isn't going to sustain a loving, committed partnership--such desiring affection can evolve, grow, becoming philo and storge. Familial bonds are brought forth through the partnering of two people in marriage, bringing forth children; and between husband and wife the love to be with one another and be partners, to come together and walk together, that is a kind of storge. And finally, agape--Christian love. One's spouse is not only their spouse, not only their partner, they are also a human being made in God's image, a person of value and intrinsic worth to be cherished, respected. We give ourselves, freely.
So what may have been "You for me" becomes "I for thee". It is only in "I for thee" that deepest love is found. That love which is of God Himself, into which we are created as human beings, to reflect God and all that He is into the world as bearing God's image and likeness.
EDIT: I have apparently confused storge and philia, I was working from memory. And thus got these mixed up in my head. I thought about deleting my post and rewriting it, but hopefully even with this error on my part it is still perhaps helpful.
-CryptoLutheran
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