Difference-love for gf and love for bestfriend

Skhandelwal · Sep 25, 2006

What is the difference b/w love for your soulmate and passion for your sport/career?

Skhandelwal · Sep 25, 2006

Besides physical attraction, mentally, is there a difference b/w love for who you care about and love for who you are attracted to and care about?

DaveC426913 · Sep 25, 2006

What do these two things have to do with each other?

What question do you really want the answer to?

Skhandelwal · Sep 26, 2006

Sorry, I messed up, I have fixed it now.

DaveC426913 · Sep 26, 2006

Clearly you have some thoughts on the matter. You might get more interest if you elaborated.

Skhandelwal · Sep 26, 2006

Well, I am talking purely about mental love. The feelings you have for your best friend and feelings you have for your gf, if we exclude physical attraction, hormones level, etc. Is there a difference? If not then does love exist? Or is it just hype for romantic movies and greeting cards?

Gelsamel Epsilon · Sep 26, 2006

The confusion is that in english the word love works for both situations. That is all.

zoobyshoe · Sep 27, 2006

Skhandelwal said:

Besides physical attraction, mentally, is there a difference b/w love for who you care about and love for who you are attracted to and care about?

I think Gelsamel Epsilon has probably honed right in on the problem here. We are handicapped by one word that is used for two fairly different things.

If you were to sit and write out your feelings in detail for each situation without recourse to the word "love" then the differences ought to become clear.

Well, I am talking purely about mental love. The feelings you have for your best friend and feelings you have for your gf, if we exclude physical attraction, hormones level, etc. Is there a difference? If not then does love exist? Or is it just hype for romantic movies and greeting cards?

If you exclude physical attraction and hormones from what we might call "romantic" love you are really talking about an artificial mental construct that doesn't exist in real life. Usually when people mentally experiment with trying to subtract those things from the equasion it means they are becoming uncomfortable with how unreliable, short lived, or erratic those things can be, and wonder if there is ever something more permanent behind it all that they can depend on to last.

Am I close?