Difference-love for gf and love for bestfriend

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

What question do you really want the answer to?

 

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

 

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

 

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.

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?