The phenomenon called love seems to affect people universally across every different culture, age group, race, and religion imaginable. Everybody wants to love and everybody wants to be loved. Without love, a person who possesses everything they have ever desired in life will still feel unsuccessful. If someone wants to be truly happy, then love is all they will ever need. People will fight for the object of their love. If someone ever feels worthless, in finding love, they will find a purpose.
From myths about Cupid to Shakespearean plays to today’s pop music and Hollywood movies, these idolized notions about love have always permeated every aspect of the culture and media. These ideas of love, lovers, loving and being in love are so widespread and ageless that a definition can easily be provided. I personally attest to having thought before that I knew exactly what it meant to love someone.
When this assumed knowledge of mine was actually put to the test by the very girl whom I supposedly loved, however, love proved to be far more enigmatic than I thought possible. As I was happily spending my time digging deeper and deeper into conversation with this girl, she suddenly turned the subject to taking a crack at understanding my personal affection for her,
“Do you love me? Or are you in love with me?”
I wanted so desperately to seize this opportunity to flaunt my exceptional understanding of love, but as my thoughts churned, I came to the awful realization that I actually didn’t know the answer. Love or in love? Are they not the same thing? Partly because I didn’t want to let on that I had just been stumped and partly because the lateness of the night compelled me to speak with honesty, I replied to her question with a question of my own,
“What’s the difference?”
In order to attempt to define love, it needs to be seen as something that exists on a scale. On the lowest end of the spectrum lies a love often applied to non-personal things. Examples are loving a specific season, loving a certain song, or loving an adorable puppy of which somebody has a picture. When one expresses love in this way, it’s really nothing more than just an exaggerated means of saying that the thing that person "loves" is pleasing to them; they just really like it.
Then comes reputational love, which is the earned or given affection of someone due to their standing. One might not know their instructor or favorite celebrity’s personal values, but they can still garner respect for their public actions. When amplified to a high enough degree, this respect becomes a form of love. Familial love is where love begins to resemble the type of exemplary power of the human spirit to which an entire February holiday is dedicated. When under the influence of this unfaltering love, one always has the best interest of the person being lovingly objectified at heart.
If the loved one (usually a family member or close friend) needs any kind of support, they can depend on the one who loves them to provide them with a helping hand no matter what. This love is usually reciprocated, and although people can, and do voice it, it’s also understood between the loved ones on an unspoken level of loyalty, trust, and emotional connection.
Finally, there’s romance. All the kinds of love on the scale build on each other until they amount to this one; the most special kind of love. Romance pits two lovers against one another to see which one finds the other the most fascinating for the longest time. Sometimes, like in the case of unbroken marriages, these romantic contests see no winner, but other times, one lover will keep on loving while the other becomes uninterested in continuing the match. If one is truly romantically loving someone, then they’re most likely doing everything they can to make sure there is no reason that all the trust, commitment, honesty, physical and emotional attachments they pour into their lover should go unreciprocated.
How does being in love fit into the puzzle though? It seems "love" and "in love" often go hand in hand, so what makes the two phrases different? Difficult as it may be sometimes to give and receive love to and from others, once you love someone, it’s actually a much more permanent state of mind than the ever-fleeting state of being in love with someone. The euphoria one gets out of simply seeing their special lover, the completely focused "world revolves around my lover now" mindset, the back and forth learning about the other lover almost constantly taking place, and seeing the best possible image of the lover that can be presented (due to the lovers hoping to impress each other and the mentally skewed "everything about them is perfect" perspective) are all a part of this exciting first phase of romance.
This is when the relationship between the two members of a couple is new and interesting. The difference between this phase and love is simply time. One can be in love with somebody and be loving them at the same time, but they won’t know for certain that they’re not just confusing one for the other until the "in love" phase is in the past. If someone continues to exhibit the traits of romantic love even after their feelings and expectations for their lover have come to be much more reasonable and realistic, then they were either in love and were also truly loving them since the beginning or were in love and developed feelings of true love for them later on.
If one starts to seem invested on a platonic level in their lover after being in love, then actual love was most likely never a part of the relationship, or else it faded away before the "in love" stage had even ended. Until the lovers have been given enough time, though, it’s impossible to know.
Despite its ancient quality and near omnipresence in all the world’s societies, love has possibly remained one of the most complex ideas mankind has ever created. I may never fully understand it. That being said, I believe that as far as whether I "love" or am "in love" with my quizzical girl goes, I now have my answer: only time will tell.
