This topic has always crossed my mind. Is there a difference between loving someone and being in love with someone? People tend to toss the word love around so much that I have come to the point of questioning if there is a love that is actually real. I know I have tossed it around personally but I have stopped such a thing. I believe there is a difference but I am not sure how one crosses into the other. Being in love with someone is a spouse or somone who you are not related to and is not a friend. That would be a difference in my eyes but it has to have more meaning than that, right? And if that is the case, why is it that love for family cannot be as meaninful? Family stays by a persons side for life in most cases, so why do they not have a higher meaning of love? I apologize if this does not make much sense but I would like to know what others believe on the matter of differnces between the loves. If there is any at all. Please, discuss.
I think that there is definitely a difference. These are my takes on the subject Loving someone means simply that you hold a high level of caring for that person, not exactly intimately. It could be a friend or family. And the love for family thing: I think some people realize that, even if you dislike a family member, they're still your blood, so you can't help but feel a connection to them, so as much as you may not want them around, you don't want them in trouble either. Being in love with someone means you want to be intimately involved with that person. A spouse, lover, call it what you will. It is confusing figuring it out these days, since everyone's throwing around the three words so much, without much apparent thought. Still, many people use it and mean it, such as myself.
That's not a reason to give familial love a higher "value". That's an essentially an obligation(whether or not a family chooses to abide by this is a different story). Like in the case of the parent/child relationship. Just because a parent spends about two decades of their life taking care of their child doesn't mean that the child owes anything to the parent. It doesn't work that way. Parents always have the duty to take care of their children and should not expect being placed higher up on the child's priorities just because they do. With family, you're generally supposed to love them. You don't have to necessarily even like them. You don't choose your family, you can however choose your spouse. With family, being there for each other is a given. With relations with someone who isn't related to you by blood, when they're there for you just as much as your family it's because they want to, not because they have to. I personally don't believe being "in love" should ever be placed underneath love for your family.
