How To Differentiate Between Love And Friendship: 4 Tips
Friendship is also a type of love, although this emotional bond is not like the one that is at the basis of relationships, traditionally associated with romantic love, which we normally consider the default form of “love.”
However, the realm of emotions is almost always complex and difficult to predict. Having a realistic understanding of our own feelings is an art, and achieving it is the exception, not the rule. That’s why, There are those who hesitate when it comes to differentiating between love and friendship We will talk precisely about this topic in the following lines.
Differentiating love from friendship: how do I know what I feel?
The first thing to understand when trying to distinguish between affection for friendship and romantic love is that both experiences are mediated by the way in which our culture has influenced our way of being, thinking and feeling.
That means, among other things, that what you feel does not emerge from your body encoded in categories clearly separated from each other, as we might expect if emotions were like the elements of a periodic table. Part of what we feel is how we interpret it, so worries and beliefs about what we are experiencing affect, in practice, that emotion
Part of the difficulty of distinguishing between love and friendship is, then, knowing how to distinguish between what that person makes us feel and what the experience of knowing that we are developing an emotional bond whose nature we have yet to understand makes us feel. The expectations that the fact of feeling something for someone generates in us They play a role in how we want to relate to them and in how that person reacts if we interact with them.
That said, let’s look at several tips on what to do to distinguish between love and friendship.
1. Is there chemistry in intimacy?
Intimacy is a key aspect of romantic relationships However, it should not be confused with sexual connection. Asexual people are not by definition deprived of the experience of love, but it is true that they do not feel a very intense sexual connection towards someone in particular.
This chemistry in the intimacy typical of love, therefore, in most cases also affects the sexual aspect, but is not limited to this and is present in many other ways of physically relating: hugs, kisses, caresses, mutual care … Normally, if what there is is friendship, a large part of these experiences are not seen as something necessary, although there are always exceptions.
2. Is there a willingness to compromise?
In romantic relationships, the people involved tend to want to establish minimum commitments. Therefore, if a certain amount of time passes without the other person attempting to contact them, for example, disappointment and sadness appear
This commitment is not equivalent to what has traditionally been considered “fidelity” based on a monogamous model, but rather has to do with the broader meaning of the word: making sacrifices and agreements to keep the bond alive and make it have its place. in the future, instead of leaving everything to improvisation or sporadic meetings. A person who sees an unjustified imposition in this idea of basing her relationship with the other on a certain degree of commitment will probably be feeling friendship, and not conventional love.
There are relationships that begin because one of its members feels a mixture of affection and compassion for a person whom he considers helpless and alone. This experience, although based on compassion, generates obvious problems. On the one hand, it perpetuates the idea that a person is alone unless they have a partner with whom they have a bond of romantic love, something that is clearly wrong, and on the other, makes it easier for the other to generate wrong expectations
Therefore, another of the necessary but not sufficient conditions to distinguish between friendship and love is to ensure that the time and activities shared with that person are not based on pity. For example, we can carry out small experiments based on imagination, such as imagining that this person starts dating another person with whom it is clear that there is a reciprocated love connection. How does that make us feel? If the answer has something to do with relief, it may very well be friendship
4. Analyze the intensity of the emotion
Normally, friendships are seen as something flexible, which can stop being on the scene for a while and, some time later, reappear. However, in the case of love the emotion is usually so intense that the idea of interrupting the relationship even temporarily is experienced in a dramatic way and clearly painful, and feeling strong grief for this loss.
The emotions felt through love are too intense for us to be comfortable with the experience of not knowing if that person will continue to be there for us tomorrow.
This “rigidity” in the way we assess whether our expectations are being met or not is another of the keys that can help us distinguish between friendship and love.
