Loving And Being In Love

What is the difference between someone saying “I love you” and “I’m in love with you”? How significant is the difference? What does either statement entail? In this post I am going to try provide my opinion about the difference between loving and being in love why, for me personally, the latter is such a bad idea.

First let us look what each one of them entails, starting with “I love you”. Loving someone means you have a strong positive emotion of regard and affection towards them. ”I’m in love with you”, on the other hand, entails being infatuated and smitten with the person.

The problem I have with “being in love” is that first of all, it is conditional, which completely defeats the purpose of the feeling of love. Once you attach a condition to a feeling such as love, its meaning and relevance gets watered down. Being in love requires the mutual existence of two characters, one being the lover and the other being, for lack of a better word, the lovee. Being in love attaches a condition to the one emotion that should never be conditional.

Being in love with someone leads to feelings of entitlement because, like I mentioned above ,it involves the mutual existence of two characters so automatically, the lover will always EXPECT the lovee to be in love with them too, which is a very toxic mentality. People should love because they want to love not because they feel obligated to which is exactly what being in love entails. Being in love invokes feelings of possession, an absurdly toxic feeling, because the loving party will always feel entitle to the love of the other party.

Egotistical love, which is what “being in love” is , suffocates both parties involved ,in the long run. It leads to them expressing love not because they want to, but because they feel like they have to, which is the complete opposite the notion of genuine love is. True feelings of love should not be obligatory at all. Being in love is simply feelings of entitlement and possession under the façade of “love”. If your partner is constantly talking about how they cannot live without you etc, they do not love you but are in love with you. Their love has a condition and that condition being they will continue to “love” you as long as you are with them, as long as they have you, as long as you are their little possession.

If you are in a relationship, ask yourself and your partner this question, “do you want your partner to be happy more than you want your partner to be with you?” Simply put, this question asks, if your partner packs up and leaves you tomorrow, will you still have the same feelings of love you have for them right now? If you or your partner answer in the affirmative, then it would be safe to assume that you love each other but if you answer in the dissenting, then you guys most probably don’t love each other but are in love with each other ,an egotistical toxic version of “love”. You guys are simply just infatuated and smitten with one another.

So one may ask, what is wrong with being head of heels in love with someone? And that is where it gets tricky. As with every bad habit like drugs etc, it feels so good in the short run. Being in love feels good as long as both partners have feelings of fascination towards each other. It feels good whilst you still have a lot to explore and learn about one another.  It feels good having partner who wants you all to themselves all the time, who shoos away anyone who tries to get close to you, a partner whom their entire life revolves around your existence. And like any other bad habit, it eventually feels terrible in the long run when that fascination ends and you want to have your own life but your partner is in the belief that your life revolves around their existence like theirs does around yours. Arguments starts to ensue because the other partner feels like they are no longer getting the love which they wrongfully felt entitled to from the get go. Hearts break and what both partners thought was a happily ever after turns into yet another Shakespeare tragedy.

Love is a beautiful feeling, love makes the world go round and if you are an avid follower of religion, then you would know that God, the creator of everything that is, is also love. That shows you the extensive beauty of this feeling of love. But like with every good thing out there, we humans have managed to take this beautiful feeling and created versions of it that are destructive. There is absolutely no nobility which comes with being in love. There is no nobility in amassing feelings of entitlement and possession under the façade of love. So if you are in love with your partner, know that you do not love them, but simply love the idea of having them as some sort of possession. Then ask yourself this, would you like it if someone treated and felt about you like some sort of possession that they own and would stop loving once they stop being fascinated by it?

We cannot and should not feel like we can choose when and how much other people choose to love us because the simple fact is that we cannot. That is completely out of our hands. The one person you love the most can choose to betray you tomorrow but that should not mean you should love them any less. The best thing we can do is love as much as we can without expecting anything in return, that is what unconditional love is about. We should not love someone because they make us happy or feel better about ourselves etc. We should love because we want to love not because we have to because once you attach a reason to love, you are wiping away the “unconditional” from unconditional love.