RELATIONSHIPS

There is a fine line between the strong bonds of friendship to the depth of romantic relationships.

Love is defined as an intense feeling of deep affection; a deep romantic or sexual attachment to someone. It also means a great interest and pleasure in something like "his love for football" or  "we share a love of music."

Because the two definitions overlap, it may cause problems between two individuals on what each perceives as their status together.


The word "love" comes from Old English "lufu," of Germanic origin; from an Indo-European root shared by Sanskrit "lubhyati" meaning desires and Latin "libet" for  ‘it is pleasing,’ libido ‘desire.’ 

We attempt all the time to please our friends. It is a means to maintain and strengthen one's friendship. We do so by sharing time together, events, memories and ideas. A good friend wants to reach out to support another friend in a time of need. 

When things get criss-crossed is when one so loves being around a friend of the opposite sex that deeper feelings begin to well up inside.  It may stun or frighten the other friend to find out that affection for each other has turned into attraction.

Affection is an emotional state of a gentle feeling of fondness or liking that can have physical expressions of these feelings such as greetings or hugs. It's roots come from Middle English and Old French from Latin "affectio" from "afficere" to mean to influence.

Closely related (and hence confusing) is attraction.  Attraction is the action or power of evoking interest, pleasure, or liking for someone or something. It is a quality or feature of something or someone that evokes interest, liking, or desire. It also comes from Middle English from Latin "attractio," from the verb "attrahere" (to attract).

Attraction is the action to cause (someone) to have a sexual or romantic interest in someone; "it was her beauty that attracted him."

The tightrope is very narrow. Friends have affection (love) to be around each other because of mutual interests, experiences and support. That is the internal emotion state. Attraction is the action of taking affection to another level (to "be in love" with another person). 

It is because these two emotional states are so close together but represent two vastly different concepts that gets people into trouble. You can only try to make someone fall in love with you. Some people try too hard. Some people don't try hard enough. Some people get caught up in a moment. Some people make mistakes confusing affection with attraction, to the point of destroying a good friendship.

Many people may find attraction the first and only means of finding true love. It may be shallow, but in a subconscious, guarded way it makes sense because we one wants to test the waters you first go to the shallow end and not dive into the more dangerous the deep end. But there is no rule against doing it the other way - - - since most couples want their lover to be their best friend.

There is little to no logic in this situation. This is an emotional gambit that can end three ways: working out, breaking up or maintaining the status quo of friendship. The sad fact is that many great friendships have been lost by the mere fact that affection turns to non-mutual attraction.