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Love or Friendship?

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Holiday20310401
 
Reply Thu 5 Mar, 2009 10:06 pm
Because I know you are all mature people I thought what better than to ask a question that has boggled me for quite some time, just an observance in the behaviour of people to praise this 'love' stuff, I don't quite fully understand.

People talk about friendship, it's so great and all.... and I think to myself, well... let's say this is true friendship most of the time, now there is this new thing going. And it's called 'love'. I'm not talking the chemical reaction love. I mean a high order of thought towards the meaning of such a 'big' word.

In the context of the love or friendship with an individual, if your friend was murdered and you knew the murderer, would you seek revenge more or less than if it was your lover who was murdered? In the context of love I'm assuming some would come to the primordial conclusion that love seems to go a little 'beyond' friendship.

Anyways, when one speaks of making a higher commitment, speaking of a deeper passion/compassion... whatever... or there is something beyond friendship(you get the picture), what is actually beyond friendship? What is love to be beyond such?

Perhaps though, it is wrong to assume love and friendship fall into the same categories. Perhaps love is a only of the whole whereas friendship is of the individual parts. It can only work that way in context. But that's just silly dawdling for answers.
 
Theaetetus
 
Reply Thu 5 Mar, 2009 10:43 pm
@Holiday20310401,
The ancient Greeks had two distinct words for love that distinguished between friend love and erotic love. There are different types of love--I love my best friend, but definitely not the same way I would a sexual partner of mine that I had a lasting relationship with. They are both love but the difference is eroticism.
 
Khethil
 
Reply Fri 6 Mar, 2009 06:18 am
@Holiday20310401,
Holiday20310401 wrote:
Because I know you are all mature people I thought what better than to ask a question that has boggled me for quite some time, just an observance in the behaviour of people to praise this 'love' stuff, I don't quite fully understand.

People talk about friendship, it's so great and all.... and I think to myself, well... let's say this is true friendship most of the time, now there is this new thing going. And it's called 'love'. I'm not talking the chemical reaction love. I mean a high order of thought towards the meaning of such a 'big' word.

In the context of the love or friendship with an individual, if your friend was murdered and you knew the murderer, would you seek revenge more or less than if it was your lover who was murdered? In the context of love I'm assuming some would come to the primordial conclusion that love seems to go a little 'beyond' friendship.

Anyways, when one speaks of making a higher commitment, speaking of a deeper passion/compassion... whatever... or there is something beyond friendship(you get the picture), what is actually beyond friendship? What is love to be beyond such?

Perhaps though, it is wrong to assume love and friendship fall into the same categories. Perhaps love is a only of the whole whereas friendship is of the individual parts. It can only work that way in context. But that's just silly dawdling for answers.



Friendship and Love...hmm

I think that what they have in common are compassion, a desire to be in that person's company, and some measure of 'identification' (wherein "I take you on as my own - one one context or another) and probably at least some Loyalty. And yea, some forms of love could justifiably be called variations of intensity of what we're calling Friendship.

Parental Love, Romantic Love, Brotherly Love all seem to comprise these elements with "added modifiers". Then you have the whole complicating factor of the non-specific love that seems to be pointed - generally - towards the inanimate ("I love my country", "I love the outdoors"). Such a generalized concept...

As a side note; although I'm sure someone, somewhere has brought this up, Love (in the generalized sense) strikes me as having more to do with the mind of the lover than the other person per say (echos of self love, selfishness, or the "I love how you make me feel"-sentiment). This is a bit spurious; I suppose, and could easily be perceived as lowering the pedestal we've placed 'love' on. Nonetheless, I think there's some merit in this line of thinking.

Nice topic... I love it!
 
hammersklavier
 
Reply Fri 6 Mar, 2009 08:14 am
@Holiday20310401,
In my experience love is an emotion of extremes. I fell in love with a girl last fall, which led me to feel extreme bliss, and then she rejected me, which led me to feel extreme despondence. I recall the quote that went something "love sows the seeds of tragedy" (can't remember who said it, sorry), because, extreme as love may be, it is an extremely transient emotion, and the emotion that necessarily follows its negative conclusion--heartbreak--is too just as finite (however, 1. human emotion seems to display isostatic qualities, that is, it tends to flex back into its ground state after a period of time, and 2. the remnants of both the positive and negative aspects of love can remain as deep undercurrents in the psychology long after the experience per se).

Love is also clearly a feeling of intense attachment. Any pursuit of nonattachment must necessarily thus deny love.

I would suppose that platonic love would be the feeling of closer attachment one has with their closer friends than they do with their more distant friends.
 
VideCorSpoon
 
Reply Sun 8 Mar, 2009 09:27 am
@hammersklavier,
I have for the most part thought that love is a two stage emotion, infatuation and then love. When people have crushes, they are not in love, they are infatuated PhaedrusMetaphysics
 
Victor Eremita
 
Reply Fri 13 Mar, 2009 01:11 am
@Holiday20310401,
Love is just the next stage above friendship. Erotic or Platonic love, but love nonetheless.
 
Zetherin
 
Reply Fri 13 Mar, 2009 01:51 am
@Victor Eremita,
Victor Eremita wrote:
Love is just the next stage above friendship. Erotic or Platonic love, but love nonetheless.


And how do you know when you've crossed the threshold of friendship and begin loving?
 
Victor Eremita
 
Reply Fri 13 Mar, 2009 01:54 am
@Holiday20310401,
When you start to think about him or her more often than not. Indeed, "just friends" only come up in my mind when I explicitly try to remember them. With those I'm in love with, they just happen to enter my mind.
 
manored
 
Reply Fri 13 Mar, 2009 01:42 pm
@Holiday20310401,
Emotions can be hard to distinguish, so hard that many emotions fall under the same word. I think thats the reason behind all this confusion regarding what "love" really means Smile

I personally think that the difference between the love of friends and the love of lovers (lol?) is that the lover's love has the erotic element. And, for having something extra, it is consequently stronger.
 
tyciol
 
Reply Sat 21 Mar, 2009 01:57 am
@Holiday20310401,
Friendship and love aren't about getting revenge if they're lost. It's about connecting with a person's memes so well that they'd live on in your heart even if you lost them, and a true relationship, it's the other way around too.
 
 

 
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