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.

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!

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.

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 with that person. They are consumed with their own ideas about a person, or the superficial impressions or expectations. They let the infatuation shape the idea of that person and disregard the faults the other person may have which would not practically attract them.

Here is the thing though, how do people who proclaim to be instantly in love fall out of love? sometimes weeks sometimes years afterwards? That infatuation inevitably wears off. What you are then left with is love, or at least the true sense of the words as I would take it. Theaetetus hits the mark by noting platonic love, both erotic and true. One is a carnal desire where no knowledge is shared between one another, where as true love is of a knowledgeable kind. In Phaedrus, Socrates warns that the true achievement of love (ignoring the fact that it can only be achieved between a mentor and an young boy) is achieved by restraint of infatuation and cultivation of knowledge. It may be that Socrates put more stock in friendship than the love.

I also think that Hammersklavier hits the nail on the head as well because love is a variation of extremes which are by their nature transient. This seems to be the very nature of what it means to be infatuated. I especially appreciate the note he made about how love goes back to its ground state. Infatuation?

Its also interesting to note that any definition of love denotes preferential and momentary emotions of "preferring," caring for," etc. Literally. Is this not the definition of infatuation? Also, there is a logical issue involved in the conception of love if you follow the term etymologically. Aristotle in Metaphysics mentions that a definition cannot include the concept itself. Seems simple, right? Socrates, to borrow Aristotle's own example, asks how Socrates can have a "snub nose nose." Socrates has a snub nose, we know this? but then when we apply the concept of snub nose to the nose of Socrates (two different things), we get "snub nose nose." Take it to the definition of love. There is not a clear definition for it. People attribute other definitions to it and call it love, like desire, carnal instinct, caring, etc. If you look to the etymology of it, all you find is a chain of "love is to love something deeply" etc. Snub nose nose, right? So in many respects, I think this falls in line with what Khethil has to say on added attributes and relative conceptions of love. Multidimensional conceptions of love.

My thoughts on love are just this, and sorry about the corny poetic prose. There is infatuation and love. One can be infatuated without love? but this is the nature of a crush. One can be in love without being infatuated? but this seems loveless as passions are not fully engaged to propagate love. So infatuation inevitably comes before love. But infatuation cannot sustain love, because it wears off. What's left is love. What then is love? Is love the construct of infatuations? At this point, I keep coming back to an article on BBC which said that love (but essentially infatuation) is a bio-chemical in the brain which wears off after two years. They tried to say in this study that this two year "infatuation chemical" keeps people together but ultimately wears off, explaining the high incidence of divorce and break ups after that certain amount of time. What is left after the chemical wears off is practicality. The bonds formed during those two years make it in such a way that two people are accustomed to one another, share the same goals, have a common interest (children), etc. Not to boil the concept of love down to scientific processes, but it makes sense if you think about it.

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?

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.

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

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.

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.