How to distinguish love from friendship - features, signs and manifestations

2024 Author: Priscilla Miln | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 00:21

Loving your friends is common. Who doesn’t love their comrades, who are always ready to help, who can cry on their shoulders and who have a great time with? Of course we love our friends.

How to distinguish friendship from courtship, sympathy, manifestations of romantic feelings?

But can you say for sure that your feelings for a friend are not romantic? Sometimes platonic friendship is hard to distinguish from love, and vice versa: people mistake a strong friendship of two bosom friends for love.

If you doubt the feelings between you and your boyfriend / girlfriend, you should think and analyze your relationship. Do not rush to jump to conclusions about yourself. Let's talk more about what the concepts of friendship and love are and how to distinguish them from each other. Perhaps you should move to the next level with your buddy? Or is it not worth risking friendship by confusing it with a romantic relationship?

Love and friendship, what do they have in common?

Note, you would hardly have become interested in the question: "How to understand whether this is friendship or love between you?" If you did not doubt your feelings for a friend. If we talk about friendship between a guy and a girl, it is worth recognizing the sad truth: there is no long-term friendship between different sexes. One or both will one day think about how they really feel and whether their relationship has a continuation.

The phenomenon of love and friendship are similar to each other, and we can safely say that they are components of each other. True friends love each other without showing romantic feelings, and their love lies in mutual respect and affection. Like lovers, they cannot exist without friendship between each other.

But not every couple is ready to cross the threshold of friendship and enter into a romantic relationship, there is a fear of losing a faithful friend or being rejected.

So how can you tell love from friendship if they are so similar? We can conclude this: friendship includes spiritual intimacy, and relationships consist of aspects of friendship and physical attraction.

Let's take a look at the differences between the two to learn how to tell love from friendship.

Feeling differences: sympathy for a potential rival

Review your behavior around your friend. This is a sure way to distinguish between friendship and love. How? Start with obvious signs of affection.

How do you react when your friend tells you they like youto another person, manifesting it in front of you?

If you are on friendly terms with this person, you will be glad to meet his choice, you will also help him build a happy relationship when the opportunity arises, because you wish him happiness and true pure love.

If you are in love, then jealousy will betray you. You are unlikely to like the object of his sympathy, but this does not mean that you do not wish him well. Just in your mind you already imagined him next to you, you are used to this thought, and your subconscious mind is at a loss: "How is it, because there is me, why did you choose (a) not me?" Jealousy is one of the main signals about your romantic feelings.

Behave in his/her presence

Do you behave calmly in the presence of a friend, or do you feel embarrassed when he appears in your company?

When you are on friendly terms with the appearance of a comrade, you feel free, no matter what condition you are in, no matter how you look. You are comfortable with this person, even if you are flaunting in a nightgown, one slipper, disheveled, with a thermometer and a bucket for snot at the ready.

If you are still in love, you try your best to look better than you are. You care about your appearance, you worry about whether your friend will like your new jacket or hairstyle. You are embarrassed when receiving compliments from him, they cause you extraordinary feelings of joy and embarrassment.

Private space

How to distinguish love from friendship? There is another obviousway. How do you feel when a friend is not around?

You feel at ease in friendships if you know that your friend is spending time with someone else. If you have not seen each other for several days, emotions will not unsettle you and will not take away sleep.

But if you still fell in love with your friend, then your thoughts are probably occupied only by him alone, you want to meet more often and spend more time together. You miss your object of sympathy. You are in love.

Showing emotions

Emotions play an important role. If you are friends, you experience lightness, freedom, fun next to a friend. No drama, only positive emotions.

But if you are in love, there may be quarrels between you. Did you think the opposite? Quarrels are not only a manifestation of mature love, but also an expression of love that has not found expression. Perhaps subconsciously you are trying to cover up your sympathy with friendship, but you want reciprocity. Not meeting her, you become irritable, demanding towards your friend.

Habits and reactions

Your reaction to the habits, behavior and plans of a person can give away your attitude towards a friend. How to distinguish love from friendship, based on the habits of the suspected subject of sympathy?

If you're only friends, you don't judge your friend for his habits, accept him for who he is, and don't try to change him. You make friends with him this way and accept him this way, and his habits and behavior will not affect your life in any way. You, of course,advise your friend to quit smoking, but don't take it to heart like a lover would.

Of course, that you are worried and wish your friend well, and even a real unloved friend would have to make a scandal if your close friend does not want to quit addiction. This is what a man in love will do, who hopes for the further development of relations with a person and worries about his he alth. A lover may try to reshape a person at his own discretion, which is less often seen with true friends.

Note that lovers try to change themselves if a friend points out to them what he does not like, wanting to please the object of sympathy.

Friend in love

If you have come to the conclusion that you are in love after all, do not despair. Love is a wonderful feeling, better let's find out if it's mutual. You can watch your partner. Here's how to distinguish a man's friendship from love? Based on this list, you can understand how your friend feels. Maybe it's time to talk to each other and move to the next level?

You can judge that your friend shows sympathy by such points as:

• your friend doesn't want to leave you and tries to spend more time together;
• your friend goes to meet with potential competitors during the parade;
• your friend is gallant with you, he will give a hand, move a chair, open the door;
• trying to pay for you;
• you are called to take a walk without company;
• you are always ready to help;
• hesuddenly into your music;
• a friend is silent about his personal life, but reacts sourly to stories about yours;
• they try to see you off;
• love to chat with you.

The list could be endless, as everyone expresses their sympathy for the opposite sex in their own way, but these are some of the most popular signs that you are experiencing more than just friendship.

Based on these tips, you can distinguish love from friendship. We hope that this knowledge will be useful to you and your feelings will be mutual.

Analyze not only your manifestations of feelings for a friend, but also the attitude of a friend towards you. Take a closer look at his behavior, how he communicates with you, how he reacts to you. Watching your relationship from the outside is the perfect way to help answer the question of how to distinguish friendship from love.