Diference Between Love and in Love

Love = trust, commitment, decision, admiration

In love = liking a person's physical traits, personality, attitude

Lust = not caring about the whole person, J. wanting them sexually based on their appearance and appeal

In summary, you choose to make a commitment to someone with nice "teeth" who always opens the door for you and you desire to be intimate with that one and that one only

To M. love is a verb -- love is an action. It is doing something for someone else without expecting anything in return.

Aw, I'm still smitten :) To M., #1 is the same, with the butterflies in your stomach and your heart jumps when the phone rings because you hope it's him :) Then, I fall 'in like'... I guess that's your #2. Next, it's heads over heels in love... now, this is where the fine line goes. For M., Once you're in love, you're in love for always and forever. You love your kids, you're in love with your man. You love your parents, you're in love with your guy. Yes, your love and relationship changes throughout the years, but you're still IN love with your SO. That's J. M. :) I love these kinds of questions, never fails to bring back the butterflies :)

Your 1 through 3 are all part of the infatuation phase.
It can linger awhile but it fades.
If you are in it for the long haul, you come to love a person in spite of their warts - and we all have them.
I met my husband when we were in high school.
He was a freshman and I was a senior. He followed M. around like a puppy dog for most of the school year before I realized he was alive.
We started dating when he was older and then we were both smitten for quite awhile.
We kept in contact through separate colleges and long distances - always writing or calling (this was before cell phones and the internet) and tried to see each other as often as we could which was sometimes only a weekend a month. Once my husband (then boyfriend) was working his internship sometimes we could only see each other once every 3 months. It was tough on both of us.
We saw other people (meaning we went to dinner or movies with other people - we didn't jump into bed with them) - it wasn't practical to be exclusive over the years - but we kept coming back to us. We actively sought to keep each other in our lives. We always were planning when we could next get together.
Then we graduated with our degrees, got jobs and got married about 9 years after we first met. (And then he was traveling for work and he was away for more than a total of 6 months for our first wedded year.)
We each took the time to know what we wanted. I had a few suitors (so did he) and I'm afraid I broke a heart or two when I made my choice.
Ultimately we chose each other and then we never looked back.
We celebrate our 22nd anniversary this August.

to M., it goes lust, caring (friendship love), in love(butterflies), then love (knowing their flaws and still being ok with them). i was with my fiance two weeks when i told him i loved him. i was totally in love with him. it wasn't until several months later that i loved him deeply. we are now planning to spend the rest of our lives together. staying in love with someone takes lots of work. and i'm looking forward to working on it the rest of my life.

I was reading The Five Love Languages the other day, and it talks about that "in love" feeling (butterflies, want to see them all the time, thinking the things that later annoy you are endearing:), wanting to make out all of the time) generally lasts 2-3 years of the relationship. That's a medical fact having to do with chemical reactions and such in the brain . After that comes the deeper like you talk about in your fourth bullet.

I tend to agree with how you order things, with the caveat that sometimes people start as friends and then enter the other stages. :)

To M. love is when you enjoy someone's company and you would give up your comforts to make them happy. I love my friends and would do almost anything for them. I love my family and would do almost anything for them.

I'm IN LOVE with my husband because I love him and I am sexually attracted to him. I still get the butterflies when I see him. I still look at him from across the room and think "I can't wait to get him home!" I'm willing to work on whatever issues we may have to make our life together better.

To M. the phrase "in love" is only applicable to someone you are sexually attracted to.

Here's the key:

"Love" is a verb. It is an action word. It is what you DO for someone else. Everything-- being kind, listening to them, comforting them, making meals for them, scrubbing their floors and doing their laundry, providing for them, giving them children, raising their children, tending to their physical and emotional needs, being a trustworthy partner, etc.

Being "in love" is J. that. A state of being. An emotion. It is all those emotions you listed rolled up into a big ball that you can only see part of it at a time. First you see the lust or smitten OR you love someone as a friend and then later develop the lusty feelings where you get the butterflies and your skin tingles at the thought of them. The deep emotions that accompany long lasting trusting healthy relationships comes later. And usually takes lots of time and the sharing of major life events (marriage, buying home, birth of children, enduring the loss of family members or other loved ones together, etc).

Ideally, we would all be loving and in love with our spouses every day. But both tend to wax and wane. We're all human.

I was going to say the difference is about 10 years....but then again, we have been married for 14 years and I still sometimes get butterflies from my husband. I think it's a maturity thing too.

i guess for M. the 'in love' part means the ability to withstand the ebbs and flows of a truly long-term commitment. we all know that it's not easy. and every relationship looks so different once you really focus on the way they work, but there do seem to be some constants.
the relationship between my dh and M. started off a little differently from the big relationships i'd had before him. it wasn't that i didn't find him attractive from the gitgo (he's a babe) but i didn't really think about him that way, we were friends for quite some time before i really started getting the lusties for him.
the lusties have waxed and waned over the years, due to stress, depression, kids, menopause etc. but the LIKE has never stopped, even when the going was rough.
on the far side of child-raising, we're finding that we're falling BACK into more of a giggly gropey fun love again- not really the heart-pounding knee-weakening lust of young 'uns, but more of a 'let's go play!' sort of thing. we're rediscovering aspects that we fell in love decades ago that got lost in the family shuffle, and also finding new things to love that we've acquired along the way.
cool question. nice thing to think about.
:) khairete
S.

"In love" means you don't know him yet.

That's cynical, I know. Okay, "in love" is that intense rush you get when you are first dating, and you can't get enough of that person.

Hi, Jen:
I fell in love once. All at once.
The passion still lingers.
D

It'll be different for everyone. For most, to say "I love..." can mean the basics. I mean, I love my dog. I love a good Philly Cheesesteak! I love summer. When it comes to people, I love my mom, my sister and brother, I love my kids, and so on. To be "in love" is that passionate love that is deep, not the basic love that is general. You'll hear women say after getting a divorce that they will always "love" their ex-husband. They're not "in love", but they will always love the good memories they had with their ex and special times that they had in the past. But they remarry and fall "in love" with a new man, someone that catches their deep and current affections in a way that no other can at that moment. Sometimes a person can't express how "in love" they are with their significant other because it's so deep it goes beyond words.

Hope this makes sense.

K. B
mom to 5 including triplets

I'd say your 1 & 2 are about the same.
To M., I've always felt that when you "love" a guy, it means you care for him very much, more than like, but not enough to spend the rest of your life with.

When you're "in Love" I think that is the real deal. When you found someone that you know you can & WANT to be with for eternity. No matter what stupid habits they might have.

I've known mine for 8 years now. We were friends for about 4 years before we even did anything.
He was actually my boss :) But I knew, from first meeting him that he was going to be important in my life. Didn't know how, but I felt it. We became great friends. Our customers used to ask us all the time "Aw how long have you been together" We would J. look at each other and say "um we're not dating"
Apparently everyone around us could see the connection.
We were hooked and didn't know it haha

After 8 years of being around this man, I am still always thinking about him. I get all giddy and excited when he gets home from work. I feel like I'm always staring at him "like a piece of meat" as he likes to say haha
I couldn't imagine my life without him. We're best friends.