Main Difference
The main difference between the words like and love is that to like someone, or something means you find something satisfactory or agreeable and to love something, or someone means you feel deep attraction for someone.
Like vs. Love
Like and love is the two most common emotions or feelings experienced by people around the world. ‘To like’ means that you find something agreeable or satisfactory. Love is a strong feeling of affection. You like the person you love, but that does not mean that you love the people you like. Liking someone means to agree with them or being pleased with them. Loving someone means to have a deep feeling of affection for them. You certainly like someone whom you love, but it is not necessarily true that you love someone whom you like. Like is the feeling of being happy with the presence of a specific person. Love is the extremely intense feeling in which you cannot bear to be without a specific person with whom you are in love. As cliche, liking gives you the proverbial butterflies in the stomach but loving someone involves something much deeper than that. Like is to be comfortable in the company of a person. Love is a specific person becoming an integral part of your life. Like and love has a difference in the level of affection one have for something or someone. When you like a person, you feel happy when he/she is around you. But when you love someone, you feel that you can never manage to live without them. Like is based on choice, and it is an instant feeling. Love is based on trust, and it may take time to develop. The feeling of liking someone can be developed for anyone or anything. But the feeling of love is only developed for the very few in your life. ‘Like’ means admiration and attachment. Love means acceptance and endurance.
Comparison Chart
| Like | Love |
| A mild feeling of attraction towards something/someone | A strong and intense feeling of attraction towards something/someone |
| Associated With | |
| Pleasant feelings | Intense, strong feelings |
| Nature | |
| Need a reason | Unconditional |
| Duration | |
| Temporary | Permanent |
| Feeling | |
| Mild | Strong, intense |
What is ‘Like’?
Like is a feeling of admiration towards something or someone. You say that you like someone or something only when you find them satisfactory. You can like a lot of things and people in life. When you say that you like a person, this preference could be based on the qualities or physical appearance of that person. Liking someone is also synonymous with respecting someone, agreeing with someone, or even having a crush on someone. It depends on the context. In modern society, ‘like’ also means to display approval through social media networks. Generally, people enjoy early stages and initial feelings of liking someone. They even like to talk to them and spend time together. They like learning all the details about each other — the feeling of likeness associates not only with the persons but also with the things. You tend to like a dress, shoes, a specific restaurant, or anything that make you happy or satisfied. But this is a controllable feeling. One can manage to live without a person or thing one likes. And the likeness is not permanent. It is temporary in a way that the likeness towards something keeps on changing. i.e., If you like a specific person or some reason you can dislike it if something bad about him/her happens to you (unlike love). Hence, this feeling ‘like’ is a limited state of emotions that is under the control of a person.
Examples
- I like to read detective novels.
- I like cats.
- I like the way he talks.
- He likes that new girl in college for her long hair.
What is Love?
Love is a strong feeling of affection. Generally, love exists in the strong and long relationships. It is an unconditional emotion. It exists between the parents and their children, a husband and a wife, a brother, and a sister, etc. Also, we use ‘love’ when we are talking about something we like a lot. For example, “I love swimming.” Or “I love chocolate cupcakes.” Love is much deeper and different emotion. It is a thing of beauty. It gives you relaxation and confusion at the same time. It is a strange feeling among all. Love is full of passion and is always similar to those emotions felt when you first met that person. Love is not about gaining the upper hand. It is selfless and undemanding. Furthermore, the feeling of love once developed, cannot be replaced or demolished. The main feature of love is that it eliminates imbalances and different degrees of feelings. You do not love a person for a reason because love needs no reason. You love wholeheartedly. If you are in love with someone, merely the thought of losing them or going far away from you will make you sad. Hence it is an intense emotion whose outcome in every sense is extreme. Sometimes, people after accidentally losing the person they love could not manage to live happily ever. They dedicate their whole life to loneliness. Means the whole world becomes nothing or them due to the absence of the person they love.
Examples
- She feels that she is in love with him.
- He loves his family.
- She loves her cat.
Key Differences
Conclusion
Like and love are the two different kinds of emotions in men and women.
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