being "in love" versus "loving"

because there is a difference

I have been alive for almost twenty-three years. I am a firstborn daughter and the oldest sister to three younger siblings. I’ve lived in five different homes, three of which I can actually remember, and two of them being in the same town. I’ve been on a plane on my own twice, and traveled outside of the United States with my family four times. I have two mysterious bruises on my leg and one on the back of my hand, whose origins I do happen to know, for once in my life (an unfortunate jump rope incident). I’ve had five different part-time jobs since high school, four situationships, and one actual relationship. I’ve also loved too many people throughout my lifetime to count, and I’ve probably only ever been in love once.

I remember having a conversation along the lines of this, maybe a year or so ago now, on being “in love” versus “loving”: what is the difference? The way I see it, the main distinction lies in the idea that being “in love” is exclusively a romantic notion, meanwhile, “loving” is a feeling and an action you can display toward anybody, regardless of romantic involvement. This is a given. I’ve always known this; that there is a difference between being in love and loving, because right off the bat, just from the contexts in which the terms are used, the distinction is very obvious.

I’d found myself caught up in a pestilential game of romantic limbo with the person I was actually discussing this with, the reason for the discourse being that, in the early stages of our entanglement, he kept saying he was “in love” with me, but never that he loved me. I originally thought that maybe he was just being a boy and not monitoring the words that left his mouth; maybe the anxiety I felt around this was just the product of overthinking. I concluded that he probably thought he was saying he loved me and simply didn’t realize that there was an actual separation between the two sentiments. But as time went on, I realized that he was being very intentional with this. Every time I said that I loved him, he would reply with “and I’m in love with you”. It was great to hear, of course—it’s never a bad thing to hear that the person you care about so deeply is in love with you, but at some point it grew somewhat frustrating to hear because I didn’t know why he was being so diligent with this. Who responds to “I love you” with “I’m in love with you”? Why not just say “I love you too”? I know it’s a lot to ask of someone, for them to tell you that they love you, but it just felt strange to me for him to respond with that in this specific context. It’s not like he was the kind of person who was deathly afraid of it; one of those guys who referred to it as “The L-word”. It was a word he was comfortable saying to me; maybe just in that specific context, but still. This was when I truly began to notice the contrast between the two phrases. Both were beautiful to hear, but they meant very different things. 

Here is my theory. He might have been in love with me, but he didn’t necessarily love me. I was perceived by him as solely an object of infatuation; an obsession of romantic nature. He may not have even acknowledged this himself, but perhaps it was this sort of subconscious thought that resulted in him being so careful with his phrasing when it came to declarations of love. There might have been an idealized version of me that he was “in love” with and projected any fantasies he had onto me (or, rather, his perception of me), but when it came to the real live version of me—maybe he couldn’t truly say that he cared for her, so he didn’t. At least not right away. It didn’t help that it was a long distance relationship, either. It allowed so much more room and leeway to conceptualize and idealize a version of a person that didn’t exist, at least not fully. In other words: I was manic pixie dream girled. 

I hadn’t really considered romantic love as something that was actually tangibly in the cards for me until recently. I wanted it, but I wasn’t sure if it was something that would happen to me. My general insecurities greatly contributed to this thought, but that is a whole different story. I had survived all of high school relationship-less: I was convinced that I was the girl that guys were in an undefined thing with and proceeded to meet “the one” right after. The girl they danced around in circles with right before they met the girl that made them want to get their act together. This left me feeling romantically defeated most of the time, because I have always been a hopeless romantic, but these repeated experiences resulted in forcing myself to adopt this mindset, and train myself to be okay with lone-wolfing it through life. But then I met this person, and as cliché as it sounds, something just clicked. I instantly felt like I knew him well, and that he knew me well right back. And I thought that, with him, I was on the other side of the fence: I was finally the girl who was “the one” for someone; the girl that made a guy want to get better. As time went on, for some odd reason, I hadn’t really considered the possibility that he wouldn’t be in my life forever. In those moments, it felt ridiculous to me: the idea that all my life had led me toward meeting this person who I grew to care so much for, and who I felt cared for me in the same way, just for them to not be the one who stays.

To love someone is to know them, and to be loved is to be known right back. It’s being comfortable; to be content and secure in your relationship, whether your tie to them is romantic, platonic, familial—whatever. It is not the same as being in love. Loving is a feeling, an action, and a concept that transcends any kind of dynamic. Loving is making time, and soup when they’re sick.  Loving is a groggy “good morning” and a tender “goodnight” in between yawns. Loving is spotting them immediately in a crowded room and sprinting over. Loving is giving them the parts of your meal that you don’t like, but they love for some reason. Loving is a “happy birthday” text, timed perfectly to be sent at exactly midnight. Loving is a gentle squeeze of the hand in the backseat of the car. Loving is staying, not only when it is easy, but especially when it gets hard. Loving is being there. 

And as often as I can, I try my best to remember to tell the people I love that I do.