You say it's a funny question? That only teenage girls can not feel the difference? Alas, no… Otherwise, in the soul of many women, painful questions would not arise, like:

— Is it love or not?
— Love or affection?
— Love or just passion?
— Love or addiction?

After all, "like" is just a lightweight form of attachment, dependence, passion, and much more. "Like" is just an instinctive "toggle switch" that works in our head under certain circumstances.

Like / Love. Nature

Let's look at some like—like pairs to feel the difference. And let's not start with a relationship at all. It will be more interesting this way.

Someone says, "I like nature." Then he goes to the country for the weekend and unloads with the company on the green lawn by the river.

Then everyone pours something alcohol-containing into themselves, chews fried meat with baked potatoes and leaves plastic cups and plates at the place of their stay according to the number of persons involved in the process. And, of course, plastic bottles — where without them?

But they really like nature.

For some reason they don't want to have a picnic in the apartment. They spend time and effort to get ready and come to the country, find a normal place and sit in good company in nature.

Do they like nature? Sure. Otherwise, why would they arrange all these trips for themselves?

Excellent.

Now there is someone who says, "I love nature." And he also goes to the country for the weekend and disembarks with the company on the green lawn by the same river.

But here's the bad luck — everything is already littered here. And then our heroes begin to clean up the shore, collecting plastic dishes scattered everywhere, bottles and other "good" left by other vacationers.

And they can also indulge in the same drinks, chew meat and potatoes, but they will clean up after themselves. After they leave, nothing will remind you that there were people here. Except, perhaps, the traces of the fire.

And these guys love nature. Yes, they like her too, but they don't just like her. For them, this is not just a place where you can have a great rest and get positive emotions. It's more than that for them.

So it turns out that those who love nature, clean up after those who just like it. Let's move on.

Like / Love. Help

We have someone who says, "I like to help others."

Someone might say that I find fault with words. Not at all. It's just that, at least, we have to "dance" from something. And the word is quite a good starting point.

In addition, a person, as a rule, does not choose words by chance. The same thing can be expressed in very different ways. And how exactly a person calls or characterizes something says a lot about him.

So, someone is trying to help not because there really is an inner urge to do this, but for completely different reasons.

Someone wants to help others to feel their own importance and usefulness.

Someone is suffering from a sense of guilt and wants to atone for it through "doing good" to everyone.

Someone pursues quite self-serving goals of the barter plan: "First I will help you, and then, if you please, you will help me."

And so on…

Another friend may say, "I like to help others."

And there will be something fundamentally different behind it.

This is not an attempt to feel valued. Not the desire to get rid of guilt. Not the desire to get something in return.

This is an internal need for the return of energy. And it is not related to social approval and other "buns" that can be obtained for "good behavior".

After all, when a person is filled with Love and has inner integrity, he simply wants to give energy to others. He doesn't imagine this life any other way.

And he does not give the last, enjoying the dubious role of the "exhausted hero", but the excess, the surplus of what he has. But about the right return a little later, and now let's look at how it works in a relationship.

Like / Love. Person

"I like him/her," someone says.

Sure. Like a flower in a field, you just want to pick it, smell it and, after walking fifty meters, throw it away when the fragrance is already boring, when the emotions are no longer the same.

Do you like it? Sure. You can please your receptors, experience pleasant feelings: pleasure, pleasure, excitement, delight.

I like it so much that even thinking about him/her takes my breath away, and my heart starts beating faster.

But what lies behind it? The desire to exploit another person. The desire to get a lot of positive impressions through it. Usually without thinking at all about what is happening to him at this very time.

And someone else says, "I love him/her."

And for him, this means that, seeing a beautiful flower, you do not want to pluck it, but help to become even more beautiful. Water, loosen the ground, substitute warm sunlight.

This desire is not to consume, but to improve, develop and contribute.

This is not so much a desire for pleasure and joy as an attempt to bring joy to the object of love, to invest your energy in it.

This is not so much a desire to make your life happier and better, as a sincere desire to make another person's life better.

The right return

Knowing how often we fall into the trap of "black and white" thinking, I want to say right away that true Love is not thoughtless self-sacrifice or self—abasement.

Both of these behaviors, brought to the point of absurdity, are just an indicator of how much the human psyche is unbalanced in its desperate attempts to find Love.

These are just signs that betray a misunderstanding of how you can get Love otherwise. And when we don't know how to do it right, we begin to go the way of destroying ourselves or our partner.

Hoping to satisfy our need for true Love and intimacy, we involuntarily begin to manipulate the feelings of another person, as if forcing him to show Love for us.

We subconsciously think: "Since I behave so sacrificially and do everything for him, then he (the partner) simply has no moral right not to respond to me with Love (otherwise he is just a beast, an ungrateful creature, etc.)"

It seems to us that this is not fair. That it's a betrayal, that it's a deception.

In fact, it's about the right return. In such a return, the consequence of which is the reverse flow of energy to you.

I emphasize that we are talking about the right return, otherwise I already hear outrages, like: "Of course! — I'm jumping here for him this way and that, I do EVERYTHING for him, and HE..."

Proper return is impossible without three main components:

1. It is performed with joy in the heart

You do this not by shrinking into a ball from pain and a sense of injustice, but with a joyful and light feeling similar to the one that arises when you sincerely and with pleasure help another person in something.

2. It is committed without intent to fuck something from this

Whether we want it or not, but it feels. The other person reads our intention, our secret (and, moreover, explicit) desire to benefit from interaction with him.

And this hinders him. If each of us were perfection itself, then no one would be offended by the fact that we "play the market". But, since we are ordinary people, negative mechanisms of the psyche flare up in us, which resist this approach.

Something inside whispers to us: "Oh, she / he wants to get something from me… But the hell with it!"

Why is this happening? It's all about free will. We want our retaliatory actions towards another person to come from the depths of our hearts, and not just be provoked by the law of "mutual exchange".

3. It is done out of a sense of sufficiency

When we give the other the "last shirt", it can have two consequences.

On the one hand, a person may feel sympathy for us because of our sacrifice, and against this background, some kind of relationship may begin (alas, it is not a fact that healthy).

On the other hand, with this approach we endanger our energy integrity and autonomy. After all, giving the latter, we seem to surrender to the mercy of another person and wait for a return "portion" from him, while being almost on the last "energy exhalation".

And if we do not receive this very "portion", then we find ourselves, firstly, in a very pitiful situation, and secondly, we also take offense at the object of our sacrifice. As if it's his fault that we put our last strength and energy into him.

Love and pleasure

Returning to the "love — like" pair, it should be noted that it is normal to enjoy what we love.

However, it is not normal when pleasure and the desire for it become the dominant force in love. When the desire to receive something completely overshadows the desire to give correctly.

Without enjoying a loved one, love will certainly lose the lion's share of its attractiveness, so it is important and necessary to let this very component into your life. The only question is to do it consciously and put it in the appropriate place in the ladder of values.

When we understand exactly how to give correctly, so as not to be left with a naked, sorry, ass, then we begin to understand how to accept love and energy in return, how to receive true joy and happiness from a love relationship.

We begin to appreciate both ourselves and our partner.

We begin to look at the world from different points of view.

Finally, we precisely draw the line in our sensory experience between the semi-instinctive "like" and the mature "love".

And when this happens, we stop confusing and unwittingly deceiving both ourselves and other people.

Do you know how to distinguish like from love?