Love and like are two emotions that every human has. Even though it is a neurological activity, these emotions increase compassion, kindness, and desire in the heart.
Activities of these two emotions motivate a person to care about his loveable things and encourage him to get what he desires.
Both of these emotions are very strong, and many people believe that he falls in love with what he likes. However, the reality is not that simple. Love and likes are two different types of emotion, and they drive people differently.
Key Takeaways
- Love is a deep, complex emotion encompassing strong affection, commitment, and attachment to a person, place, or thing.
- Like is a more moderate, less intense feeling of enjoyment, appreciation, or preference for someone or something.
- Both love and like describe positive emotions, but love carries greater intensity, connection, and emotional investment.
Love vs Like
Love is an expression of emotional attachment towards someone or something and it is accompanied by a desire to prioritize the other person’s needs and well-being. Like refers to a positive feeling or preference, while love involves a deeper emotional connection and attachment.
Comparison Table
| Parameter of Comparison | Love | Like |
|---|---|---|
| What is it | Love is a personal affection which derives from positive sublime virtue. | Like is an emotional attraction that anyone feels for another person, object, or ideology. |
| Types | Companionate love, infatuated love, consummate love, unrequited love, courtly love, empty love, and self-love. | Visual likes, logical likes, and emotional likes. |
| With time | Love grows stronger | Likes erode away |
| Value | Unconditional form of emotion | conditional form of emotion |
| Separation | Cause deep trauma and depression | Cause sadness |
What is Love?
Love is a personal affection which derives from positive sublime virtue. According to various physiologists, a human must have kindness, compassion, and affection to feel the emotion of love.
Love is an emotion that can affect anyone at any time. There is no specific time when anyone falls in love with something. Even with modern technological advancement, scientists haven’t found a reason behind love.
However, modern philosophers have segmented different types of love. These are companionate love, infatuated love, consummate love, unrequited love, courtly love, empty love, and self-love.
The love parents feel for their children and love for their spouses are one of the most potent forms of love. This type of love remains with a person for a long time and grows stronger.
Love is one type of emotion that does not depend on perfection. When anyone loves anything, they look beyond their material value. Any perfection or imperfection doesn’t change its value for the lover. In many examples, it has been found that a person might love an imperfect thing more than anything else. Love is truly an unconditional form of emotion.
Separation or departure from a loveable person or object may cause deep trauma and depression. It may take a person a long time to recover from this depression. This behaviour is commonly seen when anyone loses their spouse or a mother loses her children.
What is Like?
Like is an emotional attraction that anyone feels for another person, object, or ideology. It is a deep form of desire. Even though liking is a personal inclination, various social influences may affect this preference.
For this reason, various companies choose attractive marketing and advertisement tactics to influence public liking.
According to various philosophers, likes can be divided into three types. These are visual likes, logical likes, and emotional likes. Visible likes come from the attractiveness of an object or a person.
Most commodities available in the market fall in this category. Logical liking derives from sound reasoning. Most ideology anyone prefers falls into this category.
However, emotional likes depend on passionate attachments. A romantic relationship falls into this category.
Time plays a crucial role in this emotional attraction. Linking for an object or a person may erode with time. Someone like anything may not like it in the future.
For this reason, with time, many people quickly change their affection for movie stars and sports stars.
Likes compare one object with another and constantly look for perfection. Most people do not like any object or a person with imperfection. Like is a type of conditional form of emotion.
Most people feel sadness when departing from a likeable object or a person. However, they recover quickly, as many people recover from their breakups and move on.
Main Differences Between Love and Like
- On the one hand, love is a personal affection derived from positive sublime virtue. On the other hand, like is an emotional attraction that anyone feels for another person, object, or ideology.
- Multiple types of love exist, such as companionate, infatuated, consummate, unrequited, courtly, empty, and self-love. At the same time, there are three types of like: visual likes, logical likes, and emotional likes.
- With time, love grows stronger. However, with time, likes erode.
- Love is an unconditional form of emotion which looks beyond perfection and imperfection. But, like is a conditional form of emotion that constantly looks for the model.
- Any separation from a loveable object or person causes deep trauma and depression. It may take a long time to recover from this separation. However, any break from a likeable thing or person only causes sadness, and the person recovers quickly.
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