Today we talk about friendship and love.
We are usually inclined to keep these two things separate: friends are one thing while love is always meant as a couple relationship, seen in the partner.
Some often wonder what matters most whether love or friendship, as if love and friendship were in competition with each other.
The problem is related to the belief that lovers and friends are distant categories, that we love only one person and are friends with many. Nothing more wrong.
Friendship is a form of love.
The only difference is our mistaken belief in what it means to love. Today let's clarify, so let's start this rich study right away 😉
Wait, I forgot: whether it's friendship or love we always talk about relations with the others. Are you capable of creating solid and strong relationships? Would yours stand up to any problem? To find out, just answer the few questions in my test.
It will allow you to understand if you are capable of really love others and make them love you.
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Friendship and love: what's the difference?
To love, in truth, means to respect, understand, listen, forgive, support, accept, encourage, help, be patient.
If we stop seeing love only as a couple relationship, we realize that friendship is made up of unconditional love.
If today we think about who to give priority, between love and friendship, it is only because we live our relationships as if they were gods exchanges of interests and benefits.
If I have to choose between two alternatives, I choose the one that suits me the most, the one that gives me the most advantages, that makes me feel good.
So we have people who prefer friends, who have always been with us, and others who prefer partners, because without "love" there is no point in living.
Both are wrong because they don't talk about human relationships or love, but of need, interest and convenience.
Those who forget about friends at the beginning of the new relationship are not very much in love with their partner, but they have found in him who you satisfy them better.
Those who would never agree to leave friends for a couple relationship, gets more well-being from them than from the partner.
But both are deceived by the belief that you can only love one person (or a few at the most) at a time and that love is something to be received, to be obtained.
Most people abandon a partner who no longer meets their needs or friends who no longer behave as they would like.
We behave in the same way when our blender stops working, when the machine starts to skip, when the pen runs out of ink.
We use others for our interests.
Loving is something very different.
I don't love you for what you give me or for the benefits that come with our relationship, but I love you because I want to share my life with you, because I want to share my happiness with you, be you a friend or a partner.
Whenever I expect others, whoever they are, to adjust to my demands (even if shared by society), I am not loving, I have no friends or partners, but only interests and selfishness.
The big mistake in love and friendship is not to put love at the center of our relationships, but to center all about ourselves.
So we will have love or friendship only to the extent that people adapt to our standards and our demands, giving us well-being and satisfaction that we claim to receive.
Whether it is friendship or couple, we always talk about love, and true love it is universal and unconditional.
Love and friendship are two sides of the same coin, unfortunately many people mistake it for a simple coin and just try to have more and more.
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How to distinguish love and friendship
It is obvious that if we talk about friendship and love, with "love" we are referring to the couple relationship.
As said it is wrong, but for now let's keep this separation, in the end I will tell you how to eliminate it.
We play a game: make a list of all the things that characterize a friend or a friend.
But not a friendship like many others, but think about the person you might consider the closest, most important, the classic friend of the heart, or friend of the heart.
In short, that special friendship that binds you to a person and not to all your other friends, even though you love them too.
Stop for a few minutes and write this list.
As soon as you finish, read what I wrote and see if we agree.
Here's mine:
- Share the most important experiences of mine and his life.
- Forgive this person if he behaves badly or wrongly.
- Accept his views even if they are different from mine and wanting to understand why he sees it a certain way.
- Be there if you need to of a hand, of an encouragement, of my support.
- Know that I can count on this person, because he loves me and wants my happiness.
- Spending time together often, even just for the pleasure of sharing it, even if you don't do anything special.
- Talk to us often, if we can't meet, to talk.
- Wanting to know his ideas, his tastes, his preferences.
- Accept your choices e want the best for this person, even if sometimes it won't do what I think is right.
- Wanting her happiness and being happy with it.
These are just a few things.
Now your list, of course, could be much more precise than mine, which I have remained generic, and maybe you have referred to many situations in your daily life.
But the thing that is most important to me of all is to point out that if your friend, or any other person, reads this list, he may well think you are referring to your partner.
If in yours you have not exaggerated in thinking about situations that are too precise, try to reread it keeping in mind the person you are partnering with, or one with whom you have been in a relationship if you are now single.
Doesn't it fit perfectly?
Aren't they the same? Or almost all of them at least?
To tell the truth, only one is missing: sex. And maybe not always 😉
Many times I point out this very slight difference, to make it clear that the transition from a friendship to a couple relationship is characterized only by physical and sexual involvement.
Point.
There is nothing more.
Does it make sense to continue your relationship as a couple?
Answer my test questions to find out.
It will allow you to understand if your relationship has the characteristics to last or not.
Friendship or love: what makes the difference?
In fact, if you remove sex, many people, going through a couple crisis, will tell me that they feel like great friends, or brothers and sisters.
Understand that sex is the only distinction between a friend and a partner after all.
Physical attraction and sexual understanding are the heart that distinguishes a couple relationship from one of friendship.
Then we can come up with all the excuses in the world, but don't you often think that your partner should also be the best friend?
Why?
Because to a very close person, a great friend, you say everything, or almost everything, you share the important things, you want to be there in special moments.
After all, for how we live our relationships today, the only real difference lies in this dimension. That's it.
The problem is that sex, in this way, does not become an element of the couple, but the most important thing. If it is missing, beyond the false rhetoric, the relationship collapses, a matter of time.
Not because a couple is based on sex, in fact, for me sex matters little or nothing in a couple that is based on love, but because by almost always creating our relationships on need, we seek satisfaction in others for our demands.
And the couple stands out because we ask for something more than to a friend, precisely sex.
If this is not true, I ask you, in all sincerity, to answer a small question, I had already asked it several years ago, but now I know that I will have many more answers and a more reliable sample.
If your partner, due to a health problem, could never have sex again in his life, would you continue your relationship?
Would you be able to giving up sex forever to stay close to him and love him, or love her, despite everything?
I'm telling you: can you continue living your relationship without sex anymore? Without making love together anymore?
And without making love forever anymore?
Why am I making this pretty extreme hypothesis to you?
To make you understand that today we distinguish love and friendship on the basis of sex.
To make you understand that often our couple relationships, which should be the fruit of love, are born for the pursuit of personal pleasure.
And sex is the main way we choose to obtain this well-being, this pleasure.
I tell you in no uncertain terms: we confuse love with sex and maybe you will tell me that in fact they are linked together, but in my opinion, almost always, sex and love have nothing to do with it.
But here we would digress, even if the topic I guess is interesting 😀
Quiet, quiet, we'll talk about it again 😉
Discover the 5 Steps to Living INTENSIVELY a life Full of Emotions and Find You Well and in Balance in Every Situation (without Feeling Bad anymore) Training Your "Emotional Independence”, Even If You Don't Believe That Things Enough May they Be Different ...
... If You Don't Trust Yours Capacity or Yours Character It Doesn't Help You!
Conclusions: from friendship to love
What interests me to make you understand is that love, beyond any relationship we establish with others, is something unique.
If you love your partner more, or a friend, if you love some people more and others less, or some, who are neither partners nor friends, you do not love them at all, yours is not love even towards those you say you love.
Fromm said it many years ago, I think he was not wrong at all.
Love is a way of being, a way of living and thinking, love is the choice of giving all of oneself to others without asking for anything in return. Not even, and perhaps above all, to be reciprocated.
Before concluding, I'll show you a video that gives a good idea.
If we do not understand this, we will continue to live our life based not on love, and on loving, but about the kind of relationship we create with others, dividing people based on superficial labels, related only to our interest, what we get from them.
A friendship is based about our being friends, not about how others behave. Love is something you give, without expecting to receive it.
And a relationship is based on our giving love to each other, not expecting to receive it.
The point is that love comes first and then, also depending on what the other person chooses, we can define the relationship between us.
But if your relationships depend on what others do, you don't love, why love does not take into account the choices of others.
May.
I have no friends, I am a friend of those I meet, of those who call me, of the people with whom I share the moments of my life, whether it is a walk or a great difficulty, or a great success. This is true friendship.
I choose to love.
Not everyone will want to love me, but it's part of the game and I know not everyone is ready for such a difficult and courageous choice.
The truth, however, is that your love matters. Between love and friendship choose to love, to love everyone, to love in a sincere, true, authentic way.
If the claim that the other satisfies your pleasure, or makes you feel good, falls, you will begin to see quite clearly from don't think of others as a relationship you have, but how an opportunity to share the love that you are.
