What’s the difference between loving someone and being in love with someone?

KiraBeauty: What’s the difference between loving someone and being in love with someone?
Is being in love have to do with romance and infatuation? Or is loving someone just caring a lot for someone, minus the romance, sex, etc. I always hear my parents saying they love each other but their not in love anymore. Their divorced. So whats the difference?
Their not lying to me. They been together for very long and they separated because they got tired of eachother. They still are friends though.

Answers and Views:

Answer by thiz
they are just lying to you and themselves. they have moved on

Answer by Danger
I’ve wondered about this too

In my language you’d never say I love you to your kids, there are other words for that.
You obvioussly don’t love your kids the same way you love your spouse. So it’s kinda weird to use that word

And “in love” means two people have an open attraction towards eachother (by personality, and also looks but not necessarily). Here I think people are just confused about what it really means so most of the time they say they’re not.

“I love you” is something you only say to your partner once it’s really serious.
Thats in the direct translation of the words to norwegian.
I think English is just inconsistent some times.

Answer by N/A
You hit it on the head. Love is I care about you and your well being. I hope we can be friends and not have bad blood between us. In love is passion, desire and well being. More less in love is even when things are not perfect you still want to be with them. People can also fall back in love once they realize what they got is gone or that the grass is not always greener. Its a song that goes, in your eyes, the light the heat I am complete. I feel that is the best way to describe in love. This is of course what I feel love/in love is..

Answer by BikerChick
The easiest way I can explain this, is like this:

You LOVE your dog, you are IN LOVE with your boyfriend or husband, AND are a COMMITTED partner with and to that relationship.

When two married people finally decide that they cannot actually live with each other any more, it does not MEAN they no longer LOVE each other, they just no longer feel they can be committed to each other any more. When you are IN LOVE, you forsake all others, and only feel the need to be with each other. It really does not have to involve romance or infatuation – – take a married couple that has been together for 40 years for example, or when one partner is severely handicapped or gravely ill. LOVERS, RESPECT each other more than anything else. In the case where you love your dog, obviously your dog cannot feel what you do – they are just a dog.

Answer by John W
From a biological point of view, the difference is Phenyl Ethyl Amine and Oxytocin. PEA is what gives you that obsessed infatuated feeling early on in a relationship. It’s nature’s way of bringing people with nothing in common together for procreation. When you have high PEA levels, nothing else matters except the target of your affections. The drug Ecstasy was originally a chemical very similar on a molecular level to PEA, of course now that that has been outlawed, what you find on the street often is just a blend of other dangerous street drugs that are easier to produce. You can find PEA in chocolate. Oxytocin is the bonding hormone, a mother is flooded with Oxytocin to create the mother child bond. It’s what holds people together over decades. When you massage someone, you stimulate the release of Oxytocin in their body. The effects of PEA wear out in about 3 to 7 years by which time, one would hope Oxytocin has created a lasting bond between the couple but that doesn’t always happen.

From a linguistic point of view, loving is something that you do, being in love is a state that you are in.