To love is to feel love for something or someone. It is used in very close bonds: parents and children, best friends and couples, where its use is most popular.
To want it is to desire, to feel the need to have something or someone, or if there is some aspect of it: their attention, their time, their love, etc.
The difference between loving and wanting is that love is a higher expression of love or affection, as it is a feeling that has evolved over time between two or more people.
Wanting, on the other hand, is something more immediate, which can be fleeting or, on the contrary, can evolve into a true desire to love.
| To love | To want | |
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| definition | To feel love or affection for something or someone selflessly. | Feeling an intense desire to have something or someone, or to get something specific from a situation. |
| origin | From Latin love. | From Latin square. |
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what is love
Loving is the act of expressing love, so it can seem like a very generic action. However, in this case it refers to feeling intense and prolonged affection or affection.
To love comes from Latin lovewhich at the same time is speculated to come from Indo-European amma, a children’s expression to designate the mother. Therefore, specialists in the field have suggested that love could have had an initial connotation linked to the filial relationship mother and son.
However, nowadays love is also (and much more often) associated with the bonds between couples.
Loving is more related to the maturity of a relationship or bond and involves adult management of emotions. For example, parents love their children (and vice versa), not because they are ignorant of their faults, but above them.
In the same way, couple relationships usually start romantically (more associated with love) but over time the bond evolves and, with it, certain values such as respect, companionship, patience and empathy. This gives more depth to the relationship and creates the space for it to last over time, despite the differences between the members of the couple.
See also Difference between emotion and feeling.
What is wanting?
To want means to desire to have something or someone. In this sense, loving a person implies feeling affection for them or for a particular aspect.
Voler comes from Latin squarewhich means to ask for something, to try to get something from someone or a situation.
This does not necessarily imply that the bond develops out of interest, but in the sense that the one who wants, is waiting for his affection to be reciprocated in some way. We may love someone because we enjoy spending time with him or her and feel that their company reciprocates the affection we feel.
We can also love a person because we give or receive attention, because it gives us a sense of security, because we feel that their behavior or their knowledge can be valuable, because ultimately they contribute something that is important for those who feel the desire to love.
Wanting can be intense but also transitory. In this sense, wanting can become something bigger, like loving, but it can also suddenly disappear.
An example of wanting that is very common is the first stage of falling in love, in which couples spend a lot of time together, emotions are very high and in a very general way it can be said that it is a period of abstinence , in which it is not always possible to discern about certain matters with objectivity.
The evolution of the relationship, the common agreements, the emotional maturity of the members of the couple, the shared values, among other factors, will then determine whether it was a passing sensation or, instead, they will enter a more solid stage.
See also: