There is a reason people in relationships say they are in love with their best friend. I am in love with my best friend, and I’m also in love with the girls who I’ve been friends with all of my life. The type of love is just a little different.
When I was younger, I didn’t think it was possible to have more than one best friend. I thought only one of my friends was able to get that title, but I was wrong. However, while you can have one, three or seven best friends, you can have only one significant other.
I have my two best friends, and they are the two people in this world who I would do anything for, no matter how old we get. I say that because my love for them will never change.
Then I have my boyfriend. He is the one person who I not only love, but am also in love with. When people love their friends, it’s because of a personality connection. But when someone is in love with someone else, it becomes more of a personal and emotional connection between the two. And, trust me, there is a big difference.
When it comes to friendships, the love you feel for your best friends is ultimately the same. People can have multiple best friends and have different relationships with each other, but in the end, the way someone loves their best friends can all fit into the same category.
But with romantic love, it’s never the same. A person will never love one person the same way they do another. People can break up and then go on to love someone else. Depending on whom someone has fallen in love with will change the kind of romantic love someone experiences.
When a person is in a relationship, love heightens. It’s everything that someone experiences with their best friend and more. There becomes a physical state you can’t experience with your best friend and emotions are in full gear. Every hormone in your body becomes active, and you experience a roller coaster of emotions all at once.
I’ve been lucky enough to find someone who has taught me what loving another person romantically is like. It’s the kind of love that consumes the mind and the heart all hours of the day.
I can go days without seeing or talking to my best friends and know our friendship will remain the same. I can handle those days without them because it’s the kind of love where space is available and sometimes needed. But with him, that almost seems impossible to do.
Why?
I couldn’t give a sensible answer even if I tried because love in itself isn’t sensible. This kind of love can also be the most terrifying kind of drug. I’ve seen love transform people into unimaginable forms of themselves. Adults choosing the person they fall in love with over their child and relationships where one thinks it’s OK for someone to put their hands on them because love is their excuse.
There’s no snapping someone into reality when all they see is that one person. Once a person is truly and unexplainably in love, there’s nothing anyone can say or do to change it.
It’s amazing how love can affect us. There’s no explanation as to why love makes us feel the way it does, and there’s no rulebook as to how we should deal with it.
While people have the ability to choose the friends they want to love, they don’t always get to choose the person they fall in love with.
Email Emily Kim at cp@cardinalpointsonline.com
