Love and love

to love is to feel love for something or someone. It is used in very close ties: parents and children, best friends and partners, where its use is most popular.

Want It is to desire, to feel the need to have something or someone, or failing that, some aspect of it: their attention, their time, their love, etc..

The difference between loving and wanting is that loving is a higher expression of love or affection, since it is a feeling that has evolved over time between two or more people.

Wanting, on the other hand, is about something more immediate, which may well be temporary or on the contrary, it can evolve into a true desire to love..

	to love	Want
Definition	Feeling love or affection for something or someone in a selfless way.	Feeling the intense desire to have something or someone, or to obtain something concrete from a situation.
Source	From Latin i will love.	From Latin quarere.
Characteristics	Can feel towards something or towards someone . It deepens with time. It implies trust, loyalty, unconditional. Requires emotional maturity. Loving implies an evolution of wanting.	Can feel towards something or towards someone . It can be a fleeting sensation. It implies desire, satisfaction, immediacy. It does not require emotional maturity, although it would be ideal. Wanting does not always mean loving.
Examples	Maternal love. Love in healthy and solid relationships.	Relationships mediated by an interest or benefit (attention, love, companionship). Intense and short-lived love ties.

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 the fact of feeling intense and prolonged affection or affection.

Love comes from latin i will love, which in turn is speculated to come from Indo-European amma, a childish expression to designate the mother. Therefore, specialists in the field have suggested that amare may have had an initial connotation linked to the filial relationship mother and child.

However, nowadays, loving is also associated (and much more frequently) with the bonds between couples..

Loving is more related to the maturity of a relationship or a bond, and involves an adult management of emotions. For example, parents love their children (and vice versa), not because they are ignorant of their flaws, but above them..

In the same way, couple relationships usually start in a romantic way (more associated with love) but with the passage of time the bond evolves and with it, certain values ​​such as respect, companionship, patience and empathy. This gives greater depth to the relationship and creates 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 want?

Wanting implies wanting to have something or someone. In that sense, loving a person implies feeling affection for them or for a particular aspect..

Wanting comes from Latin quarere, what it means to ask for something, to try to get something from someone or from a situation.

This does not necessarily imply that the bond is developed out of interest, but in the sense that whoever wants to, is waiting for their affection to be rewarded in some way. We can love someone because we like to spend time with him or her and we feel that their company returns the affection we feel.

We can also love a person because we give or receive attention, because it creates a sense of security, because we feel that their behavior or their knowledge can be valuable, because ultimately, it contributes something that is important to those who feel the desire to love.

Wanting can be intense but also transitory. In that sense, wanting can become something greater, 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 raw and in a very general way it can be said that it is a period of self-absorption, 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 if it was a passing sensation or, if on the contrary, they are going to enter a stage more solid.

See also Difference between friendship and companionship.