There are many types of love:

Love of your;

Children

Pets

Home

Your parents

Friends

Spouse

Career

And so on.

To love is; to cherish, to be kind to, to want to spend time with, to respect, to enjoy, to trust, to want to know better. This list is too lengthy and I am sure you can add many of your own characteristics or qualities.

And then there is to be in love; to be smitten, infatuated, enamored, hooked, taken with, besotted, head over heels.

How about a few thought-provoking questions to ponder throughout your week.

– What is the real difference between the two?

– Can you have one without the other? Can you be in love and not love someone or can you love someone and not be in love with them? And vice versa.

– Are both necessary for enduring positive relationships

– If one of the people in a relationship say they are no longer in love with their partner as

in a marriage or engagement, but they still love them, is it time to pack

it up and find someone new or work to get the ‘in love’ back?

– If you are in a relationship and someone that you loved or were in love with and they said to you,

I love you I adore you but I am not in love with you any more, what are they really saying to you?

How would you feel? What would you say? What would you do?

To be in love is to share intimate feelings, hopes and dreams. To feel passion and excitement when the love of your life enters a room. To miss them and their touch. To want to be around them and listen to know and understand their every feeling, hurt, joy and frustration.

Yes, there are several similarities when you love something or someone and to be in love with someone. For example you can want to know and understand the emotions and feelings of your friends and your spouse but there is a difference in the depth of this understanding.

You can want to spend time at your job because you love it but you can never be married to it, although I have known a few people who have tried.

I was once told by a spouse that she loved and adored me but was no longer in love with me. Did this mean that the intimacy of the relationship was now gone? Did this mean that the relationship was now heading towards Winter as Chapman says in his latest book, The Four Seasons of Marriage?

Let’s face it the two are both important but are somewhat different. What I am struggling with is – are the differences significant enough to consider changing either your attitudes about these two concepts or changing partners?

I am having trouble defining what it means – to be in love – with someone. So I have had to do a little research and here is what I discovered. Everyone is as confused as I am. No one was able to give me a definition of – being in love that would satisfy the majority of people who say they are in love with someone.

I have researched every book in my relationship library, spent more than a few hours browsing the relationship section of a few bookstores and spent far too much time searching the internet for answers and I am as confused as ever!