We often carelessly interchange ‘I love you’ and ‘I am in love with you’. It happens so as we believe that these two sentences have the same meaning. Actually, they’re not. Love vs in love are two different things. It’s similar to loving someone vs being in love with someone.
Being in love comes when you’re attracted or have an obsession towards someone. You express it by holding hands and feeling lonely when your loved one is not around you. You suddenly crave for them when they’re not around and wish to spend most of your time with them.
However, loving someone is different. It’s about accepting someone the way they are. You accept them wholly without changing anything about them. You want to support them, encourage them, and want to bring the best out of them. This feeling needs 100% dedication and commitment.
Let’s understand the difference between the terms love vs in love properly.
1. Choice
Love is not always a choice. When you meet someone and find their qualities interesting, you start loving them. This happens once you’ve evaluated their best qualities and appreciate them for who they’re. This defines the feeling when you love someone.
However, if you’re in love then you have no choice but to love the person. It’s something that happens without your consent. Furthermore, you simply can’t walk away from this.
2. Well being
This is an important difference between the terms love vs in love. Love gives us the courage to do things that we thought were impossible or difficult. It gives us the power to do better for ourselves. However, when you love someone, you would want them to be the best. You want them to succeed.
In the other case, when you’re in love, you would not only want them to succeed, you would do things out of your way to make sure they achieve it. You would want to stand next to them and support them in their dream.
3. Shelf life of love

This again differentiates ‘I Love You vs I am in love with you’. As discussed above, when you love someone, you have a choice to be in love with someone. You make a decision and then start loving. This love has a shelf life. When the feeling dies up or things change, the love will vanish.
However, when you’re in love with someone, there is no shelf life. You can’t just stop loving someone you’re in love with. You didn’t decide to love that person in the first place. It happened automatically. So, the feeling stays forever.
4. Changing your partner
It’s a universal truth that no person is perfect. Everyone has their own flaws, but what they need is someone who can accept them for the way they are. Accepting a partner without changing them is the toughest job. When you love someone, you live in a fantasy world where you wish your partner to have a certain set of qualities. You may want to to change your partner to meet your expectations.
When you’re in love with someone you accept the reality. You don’t want to change your partner a bit and accept them the way they are, with their good and their bad. This is the most significant difference between the terms love vs in love.
5. Feeling
Often you would hear people say that when they’re in love how their partner make them feel. Well, the feeling is another aspect to differentiate love vs in love. When you love someone, you would expect them to make you feel special and great. Here, your feelings will play a major role.
But the situation is totally opposite when you’re in love with someone. When in love, you would want to make your partner feel special. This might sound right from a movie, but this is what happens. So, to determine the feeling, see whether you’re putting your feeling forward or your partner’s.
6. Need and want
Just like feeling, the desire to be with them or not can help you determine the difference between feelings of love vs in love. They say, ‘if your love is true, set them free.’ This fits well here. When you love someone, you would need them to be around you. The desire to be with them would be so strong at times that you would want to be with them no matter what.
However, when in love with them, you would want them to be happy, even if it’s without you. For you, their happiness matters the most. You would set them free and won’t stay with them unless being asked to.
7. Ownership and partnership
It is important to understand the difference between love vs in love. When you love someone, you have a sense of obsession. You would want them to be yours only. This explains the ownership of yours over your partner.
When you’re in love with someone, you seek partnership. You both decide to be each other and would look at your relationship as a concealed partnership.