To love is to feel love for something or someone. It is used in very close ties: parents and children, best friends and couples, where its use is most popular.
Querer is to desire, to feel the need to have something or someone, or some aspect of it: your attention, your time, your love, etc.
The difference between loving and wanting is that to love is a higher expression of love or affection, as it is a feeling that has evolved over time between two or more people.
Loving, on the other hand, is something more immediate, which may well be fleeting or, on the contrary, may evolve into a true desire to love.
| To love | Querer | |
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| Definition | To feel love or affection for something or someone in a selfless way. | Feeling an intense desire to have something or someone, or to get something specific out of a situation. |
| Origin | From Latin amare. | From Latin quarere. |
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What is to love?
To love is the act of expressing love, so it may seem a very generic action. However, in this case it refers to the fact of feeling an intense and prolonged affection or affection.
To love comes from the Latin amarewhich in turn is speculated to be derived from the Indo-European ammaan infantile expression to designate the mother. Therefore, specialists in the field have suggested that amare may have had an initial connotation linked to the filial mother-child relationship.
However, nowadays amar is also (and much more frequently) associated with bonds between couples.
Loving is more related to the maturity of a relationship or a bond, and implies an adult management of emotions. For example, parents love their children (and vice versa), not because they ignore their faults, but over and above them.
Similarly, couple relationships usually begin 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 greater depth to the relationship and creates the space for it to last over time, despite the differences between the partners.
See also Difference between emotion and feeling.
What is to want?
To like implies to desire to have something or someone. In that sense, to like a person implies feeling affection for him or her or for a particular aspect.
Querer comes from Latin quarerewhich means to ask for something, to try to obtain 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, is expecting his or her affection to be repaid in some way. We may love someone because we like spending time with him or her and we feel that his or her company repays the affection we feel.
We can also love a person because we give or receive attention, because he or she generates a sense of security, because we feel that his or her behavior or knowledge can be valuable, because in short, he or she contributes something that is important to the one who feels the desire to love.
Loving can be intense but also transitory. In that sense, wanting can become something greater, like loving, but it can also disappear suddenly.
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 issues 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 feeling or, on the contrary, if they are going to enter a more solid stage.
See also: Family types
