I don’t like most of the responses here so I’m offer my own. Love is not found it is built.

My wife and I got married young. I’m 34 and I’ll be celebrating my 9th anniversary in under a week.

Love is where all those things come together. We have the deepest friendship. We’re weird in the same ways and we’ve basically developed our own brand of humor. I can make my wife laugh literally with a look.

Love is also a commitment to never, ever bail. It’s unlike anything else. With friends, you still try to be good company or you wouldn’t tell them the deep thoughts. But my wife and I can share anything. We’re so intertwined that there’s more understanding than judgment. We can say things we don’t like about people, about the world, about ourselves. We can be truly vulnerable.

We didn’t find love, we built it. From 25 to 34 I’m a phenomenally different person, but we’re like two planets oscillating around each other. Our orbit influences the other, and vice versa. We never would have been these people if we weren’t together. With most friends I feel like they may have some influence… But in marriage it’s just undeniable.

It’s a truly unique thing. But I will say I couldn’t understand it until I had it. And I still don’t. Dating for 4 years wasn’t the same as marriage after 1 which wasn’t the same as marriage after 5 and that’s not the same as it is now after almost 9 years. It’s always growing, always deepening, and it’s just insanely personal at a very deep level.

For me, “like”, “love”, and “in love” are not separate emotions. They’re the same emotion resonating at different frequencies, for lack of a better metaphor.

“Like” and “Love” are largely hormonal as far as I can tell.

• You get along with someone and you want to hang out together, the chemicals in your brain say “hey…this person gets me and I’m happy being around them. I LIKE them.”

• You get along with someone, and you want to hang out together, and you’re sexually attracted to them. The chemicals and hormones say “Hey…I really really want to be alone with the person and tell them everything and share my intimate self with them. I LOVE them.”

“IN LOVE” is the one that takes work. Because “IN LOVE” happens long after you’ve started in that relationship. You know their goods. You know their bads. You know what makes them tick and what annoys them. You know what they do that annoys you, and yet you STILL have gotten so addicted to having them as a part of your life that you wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s like the old saying “Yes, we fight. But there’s noone else I would rather fight with.”

They are all one and the same emotion, and where it lands with any one particular person depends on the individual circumstances.

Yeah. What is love, really? A question people have pondered since the dawn of time.

There’s this societal expectation that things go a certain way. You know lots of people, make friends, become “more than friends” with some, “have feelings” for someone, date, stronger feelings, “fall in love”, and so on.

For some people love is very transactional. For some love is about passion. For some love is an infatuation. For some love is about practical compatibility, shared status, culture, and ideals. For some love is something that can only develop after years of marriage.

All of these are very different. None are right or wrong. They’re just narrow verbal explanations for a complex range of considerations both practical and emotional.

Honestly I think most people just follow the process of coupling with someone just because that’s what people do and life goes easier with a buddy.

I’m no master of romance, but my advice to you would be to just focus on building strong, close relationships with people in whatever form that might take, while being honest with them about what you can offer. In this context, honest doesn’t mean being abrupt and telling everyone you’re incapable of love, it just means not misleading people.

After reading your responses, I think you’re basically asking how to casually date friends, right? For casual dating/sex, stay away from friends. It can ruin the friendship or even the entire circle of friends. There’s always the “friends with benefits” thing, but even that often ends badly. For casual dating, stick with strangers. Aren’t there a ton of apps for that sort of thing?

Have you considered that you may be on the aromantic spectrum? To me it sounds like despite experiencing sexual attraction, you feel little to no romantic attraction.

Have you ever experienced sexual attraction?

Making friends easily argues against “socially awkward“ as an explanation but you might be asexual.

Literally right there with you, at 30. I’ve always chalked it up to nerves though.

FWIW, I don’t know that you can really be “in love” if you haven’t had a long term relationship with someone

Long and difficult question. For me, “The art of loving” by Erich Fromm was where I truly learnt this stuff. Inspired by Marx and Freud. The main point is that love starts with you, the subject, and how different kinds of love are connected. Could be what you’re after.

NOTE: There is some sexist and homophobic stuff in there. I will not defend it, but the spirit of the book does not rely on these points, in my opinion.

For me - don’t take this as the norm - I find friends through gaming, we become good friends over time, I’ll progressively ‘lower my guard’ and, as part of this process, make more and more sexual jokes and innuendos. Depending on how they react, it might stay at ‘teehee I’m still 13 making pp jokes’, or it might advance to the ‘so I think you’re into some freaky shit, I’m into freaky shit, wanna bang?’ friends with benefits territory. If that goes okay, I’m almost certainly catching feelings, and thus ‘want to be a couple’ is the next step. A few shared or similar interests, or an interest in each other’s interests, is important too. Can’t be pounding like rabbits all the time…

Basically, I eat the desert first, and then have the main course. If we aren’t sexually compatable in some aspect, it is stupid to be dating, in my view. No need for hurt feelings or awkward breakups. And falling back to fwb is easy if we don’t work out for other reasons. Just because you like pet spiders and I want to light them on fire (eek) doesn’t mean that we can’t wake the neighbors with our moans and screams.

To like someone means you enjoy their presence. If people enjoy it when you’re present you’re almost guaranteed to eventually have someone take interest in you.

For people to enjoy your presence you need to be comfortable with yourself as an individual before anything else.

I just don’t know how to (for lack of a better word) make others see me for more than just a friend.

You don’t. It’s complex and subtle and annoying. 😉

You don’t turn someone who doesn’t love you into some who does. You keep looking until you find a person who was already going to love you. And there are many, even when it doesn’t seem like there are. And it takes a maddeningly long time for some folks. It did for me.

25 is so young. For me, I just had casual relationships until something “stuck”, for lack of a better word. Stayed with my ex for 25 years, with my husband now for 11, we are so happy together and the sex is still good. Husband said he knew at the start he would be serious about me, I didn’t know until it lasted and got better and I liked his family, and his kids liked me and all our kids got along (more complicated situation when older, obviously) AND the sex stayed good and we still felt affectionate and loving.

I would say, at your age, it’s entirely possible you just haven’t met someone yet who you can feel that way about. You do have to be open to it if you want it, if that makes sense.

And I need to add- it’s not a requirement for a full and happy life, if you don’t want to pair up you don’t have to.

Well for me I had to change my gender and then suddenly i could be in love with people.