Key difference: ‘Love’ is a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person. It is a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend. It can also be used to describe sexual passion or desire. Friendship is a relationship between two people based on a mutual affection for each other.

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Humans are fascinated with love. We need love, we crave love, and we’ll do anything for love. There are pages and pages devoted to love throughout history, stories, poems, sonnets, paintings, and so much more.
See the difference between love and marriage.

According to Dictionary.com, ‘love’ is a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person. It is a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend. It can also be used to describe sexual passion or desire.

Love is a strong affection and the emotion of personal attachment. Love is defined as a virtue full of human kindness, compassion, and affection; "the unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another". While, love more often than not is used to denote feelings toward the romantic partner, love, in fact, is more generic than that.

Loving someone is a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection. It can be used to refer to anyone, any person, or anything. For example, I love you. I love my mom. I love my husband. He loves his girlfriend. I love my dog. They love pizza. She loves vanilla ice-cream. Mary loves the sea. John loves football.

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Love can be used to refer to a variety of different feelings, states, and attitudes, ranging from pleasure to interpersonal attraction. It may refer to passionate desire, the intimacy of romantic love, sexual love, familial love, platonic love, religious love, and to a concept of love that encompasses all of those feelings. However, when referring to love between two different people, there are in fact two distinct forms of love:

• Platonic love: A deep and non-romantic connection or friendship between two individuals. It is love in which the sexual element does not enter. Platonic love can refer to friends, best friend, siblings, parents, children, etc.
• Romantic love: Considered similar to platonic love, but involves sexual elements. This the type of love referred to when talking about the love between two partners, such as a boyfriend-girlfriend, husband-wife, boyfriend – boyfriend, girlfriend – girlfriend, etc.

Also see: Difference between Love and Infatuation 

Love or actually the need to be loved is the driving force between all interpersonal relationships that one forms. Love is a psychological need for all humans. We all want to feel loved. Love is, in fact, a part of our survival instinct. It is a function to keep human beings together so that they may procreate and continue the species. However, this is debatable as to why humans need love, whereas many other species procreate well in the absence of love.

Despite the presence or lack of love, humans seek acceptance in a group of friends. It can be said that friendship is a form, platonic love. Essentially, friendship is a relationship between two people based on a mutual affection for each other.

According to Dictionary.com, a ‘friend’ is:

• A person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard.
• A person who gives assistance; patron; supporter: friends of the Boston Symphony.
• A person who is on good terms with another; a person who is not hostile: Who goes there? Friend or Foe?
• A member of the same nation, party, etc.
• A person associated with another as a contact on a social-networking Web site: We've never met, but we're Facebook friends.

A friend shows the value of his friendship by expressing the following:

• The tendency to desire what is best for the other
• Sympathy and empathy
• Honesty, even in situations where it may be difficult for others to speak the truth
• Mutual understanding and compassion; ability to go to each other for emotional support
• Enjoyment of each other's company
• Trust in one another
• Positively strong, deep, close reciprocity, mutuality – equal give and take between the two parties
• The ability to be oneself, express one's feelings and make mistakes without fear of judgment.

A friend is someone you hang out within a group, someone to talk to and to laugh with. Friends stand out in a group of people. Friends are someone who you are happy to spend time with you doing absolutely nothing at all, someone who doesn't mind driving you on stupid errands; someone who tries to help you. A friend is someone who would never intentionally hurt you, lie to you, deceive you, manipulate you, abuse you and who takes great care to be kind to you.

It can also be said that romantic love is a step ahead of platonic love or friendship, as a lover also emulates more or less all the characteristics of friendship. One can say that a lover is a friend with the added benefit of romantic attraction. In fact, many relationships start off as friendships.

Also see: Difference between loving and being in love 

Image Courtesy: wahidthe1.blogspot.com, fun4friends.net