Love and Friendship

Friendship is a tree while love is like a flower.

By: Yeong Jae Han

My girlfriend asks me, "If your friend and I fall into the sea, who will you save?" This question is difficult to answer. And, my friends ask me, "If I am admitted to the army tomorrow, are you going to meet me today?" But today is my girlfriend's birthday and she is looking forward to that. The way the situation would be handled, as you probably know, is such a way that people almost have to be self-selecting. If you had to make a choice, which one would you choose? Also, including this situation, we constantly worry about which one to choose: friendship or love. So, do we really understand love and friendship? It is very difficult to draw a boundary between the two. Let's take time to look at the similarities and differences of love and friendship and to think about their meanings.

Love and friendship have something in common. That is, both relationships are on a positive side. First of all, both relationships involves caring about each other. They want to know each other more deeply and try to understand each other. So, concern is a key quality necessary to form a relationship bond. In addition, these relationships hate conflict. Even when there is a conflict between true friends, they try to understand and forgive each other. They have a habit of giving concessions to each other in order to avoid conflicts. Lastly, these relationships feel good whenever the peple are together. It is good to be together, so they will often look for each other's acquaintance. It'd be the best to have both of them. So, if my girlfriend and/or friends are not around me, I'd contact them. I want to keep in touch with them (lover and friends) and maintain good relations with them.

The difference between love and friendship is emotion. Love is a heartbreaking emotion when you think about a person who does not love you back. Compared to love, friendship is more of a comfortable feeling. There is a difference in the strength of the emotion. So, people's love is a blazing fire but could easily be put out while friendship is a typical fire but is hard to put out.

Another difference is persistence. Experts say that the expiration date of love is 2 years. But, expiration date of friendship does not exist. Friends boast about how many years they have been friends. Love is sometimes so intense that it is hard to sustain.

The last difference between love and friendship is that love is exclusive while friendship is not. Love does not allow the intervention of others that could potentially hurt their relationship. On the other hand, friends can absolutely become friends with other friends. In short, lovers do not like others entering their world, but friends are stepping stones to a wider relationship.

Finally, let's look at how to manage love and friendship. Then feel free to answer the main question: if you were to choose just one, which would it be, friendship or love? I love my girlfriend and I love spending time with her, but I like balance and I still really value my friendship. Nevertheless, I choose to love. Love is like a flower, so you should always take care of it. Love will wither unless you take good care of it. On the contrary, friendship is like a tree, in such a way that they are watching me, never letting me out of their sight. The important thing in love is the continuous concern and interest. On the other hand, what is important in friendship is the trust in one another, even if they do not actually say it. To sustain the love, you need to keep in touch and express your love. To maintain friendship, it is important to not to do something that could possibly break trust.

In conclusion, it is very difficult to draw the boundary between love and friendship. Sometimes friendship deepens into love over the years. Some people say that love is a long-term friendship. Personally, I believe that love is a deep form of friendship. As an evidence, friendship often ends in love, but love ending in friendship almost never happens. Anyway, both of these relationships are helpful to us. We must be sincere and faithful, whether it is in love or friendship. It is also a great energizer for us to live and motivates us to do something. When I'm sad, my friends and lover are likewise sad and when I'm happy, they become happy as well. In my opinion, friends or lover can be considered as a second version of ourselves.