GeniesLoki

You get this with positive emotions too I think. Love is "just" liking but you do it lots, but at some point the quality of the emotion changes in a way that saying "I love you" is more than "I like you a lot" because you've crossed that threshold.

I often think of emotions as dispositional: They are (or include) a felt sense that you are predisposed towards a particular class of actions or attitude towards the world. e.g. liking something means you are inclined towards more of it in your life.

(That's not literally true, it's possible to like something and not want to do it again, but it gestures vaguely in the direction of truth)

I think often this kind of threshold arises as a kind of felt sense of inevitability to that disposition. At normal levels you feel like "I would prefer something to be done" but at some point you cross over to "the natural order demands that something be done".

Josef Pieper defines love as a felt sense that it is wonderful that something or someone exists. To me this feels like the universe is made better for the object of love, in a way that feels like it extends beyond my mere personal preferences.

Liking feels like "It is good that this is in my presence". It's not that love *isn't* relational, but it feels like it has transcended that someone. Liking is more about me, and my relation to that which I like, while love is more about that which is loved.

The hatred/loathing line is similar. "It is bad that this is in my presence" vs "It is bad that this exists".