What is the difference between romantic love and friendship?

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Relationships have roles and they have rules, happiness is built on top of them.

Friendships might have roles and they might have rules, but the happiness of friends is not built on top of the relationship.

If you break up a friendship, two people are inconvenienced. If you break up a relationship, you’re breaking up people’s lives.

The classic differentiator here is sex. Not all relationships involve sex, but in the US that’s the common way of looking at it, people will look at you funny if you say you’re in a sexless relationship.

But there’s more to a relationship than sex, and it’s worth digging into how you guys see each other’s role in the relationship and what you can and can’t do as a result of that other person.