i think that's like apples and orangotangs
being able to get along is very different from an overall comfort in someone's existence

i, too, am buzzed and this is too close to a comic i just redrew so don't make a spoiler

In your lives, what person have you liked the most?

mrs. jonmc (aka pips) tops the list. There's several people from Mefi/Cha etc. on the list, too: vidiot, divine_wino, chicobangs, dame, languagehat, etc. and IRL, there's the infamous RTEMT (aka Rob The Cop), my old buddies Chris F. who keptme sane in grade school, Chris C. who kept me sane in high school, Darin, who kept me sane in College, Rich, Heather, Pete, Sandra and countless others. If you're out there, here's to ya.

(I've mentioned all these people obliquely on various MePermutations)

Actually, some of the people I like, I don't like all the time. I don't think like is continuous.

Huh. I started writing a list, but I realized that I love--deeply, platonically (for the most part)--all the people I also like.

I hate you all.

/eyeballkid

unsurprisingly, i jibe with miko

I want to know who delmoi likes.

I think the person who I've liked the most in my life, just really truly liked, was a roommate I had when I lived in NY. I fell out of touch with her, and miss her, even though I haven't seen her in 15 years. I google her name every once in a while, but she may have gotten married and changed it, so who knows. I'd really like to get in touch with her again - we were very sympatico in so many ways. I've never liked anyone else again as much as I liked her.

I think the person I like most is my Dad. I'd hang out with him even if he weren't my Dad.

Actually, most of my favorite people have been dogs.

I liked all my grandparents and to this day tend to instant rapprochement with older people, especially old men. There's something indescribably wonderful about a tough, tough old guy who's seen it all and mellowed into a rough sweetness. I get on best with such men, because they tend to glow warmest around the company of little kids and admiring women. I listen to their old war and tomcat stories and admire their well-kept cars and toolsheds and flirt with them a little if they like that and am happy.

I like little sweet kids, like my youngest nephew; my sister-in-law always worries I tire of playing with him long before I do. I like teaching them things and feeding them something good they've never had before so that their eyes fly wide open. I like how when they trust me they hug with all their soft weight.

I like my husband. Just the other day I made him laugh, and I thought about how he laughs all the time at things I say that would only elicit puzzled looks and the audible thud of a dead joke from other men. No one's ever got me like he does. So I love him, yeah, but I like him just as much or more.

I like a whole mess of you from afar and interrobang and a bunch of other friends from nearby. And no two of you for the same reasons, either. And yeah, like is not a perfect line; it's a continuum, where your old neighbor tells the same Depression tale for the fifteenth time and you wince a bit inside, or the little boy who was just resting comfortably against you starts screaming his head off for a toy he can't have, ad infinitum, but it circles back again. Sometimes it's a slow lazy arc you can barely hang on to, but it circles back just the same.

I like *you* delmoi.

my grandma--and various friends over the years.

I tend to stew and harbor petty resentments about many of my friends, even ones that I'd gladly throw myself in front of a truck to save. The only friend I don't resent about anything is my friend Brian, the zombiemaster. But the like there is more muted than the like I feel for other friends. Which is to say that I don't know. Or I'm with miko.

i pretty much deeply despise everyone.

Damn, quonsar stole my comment. I do, however, tolerate a number of people. Barely. I could snap at any moment, though.

i barely tolerate more people less and extremely hate one person right now who is not among you
i have just snapped
now i must pee

I want to know who delmoi likes.

Actually i was sort of feeling this euphoria, a general contentment with the world writ large, although I was inspired by this Chinese girl I was talking too. She has a boyfriend, former fiancé and I'm wondering if I should make a move when she moves back into town. I like her, but I really don't know if we would be compatible romantically.



I think the person I like most is my Dad. I'd hang out with him even if he weren't my Dad.


Ironic, since my dad would be the classic example of 'love, but not like'.

I like *you* delmoi.

Awww...

&heart;

Yeah, my mom is my example of 'love, but not like'. We all got our shit. My Dad has always been my example of how to treat others and my Mom has been my example of how not to.

I tell my kid every day that I like her.

I liked my boyfriend long before I loved him, and now I love him all the time and like him 99% of the time (is it impossible for women to like someone all the time? it is for me...). My best friend from high school. I like a lot of people I meet online. I like a lot of my acquaintances. But the people nearest to me, I know too well to like a lot (I can see their flaws, and they have probably pissed me off at one time or another), but I know them well enough to love them.

My brother.

I think the three people I like and have liked the most in my life are an ex-girlfriend (and I probably liked her much more than I loved her, which was perhaps what doomed our relationship), my mother, and my now-longtime best friend whom I met in college. All three I can say that I thoroughly enjoy spending time with them and never get tired of their presence or even annoyed very often at all. I wouldn't say that I "love" my ex, of course, but I also love my mom and my best friend.

There was a time when my sister would have been in this list and it's a great sorrow to me that she no longer does.

I was just lamenting that I'm not spending time with many people I like, lately. Workmates, particularly. No one I'd really enjoy taking out for a drink in the lot of them. But I, too, find that like is inconstant. Though if caused by disappointment, it seldom returns.

Like without love seems to me to be much like admiration, usally for people you don't know that well (and get to know them better, and either come to love them, or lose that like).

But yes, easy to love people you don't like. Family can be like that, certainly.

I think it would have to be my current roommate... but we've only been roommates since Friday, so hopefully it won't end up screwing up our friendship.
We've known each other since we were in our second year of college or so. He's one of the few people I can talk with for hours and neither of us will run out of things to say.

As for people I loved but didn't like, I'd say my ex-husband, for the last year of our marriage, if not longer.

I don't see a difference between like and love. The people I love the most seem really far away from me right now.

I open my mouth to speak and when words don't come tumbling out immediately, I get caught up in whether they'll ever come out. Same with letters. Then so much needs to be said that I'm overwhelmed at even the thought of speaking, so I don't. And so I allow these distances to grow.

But liking, or loving, her makes these distances disappear when we finally do face each other. We have everything except each other, so we have nothing at all. Except for an incredibly good friend who shows up and paints the world in color every few months.

I feel like crying.

I've been lucky in my friends - I have always had a lot of close friends whereever I've lived and I still genuinely like them all. Yeah I've known a lot of them long enough where they can easily pluck my last nerve, but that's okay. They're forgiven. I love and like them. I pretty much love and like my family as well and I'm finding, as my kids grow up, that I genuinely like them as people as well as loving them utterly. That's pretty cool.

Also, I like most of my ex boyfriends with the notable exception of the two I had children with; the others are all still good, lifetime friends. And just last week I rediscovered my best friend from my 20s; a whole lot of weird circumstances led to us losing touch and through another friend we're talking again, and that is really wonderful - I've missed her horribly.

My husband. We were friends first. My oldest brother is a close second. I'd love to be friends with both of them even if we weren't otherwise entangled. Although they're both far from perfect, they're good people. I admire them both.