So it seems a lot of people have already asked this question, at least according to Google. But I thought I'd ask it again, because it's one of those things that bothers me from time to time, like right now. What's a good word for that grey area of emotion between 'like' and 'love'?

Don't say lust, because that's just physical and doesn't fit the emotion that I'm thinking of. And infatuation and crush don't do it either, because to me they always imply kind of an unrequited feeling, not a feeling between two people. There's a slang site that I came across in my Google search that uses 'loke', but that just sounds very, very silly. And as much as I like 'smitten' and 'twitter-pated', those seem kind of fluffy after a certain point. 'Adore' also implies a one-sidedness, an idolization. 'Fond' sounds more maternal than romantic. 'Fancy' sounds very old-fashioned and kind of foppish.

I guess I've generally used the distinction between 'love' and 'being in love'... Where love is the love you feel for family, friends, pets, etc... And being in love is the romantic love. But even then, there's kind of a transition period, isn't there? The period of 'falling in love'... But that phrase is almost scary because it seems to carry so much weight and connotations with it. And it assumes that the end result will be being in love, but that isn't necessarily true -- I think you can get in this grey area of emotion and then just stay there indefinitely... Romance's purgatory.

i could probably babble about this for awhile more, but I really need to get some work done. If anyone has any ingenious answers to this question, do share.