I don’t like most of the responses here so I’m offer my own. Love is not found it is built.

My wife and I got married young. I’m 34 and I’ll be celebrating my 9th anniversary in under a week.

Love is where all those things come together. We have the deepest friendship. We’re weird in the same ways and we’ve basically developed our own brand of humor. I can make my wife laugh literally with a look.

Love is also a commitment to never, ever bail. It’s unlike anything else. With friends, you still try to be good company or you wouldn’t tell them the deep thoughts. But my wife and I can share anything. We’re so intertwined that there’s more understanding than judgment. We can say things we don’t like about people, about the world, about ourselves. We can be truly vulnerable.

We didn’t find love, we built it. From 25 to 34 I’m a phenomenally different person, but we’re like two planets oscillating around each other. Our orbit influences the other, and vice versa. We never would have been these people if we weren’t together. With most friends I feel like they may have some influence… But in marriage it’s just undeniable.

It’s a truly unique thing. But I will say I couldn’t understand it until I had it. And I still don’t. Dating for 4 years wasn’t the same as marriage after 1 which wasn’t the same as marriage after 5 and that’s not the same as it is now after almost 9 years. It’s always growing, always deepening, and it’s just insanely personal at a very deep level.

FWIW, I don’t know that you can really be “in love” if you haven’t had a long term relationship with someone

After reading your responses, I think you’re basically asking how to casually date friends, right? For casual dating/sex, stay away from friends. It can ruin the friendship or even the entire circle of friends. There’s always the “friends with benefits” thing, but even that often ends badly. For casual dating, stick with strangers. Aren’t there a ton of apps for that sort of thing?

For me - don’t take this as the norm - I find friends through gaming, we become good friends over time, I’ll progressively ‘lower my guard’ and, as part of this process, make more and more sexual jokes and innuendos. Depending on how they react, it might stay at ‘teehee I’m still 13 making pp jokes’, or it might advance to the ‘so I think you’re into some freaky shit, I’m into freaky shit, wanna bang?’ friends with benefits territory. If that goes okay, I’m almost certainly catching feelings, and thus ‘want to be a couple’ is the next step. A few shared or similar interests, or an interest in each other’s interests, is important too. Can’t be pounding like rabbits all the time…

Basically, I eat the desert first, and then have the main course. If we aren’t sexually compatable in some aspect, it is stupid to be dating, in my view. No need for hurt feelings or awkward breakups. And falling back to fwb is easy if we don’t work out for other reasons. Just because you like pet spiders and I want to light them on fire (eek) doesn’t mean that we can’t wake the neighbors with our moans and screams.

25 is so young. For me, I just had casual relationships until something “stuck”, for lack of a better word. Stayed with my ex for 25 years, with my husband now for 11, we are so happy together and the sex is still good. Husband said he knew at the start he would be serious about me, I didn’t know until it lasted and got better and I liked his family, and his kids liked me and all our kids got along (more complicated situation when older, obviously) AND the sex stayed good and we still felt affectionate and loving.

I would say, at your age, it’s entirely possible you just haven’t met someone yet who you can feel that way about. You do have to be open to it if you want it, if that makes sense.

And I need to add- it’s not a requirement for a full and happy life, if you don’t want to pair up you don’t have to.