“Like” and “love” are verbs. Verbs show either actions or conditions. Actions such as “run,” “eat,” etc. are called dynamic verbs, and conditions such as “differ” and “resemble” are called stative verbs.
In Japanese, “like” and “love” are considered as stative verbs. However, in personal opinion, these verbs can be considered as actions because they refer to the act of delivering our feeling towards the other party by various methods, such as sending messages, talking on the phone, going to see them, and even sometimes cooking for them.
What’s more, sometimes our feelings subside or fade away so the verb type might change state into verbs such as “vanish” or “lose.”
Some women might say, “It brings me both happiness and pain to like him,” or “It hurts that I can’t get him out of my mind,” etc. Originally, loving someone brings happy emotions upon us. “Pain” or “sadness” or similar types of feeling might not have existed without first feeling love.
Now, why do people have such negative feelings?
It is because the verbs, “like” or “love” may come together with other verbs such as “request or expect something in return,” “reciprocate,” etc. These verbs negate the positive emotions and change it into something burdensome. For example, if you tell yourself – “I want him to love me too” or “when he replies to me, I hope he says something like this…”
When these thoughts arise and things don’t go the way one wants or anticipates, it will be very natural for one to feel frustrated and disappointed.
Looking at the sentence – “I like him.” It has a happy connotation. The person might have and do exciting things such as going to see their person of interest, they’re staying mentally healthy and happy with the reality that someone whom they like exists. It gives them butterflies in their stomach in a positive way.
One more thing, when someone begins to love a guy who already has a girlfriend or is married, then just liking him is not a problem. Because being into someone can be done freely and willingly.
But, once their actions go beyond just innocently liking someone and goes to the extent of bothering the other person, such as going to see him even though he feels annoyed, asking him to love her in return, etc., then their emotions change from “like or love” verbs to the pain and depression-causing verbs.
Generally speaking, like and love are stative verbs. But, once a person begins to demand, request or expect something in return from someone else, then the positive “love” or “like” emotions will change and become overwhelmed by negative emotions.