Glossary · Junto Emotion Wheel
Love
One of the six core emotions on the Junto Emotion Wheel — connection and warmth directed toward someone or something.
Love is a core human emotion of warmth, attachment and care directed toward another person, a group, a place, or an experience. On the Junto Emotion Wheel it is one of six core families, branching into five more specific feelings: enchanted, romantic, affectionate, sentimental and grateful. Distinguishing romantic love from gratitude from tenderness changes how you understand a relationship.
What is love?
Love is a core human emotion of warmth, attachment and care, directed outward toward someone or something — a partner, a child, a friend, a community, a place, or even a piece of work. Where joy is a general sense of well-being, love has an object: it is about someone or something.
On the Junto Emotion Wheel, love is one of the six core families. Many emotion wheels fold love into joy or omit it; the Junto wheel keeps it as a distinct core, because the felt experience of loving is not the same as the felt experience of being in a good mood.
How love feels
Love registers as warmth and a pull toward closeness — physically softening, attention drawn to the loved object, a willingness to give. It ranges from the quiet steadiness of long affection to the intensity of being enchanted by someone new. It also overlaps with gratitude: much of what people call love, day to day, is closer to appreciation for what someone is or does.
Love on the Junto Emotion Wheel
On the wheel, love branches into five secondary feelings, each with two more specific tertiary feelings:
- Enchanted — enthralled, rapturous
- Romantic — passionate, enamored
- Affectionate — warmhearted, compassionate
- Sentimental — tender, nostalgic
- Grateful — appreciative, thankful
The distinctions are practical. Grateful love (appreciative, thankful) points you toward expressing thanks; romantic love (passionate, enamored) toward a different kind of attention; sentimental love (tender, nostalgic) often carries a thread of sadness for what has passed.
Related emotions
- Joy — love's neighbouring positive family, a general state rather than a directed one.
- Sadness — sentimental love often blends with it (nostalgia, grief for what is gone).
- Surprise — being newly enchanted often starts as surprise.
To see how love sits in the full structure, read what is an emotion wheel.
Name what you feel
Open the Junto Emotion Wheel and find the shade of love that fits — gratitude, tenderness, passion are not the same, and naming the difference is the practice.