Love metaphors generally refer to love as something that is irresistible and not your choice, such as in these examples:
- Struck by Cupid’s Arrow
- Falling in Love
- Love is a Drug
- Knocked off your Feet
Other examples relate it to natural phenomena, such as:
- Love is a Whirlwind
- An Eternal Flame
- A Wave of Passion
Below, I’ve listed 25 love metaphors for every occasion.
Contents show
Love Metaphors, Analogies and Similes Describing Love
Read Also: Marriage Metaphors
1. A Bottomless Well
The idea that love is a bottomless well implies that it’s something that will never run out. Your love will last forever. You might say this about your love for your parents or family members who you have known your whole life so they’re a part of your very identity.
2. A Flame
Love is often related to heat and fire because it evokes a sense of passion. If we’re in love, we might have a flame burning inside of us. Similarly, a new love affair might be called a “young flame”.
As a writer, you could be quite creative with this metaphor. You can say things like “her love was a fire burning inside her,” or if there’s a love affair that has ended but is not truly over, it could be “smouldering love that lasted for years, even though they were apart”.
Another fire-related metaphor for love is “burning desire”, which refers to this intense sense that you want to be with someone.
3. A Ride
It seems as if the rollercoaster metaphor can be used for just about anything. And it’s no different here. Love as a rollercoaster ride gives you a sense that it’s full of the highest of high emotions as well as the lowest of lows. Usually, a ride is also
4. Life
When people say “love is life”, they mean that love is the most important thing in life, not that they’re the one and the same thing. In reality, love is one thing in our lives, but it can be the most overwhelming element of our lives. This technique of saying a part of something is its whole is a literary technique called synecdoche.
5. My Love Overflows
The idea that love overflows gives us this sense that love is water in a mug. If you’ve got a lot of love in your life, you can say that your love is overflowing. This is to imply that you have more love in your life than you can handle! Another version of this “love as liquid” metaphor is the idea that you can’t “contain” your love, which may mean that you’re displaying affection even in moments when you probably shouldn’t.
6. A Wave of Passion
The idea that love is a wave of passion gives us a sense that it hits you (like a wave in the ocean) and you’re overcome by it. But just like waves in the ocean, it might also imply that the emotion comes and goes, comes and goes. There is both high emotion and temporariness in this metaphor that can be great for the fleeting young love of summertime, for example.
> See 21 More Ocean Metaphors
7. A Whirlwind Romance
When you’re stuck in a whirlwind you’re disoriented, unable to escape, and it often creeps up on you. Love can be explained in a similar way. A whirlwind romance starts suddenly, its full of emotion, and often ends suddenly as well. When you’re in a whirlwind romance you may feel like you’ve been ‘swept off your feet’ (another metaphor – discussed later), meaning you’re overwhelmed and almost acting irrationally due to your emotions.
8. A Magnet
Magnetic love occurs when you feel as if you and the person you’re in love with seem to be consistently “drawn to each other” like magnets. You find yourselves in situations where you’re together and making efforts to be around each other. You may also find yourselves glancing at one another across the room all the time because you want to be together.
9. The First Day of Spring
To say “love is like the first day of spring” (that’s framed as a simile because we’re saying like) is to say new love makes you feel like everything is positive and exciting. Birds are singing, the sun is shining and the next few months will be lovely and warm! Spring is often associated with positive feelings and an upbeat future, as opposed to winter which is often a metaphor for bad days ahead.
> See 10 More Spring Metaphors
10. A Drug
The idea that love is a drug gives us a sense that it alters your consciousness somehow. Recreational drugs will often give you a euphoric feeling. So ,you might be ‘deliriously in love’ or even refer to love as a ‘fever’ to show how it has affected you. Another phrase you could use to refer to this metaphor is to say that you’ve been hit by the love drug.
11. A Journey
The concept of love as a journey refers not to new or young love, but a deeper longer-term love. This might be a good one for a marriage, where you go through the ups and downs of it all, but you have your journey companion by your side the whole time. This idea is even loosely referred to in weeding vows where you say “in sickness and in poor, good times and bad”.
12. My Guidebook
To say “love is my guidebook” or “love is my guiding light” references the idea that we’re making our decisions in life based on love. If you have a family and all your decisions are about protecting or providing for them, this might be a good metaphor for you.
You can find more family metaphors here.
13. Wild
Wild love is a return to that idea that being in love is something that sweeps you up (a metaphor discussed later) and makes you giddy with happiness. This might be a particularly physical form of love as well – “they’re animals, the way they touch each other!”
Alternatively, you might say “I’m wildly in love,” implying that your love is an infatuation.
14. Blind
We often say that “love is blind” to refer to the idea that we’ll often overlook our partner’s faults because we love them so much. Someone who isn’t in love with the person might see their faults more objectively. Their loud chewing or their bad jokes might get the roll of an eye or be met with irritation.
But when you’re in love with the person, you’ll overlook these things because you’re so infatuated with them. You’re blind to their little annoyances!
> See More Eyes Metaphors
15. A Dream
If we say love is a dream, we’re implying that it feels like it’s not real. You might say it’s a dream you don’t want to wake up from because it’s so amazing. Life feels exciting and unbelievably good. You could say that someone is so in love that they’re pinching themselves. When you say you’re pinching yourself, you are implying that you are checking to see if you’re awake or asleep because this feeling is so unbelievably good.
Metaphors for Being in Love
16. Intoxicated by Love
This metaphor relates love to being drunk. A person who is intoxicated might be making bad decisions, be artificially excited, or be having an excellent time. So, being intoxicated by love means you’re feeling those effects – but not by alcohol, but by the natural elixir of love! Another way of saying this is ‘love-drunk’, and it often relates to young love.
17. Made for each Other
People who seem to be in the perfectly compatible relationship might be said to be ‘made for each other’. Literally, you might read this as a belief that God has put both the people on earth specifically to be with one another. We might call them soul mates. Commonly, though, this is a term figuratively used to simply refer to a couple’s compatibility.
18. Knocked off your Feet
A person knocked off their feet is someone who has fallen so in love that their world has been tipped upside down. They might be rendered speechless or giddy by the love that they have found. Another way of saying this is “swept off your feet” or “swept up” by love, which again implies that you’ve lost your balance because you’re so in love.
19. Love Conquers All
This war-like metaphor implies that love is the greatest of emotions. It ‘conquers’ all other emotions, including hate. It is the most powerful and important of all emotions. This is often used in relation to someone who is struggling between the emotions of love and hate. You’d want the protagonist to let go of their hate and follow a life led by love for their fellow man.
20. Falling in Love
‘Falling’ in love is so common as to be idiomatic. We rarely think of this as a metaphor when using it. But when we start to love someone, it might give us this feeling of falling. We might be falling into their arms or fainting because we’re so overcome by emotion. It also gives a sense that you can’t stop or help yourself. When someone is falling (say, off a cliff), they usually cannot stop themselves – much like if you’re in love, you can’t just snap out of it.
21. Struck by Cupid’s Arrow
Cupid is a Greco-Roman god of love. He is represented as a young, flying god who has a bow and arrow. When he shoots his arrow into someone, they’re said to fall in love with the first person they see.
Today, we say someone is “love struck” to refer back to this old idea of being struck by a love arrow. Like many other metaphors in this list, it implies we have no control over whether we love someone – cupid decides for us.
22. Starved of Love
Someone who is starved of love might not have found someone to love in their life, but they are desiring it. While we’re usually (literally) referring to starvation as being starved of food, someone starved of love might feel that same desperate feeling that they need it for sustenance and to make themselves feel fulfilled.
23. Made Whole
The metaphor “to be made whole” by your love refers to the idea that there was something missing in your life before your loved one came into your life. There’s a sense that you are only fully content and satisfied with your life when you have that one person in your life who fits perfectly. This also makes us think of the idea that there is a sense of “completion” of our destiny or life’s purpose when we meet “the one”.
Metaphors about your Husband or Wife
24. My Ball and Chain
Sometimes we will refer to the person we love as our ball and chain. This is a somewhat condescending or negative idea (although used in jest, usually) to say that their partner is holding them down and preventing them from doing something they’d prefer to do.
25. You’re my Better Half
A person who is your better half is the person who you feel is a better person than you. When you’re in a couple, you’re half of the couple and your partner is the other half. You might feel that the person who is your partner is more forgiving, caring or kinder than you. So, you call them the better half to pay homage to how great they are and how lucky you feel to have them in your life.
26. You’re the Light of my Life
Love and light are often associated with one another in metaphors. A person who is the light of your life is the person who gives you a great deal of happiness.
Another way of saying this, in reference to the famous song, is to say that someone is “your sunshine”. They make you happy even on sad days! They might be the person you live for, or the person who you crave to be with.
Related: Light Metaphors
Conclusion
Whether you’re looking for ways to describe love for a wedding speech, novel, or to learn new sayings in the English language, I hope this list of love metaphors, similes, idioms and analogies has inspired you. Even if one of these phrases isn’t quite what you’re looking for, sometimes just reading some examples can get your creative juices running so you’re inspired to come up with one yourself!
