If you’re not mixing up 恋 and 愛, it just means you’re in love with an undisclosed target.
On a slightly related thing with same-sex love. Japanese people will often say something like “あの子を男として見る。” to mean something like “I see him sexually.” does this same phrasing also work if the speaker be of the same sex as the antecedent, or only if he be of a different sex?
Friends (I guess mostly Japanese women, in my experience) say 大好き to each other to mean a platonic love.
If you said 愛してる to me, I would just assume you meant 大好き but just messed up when you were speaking. It’s possible your friend realized a similar thing and assumed, based on your level of Japanese, that this was the best way of expressing it so that you could understand (rather than correct it).
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If you’re not mixing up 恋 and 愛, it just means you’re in love with an undisclosed target.
On a slightly related thing with same-sex love. Japanese people will often say something like “あの子を男として見る。” to mean something like “I see him sexually.” does this same phrasing also work if the speaker be of the same sex as the antecedent, or only if he be of a different sex?
Friends (I guess mostly Japanese women, in my experience) say 大好き to each other to mean a platonic love.
If you said 愛してる to me, I would just assume you meant 大好き but just messed up when you were speaking. It’s possible your friend realized a similar thing and assumed, based on your level of Japanese, that this was the best way of expressing it so that you could understand (rather than correct it).