The context for this is sort of long and makes the usage of 恋人 confusing, so I didn’t think it was necessarily a simple question.
Context: I have a friend that I’m very, very close to (we say ‘I love you’ with ‘愛’, hug and hold hands when we’re together, frequently compliment each other on things like appearance and personality, etc). We consider each other to be family because of how close we are. This friend is married. I am not. I come from a very touchy-feely family, so none of the above things (save for appearance compliments to some degree) are really out of the ordinary for me. Nothing about my friendship makes me think it’s inherently romantic, mostly due to that and because he’s married and he’s the most sincere/would-never-hurt-a-fly person I’ve ever met.
Anyway, my friend recently said to me “[my name]はそのままで素晴らしい恋人です。” I understand the meaning of all of those words, but I’m unsure if I’m missing some nuance somehow? From everything I’ve read, 恋人 is strictly for lovers. When I asked him, he said he meant the “sweetheart” definition and that it just meant someone he loves in general. This is a Japanese person telling me this and I don’t think he’d ever lie to me, but I really can’t find anything about 恋人 being a platonic term at all. It’s true that “sweetheart” does show up as a definition a lot when people talk about it. But “sweetheart” in English can be used both romantically and platonically, which is why I’m confused. I can’t find anything about whether or not the “sweetheart” definition is similar to English and if it could be ambiguous.
Same with other things like 恋に落ちる – that’s also strictly romantic? There’s no room for platonic love there? I do understand 恋’s general meaning, and I don’t mean to compare Japanese to English at all, but I think the latter’s tendency to exaggerate (“I am just in love with that dress!!”) has me slightly lost.
I want to make sure I have a solid understanding of the nuance here before I go back to him. If this is him testing the waters somehow, I’d like to know so I can nip this in the bud.
EDIT: thanks for the replies so far. I want to clarify that I’m not thrilled about the fact that he used that word with me. I don’t want anything more than friendship from him. The whole point of this post was to make sure I was right with my understanding of the word so that I could confront him about it. I’m a touchy-feely person like I said and that’s true for my family and even with other friends, so this really did not stand out as anything different or weird to me until he used that word. You can call me clueless if you want, but the last thing I want to do is hurt anyone. Again, that’s why I’m asking in the first place.
Also, his wife is my friend too and she doesn’t have a problem with my friendship with her husband. We’re all like this with each other when we meet up in person. But I don’t think she’s aware he’s using words like that with me, so I will make sure it stops.