I wonder how these two verbs differ in meaning?
I know that You spare time for your loved ones, but You spend time with your loved ones.
However, it is difficult to distinguish between them in an example like the following one:
I have encountered "spare" in above sentence many times, but I need to know the logic behind that! Why "spend" does not work here, while semantically and based on dictionary definitions it should work?
Please do me a favor and explain that to me.
Best Answer
You ask someone else is they can spare the time for something.
If you refer to yourself
it makes you sound self-important or condescending.
In the context of your loved ones, again it makes it seem that they are unimportant, if you say you can spare some time to be with them. So
You can also ask someone to spend some time with you, if you want to be friendly:
If you can spare some time, you make the time available.
If you spend time, you are using the time that you have.
To complicate it slightly further, you might have some spare time that you can spend doing something.