You said "that's not true" but then discussed a bunch of stuff I never mentioned. I never mentioned whether or not hydrogen bonding only applies to dissolving substances. I never mentioned water being a liquid at room temperature.

But I will address this:

>they are just two ends of a spectrum representing how little/how much energy you need to break an attraction.

At a physical level I agree with you. But not at a categorical level. These things are categorically distinct when we talk about them because of the size of disparity in energy required.

Let a cup of salt water sit and salt will spontaneously crystallize out of the water within hours. Just through Brownian motion.

Stable molecules could take billions of years to change their structure, or longer. This is why we categorize "water" as it's own molecule, and "salt" as it's own molecule, but we don't categorize "salt water" as a molecule - we categorize it as a solution of 2 molecules.