Despite having just four letters, love is one of the biggest words. What is love? This is an eternal and probably unanswerable question, but it is fun to seek an answer. My article presents a few approaches to love, mainly the most interesting kind - that between man and woman.
The first problem is a semantic one, since the word 'love' is used in so many different ways. Perhaps more than any other word in the English language, 'love' can mean anything, or almost nothing. It is often used thoughtlessly. When someone says, "I love him," about the man they live with, this means little to me, until I know much more about their relationship. Note that in some languages the word 'love' has a more restricted usage, eg in Polish you cannot say, "I love chocolate".
(2) In love the paradox occurs that two things become one and yet remain two. (Erich Fromm)
(3) O what a heaven is love! O what a hell! (Thomas Dekker)
(4) The reduction of the universe to a single being, the expansion of a single being even to God, this is love. (Victor Hugo)
(5) The delusion that one woman differs from another. (H L Mencken)
(6) God is Love, I dare say. But what a mischievous Devil Love is. (Samuel Butler)
(7) It is with true love as it is with ghosts; everyone talks of it, but few have seen it. (La Rochefoucauld)
(8) Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:13)
(9) All is fair in love and war.
(10) If a man say, I love God, and hates his brother, he is a liar: for he that loves not his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? (I John 4:20)
(11) Love's pleasure lasts but a moment; love's sorrow lasts all through life. (J-P Claris de Florian)
(12) Love is, above all, the gift of oneself. (Jean Anouilh)
(13) There are very few people who are not ashamed of having been in love when they no longer love each other. (La Rochefoucauld)
(14) A loving heart is the truest wisdom. (Charles Dickens)
(15) To be wise and love
Exceeds man's might. (William Shakespeare)
It doesn't seem likely that all these quotes refer to the one thing. How are we to resolve the confusion?
Tremendous confusion is caused by the fact that the word 'love' refers both to an emotion and to an attitude or orientation. The emotion we feel in our heart called love, is like all other feelings, a transitory experience. It may last a day, an hour or only an instant. It cannot remain fixed and stable, any more than anger or sadness can, however long they may last. Though it is wonderful to feel the emotion called love, when it's not there, it's not there, and we can't induce it by an act of will. Unlike the emotion, the attitude of love can be a permanent orientation.
The crucial distinction between love the feeling and love the orientation is seen in the behaviour of a person who feels passionate love for another but acts cruelly towards them.
The emotion of love is not a more intense form of liking; it is different in kind. Some people state that they love a person but do not like them. Another common mistake is to view the orientation of loving as an all or nothing state. If I do something out of completely unselfish motives for someone, then this is an expression of my love, no matter how small the action, and regardless of my feeling for that person.
The feeling of love is often, but not always, accompanied by the orientation of loving ie we are kind to those we like. Yet, one can care deeply about someone over a long period of time, during which one might feel love for them only from time to time, or perhaps not at all.
Stephen Covey points out that love is to be found in actions, as well as being something we can feel. People driven by their feelings do not take responsibility for love. They are unaware that the feeling of love can be recaptured. It is regained when we act in a loving way: by affirming, appreciating, being considerate of, being kind, through affection, making small sacrifices and giving to, communicating with, and seeking to understand the person we are in relationship with. Another example is choosing to overlook petty failings in the other person. It is important to realise that these actions do not depend on feeling love but that they generate the feeling. The person who is behaving in a loving way creates the feeling of love in themselves. Of course it is likely that the other person will respond in a positive way.
One could argue that creativity is needed for us to be loving towards other people. By contrast, consider the man who buys red carnations for his wife every Friday.
Krishnamurti draws a clean distinction between love and sentiment:
To be sentimental, to be emotional is not love, because sentimentality and emotion are mere sensations. A religious person who weeps about Jesus or Krishna, about his guru or somebody else is merely sentimental, emotional, cannot possibly know love. Again, aren't we emotional and sentimental? Sentimentality, emotionalism, is merely a form of self-expansion. To be full of emotion is obviously not love, because a sentimental person can be cruel when his sentiments are not responded to, when his feelings have no outlet. An emotional person can be stirred to hatred, to war, to butchery. A man who is sentimental, full of tears for his religion, surely has no love.Scott Peck adds, "It is easy and not at all unpleasant to find evidence of love in one's feelings. It may be difficult and painful to search for evidence of love in one's actions." He cites the example of the alcoholic in a bar who, with tears in his eyes, professes to the bartender love for his wife and children, who are in need of his attention at that very moment. In a different vein, Chet Snow warns against mistaking love for the "emotional, ego-bound merry-go-around of sexual attraction and possession".
Looking back at the 15 quotes, not all are easily classifiable as emotion or orientation. I think that numbers 1, 3, 5, 6, 9, 11, 13 and 15 clearly refer to the emotion, whereas numbers 8, 10, 12 and 14 clearly refer to the orientation. Perhaps what the quotes really tell us is that love is such a mystery that no-one really knows what it is. Love is like a black box: each of us sees it as containing what we most value.
I thought about what love is for me personally, what the essential aspects are as I experience them. I listed: caring, fondness and affection, closeness, feeling with, and trust. Love reduces the separation between me and another person. I feel it as a genuine connection, one I experience somewhere deep in myself.
Reflecting on my list, it seems to me that feeling and orientation cannot be separated. Take caring, it is an orientation alright, but can it be divorced from feeling? Surely you care because there is some sort of feeling for the person or thing you care about. Fondness and affection are feelings but can they be divorced from a friendly attitude? Closeness is a feeling but it is also a decision to involve oneself, to be vulnerable, to let down defences. 'Feeling with' is obviously a feeling but another word for it is empathy, which is a way of relating. Empathy can be just a technique, as in counselling. Trust is an attitude but it is clearly laden with feeling.
It is a chicken and egg argument: do I feel close to my partner because of a decision or attitude, or does my attitude of openness arise from the feeling I have when I am with her? Clearly one feeds on the other. When I think about my love for her I think about the relationship I have to her, and that relationship includes both feelings and orientations, which are inextricably linked.
So the division of love into feeling and orientation is somewhat artificial. A bit like talking about the different tracks of a bicycle's front and rear wheels, which go down the same path. It is well to remember that we human beings are basically driven by our emotions. Our life attitudes and orientations do not come from rational analysis or thinking but arise from our emotional life. Yet it seems to me that only by dividing love into feeling and orientation can we understand the paradox of people being cruel to those they claim to love. Simply put, you cannot be selfish and cruel to another if your attitude to them is loving.
For purposes of analysis, it seems to me that love can be divided into feeling and orientation, and that the orientation of love can be dissected into components. Yet nothing complex is just the sum of its parts, and especially not love. So it's important to remember that what I present below is just a model, a way of trying to understand what love is. If it resonates with your experience or clarifies something then it has done its job.
Love is its own motive. Being the ultimate source of motivation, it has nothing behind it. There are many other motives, such as pleasure, security, power, acceptance, duty, freedom and achievement. These other motives lack the self-sufficiency of love. If you love someone, you care for them for their own sake, not for any benefit or effect they have on you. What you love has intrinsic value for you ie value that is independent of your own existence. Love is wanting the gain of another, without gain to oneself. Perhaps ultimately love is wanting the gain of the Whole, not of the part that is our self.
Caring is the first essential. Love without caring is meaningless.
You can't love whom you don't respect, about all you can do is pity them. Loving entails unconditional regard, ie respecting and valuing the person regardless of our assessment of what they do or say. Note that it is possible to respect even a small child, to value their autonomy and respect their potential.
It is essential to know the person, as otherwise you may be loving your ideas about them, not the person themselves. This is called projection - reading into others what is actually in your own mind. The knowledge involved in love is not a static picture; rather it is a growing understanding of the other person, an increasingly accurate perception of what it feels like to be them.
If you are not willing to give to the person you ostensibly love, then you do not really care about them. Of course, not all giving is an expression of love. The workoholic husband who gives money but begrudges his time is an obvious example. Giving in a loving way means contributing what the other person wants or needs, not what happens to come easily to you. Knowledge is needed since ignorance of the other person's needs may sabotage your giving. Nor is horsetrading - I give this if you give that - an expression of loving.
The necessity of receiving is less obvious. If you are able to give but not to receive, then you are not putting yourself on the same level as the other person. When this is a pattern in the relationship it amounts to aloofness, though one is not normally conscious of this. It is only when you can both give and receive freely that there is a real connection with the other person. If you cannot receive then you remain separate. Nor is receiving as easy as it sounds. It is often easier to do a favour than to ask for one. An interesting aspect of receiving is that you will have a problem with receiving unless you are able to truly give without strings.
Obviously, it is not possible to love someone whom you do not accept. You cause separation by judging. Rather, the question is: how much do you need to accept someone in order to love them?
Intimacy is a way of relating rather than a feeling. Being intimate with a person means we are truly ourselves with them, without any kind of barrier or facade. This is only possible if we are fully comfortable with the other person, ideally to the point where we feel as though we are only with ourselves. This takes time, more exactly, it requires a long and mutual process of self-disclosure. Ultimately, intimacy means being entirely known by the other person, ie not consciously holding anything back. Montague Ullman explains the importance of this, "The freedom to let oneself be known is also the freedom to be oneself."
There are four important factors bound up with intimacy - empathy, openness, vulnerability and trust.
Vulnerability is paradoxical. Though it appears to be a weakness it is in fact a strength. In reality all of us are vulnerable because we are sensitive. Yet we often conceal our sensitivity with pretended toughness, humour, cynicism or intellectualisation. Allowing ourselves to be vulnerable means keeping our hearts open to the other person. As a consequence we can be hurt by them, but the alternative is to erect a defensive barrier, which is ultimately more painful. Vulnerability hinges on trusting the other person.
Yet I think Sternberg's division is too simplistic, since it omits some of the most vital ingredients of love - such as giving and caring. As for commitment, I think it is a result, not a component of love. Two people will naturally want to stay together if they are in a loving relationship. Having been in such a relationship for the last thirty-four years, I can say that a conscious commitment to stay together was never part of the picture for either of us. Rather, the desire to stay together was the outcome of loving each other. On the other hand, a person who baulks at committing themselves because they value freedom more than the relationship is not tasting the fruits of love, or so it seems to me.
The ego is a false sense of identity, a pretence we try hard to maintain. It is ego that stops us from admitting it when we are wrong. Thus we might prefer to lose a friend than an argument. A clear example of ego at work is when we try to save face. Ego is a false sense of pride that masks a deeper insecurity. Whenever we are defensive we are acting from the ego. For the ego is like an inflated balloon we constantly guard against being pricked. Ego is a fragile narcissism that costs us dearly. It can be summed up as being hooked on having things our way. If my ego is extremely inflated then I will see everyone and everything as existing only for my benefit.
The conflict between love and ego becomes clear when we review the seven components of love. Caring requires us to deflect concern from ourselves to another. Respect is only possible if we are not too caught up in ourselves. To know another we need to displace our interest from our own person. Giving goes counter to egotism. Receiving goes counter to pride. To accept another we need to tone down our ego-based judgements. The empathy needed for intimacy is only possible if we genuinely focus on another person, putting ourselves aside for the moment. Likewise, openness means pulling down our ego-defences. Trust and vulnerability are only possible if we are not afraid of being invaded or rejected by the other.
A good relationship should not be any real achievement. It is sufficient if I'm nice to you because you are nice to me. This is a simple win-win form of conditional love. Yet even this is difficult for human beings. One reason for this difficulty is the presence of two egos. Another problem is due to incompatible ideas about how each partner thinks the other should behave. Also, whereas we see and directly experience all that we do for the other person and are very aware of our own needs, we are far less aware of what they do for us and of their needs. We feel our own hurts directly and painfully; we have to imagine what the other person really feels. Many of us do not make an active effort in this regard.
Psychologist John Gottman said, "Sex, romance and passion are about taking in information and energy, as opposed to broadcasting them. So it is not about being sexy or being attractive, it is about being interested in your partner and being receptive and knowing them, and taking in something deep and fundamental about them. It is a moment-to-moment decision to be interested, to be complimentary." People good at relationships have this habit of looking for things to appreciate.
Love is fragile and vulnerable, unlike anger or hate. Testing it can break it. We resent it if the other person presumes too much on our love. It is a vulgar analogy, but a loving relationship is somewhat like a bank account: if the other person makes too many withdrawals as against deposits then our love for them will suffer. It is important to note that because there are two people involved, the giver and the receiver will not place the same value on a generous act. If we give without regard for the personality of the receiver then the result may be counter-productive, eg we may injure their pride. On the other hand, knowledge acts as a lever, in that something that costs me little to do may be felt to be a big deposit by the other person. It is much easier to satisfy your partner if you are sensitive to their needs.
Unconditional love means loving the person irrespective of what they do, and even of how they treat us. It means loving the sinner, not the sin. The familiar example of unconditional love is mother's love. By contrast, father's love is conditional, requiring that the child live up to its parent's ideas. This means one is not loved for oneself but because one pleases. Note that 'mother's love' and 'father's love' are not to be taken literally, since they refer to archetypes. Thus an actual father might love in a predominantly motherly way, while his wife might love their child in a mainly fatherly mode.
Some people argue that only unconditional love is true love. Though I agree that unconditional love is a purer form of love, I think this is too harsh a view. Let the person who loves entirely unconditionally cast the first stone!
Krishnamurti wrote:
The problem is: what is love without motive. Can there be love without any incentive, without wanting something for oneself out of love? Can there be love in which there is no sense of being wounded when love is not returned? If I offer you my friendship and you turn away, am I not hurt? Is that feeling of being hurt the outcome of friendship, of generosity, of sympathy? Surely, as long as I feel hurt, as long as there is fear, as long as I help you hoping that you may help me... there is no love. If you understand this, the answer is there.Krishnamurti sums up his uncompromising attitude: "Where love is the self is not." I think it certain that the less ego a person has, the easier it is for them to love. Down syndrome people illustrate this poignantly.
In the novel, "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" by Milan Kundera, a woman tells her husband that she loves their dog more than she loves him, or rather, that she loves the dog in a "better way". I think she meant that it is easier to love a dog unconditionally, expecting nothing from it except that it be a dog.
The attitude of loving is the most positive and productive orientation to people and to life in general. As a side effect, it happens to ensure that you are lovable. Whereas being loved does not guarantee that you are lovable. People may love you for reasons that are unrelated to your worth as a person, such as wealth, beauty or status.
Krishnamurti expresses this much better than I can:
You want to be loved because you do not love; but the moment you love, it is finished, you are no longer inquiring whether or not somebody loves you. As long as you demand to be loved, there is no love in you; and if you feel no love, you are ugly, brutish, so why should you be loved? Without love you are a dead thing; and when the dead thing asks for love, it is still dead. Whereas, if your heart is full of love, then you never ask to be loved, you never put out your begging bowl for someone to fill. It is only the empty who ask to be filled, and an empty heart can never be filled by running after gurus or seeking love in a hundred other ways.
Robin Norwood draws similar distinctions by contrasting eros with agape. Eros "refers to passionate love, while agape describes a stable and committed relationship free of passion, that exists between two individuals who care deeply for each other". Norwood points out that we are conditioned to accept the illusion that a passionate relationship (eros) will bring us contentment and fulfilment (agape). "The price we pay for passion is fear, and the very pain and fear that feed passionate love may destroy it. The price we pay for stable commitment is boredom, and the very safety and security that cement such a relationship can also make it rigid and lifeless." Her solution to this eternal dilemma is to develop true intimacy. This means an ever deeper exploration of "the joyful mysteries between a man and a woman".
Robin Norwood is famous for her book, "Women Who Love Too Much". I think the title is wrong: not that women love too much, but that some women love in the wrong way - a way that is dependent, one-sided, without knowledge or intimacy, without receiving and hence without caring for themselves.
Romantic love, especially love at first sight, is a classic instance of projection. A man who falls in love in this way is not relating to the other person since he doesn't know her at all. Instead, he is responding to his inner image of the ideal woman (ie his anima). In fact, the less he knows the woman, the easier it is for him to project his inner ideal onto her. Setting up a woman on a pedestal is not raising her status in any real sense, but merely a way to avoid dealing with her as a person. One lady criticised what she saw as her own lack of love, saying, "If I loved him I wouldn't have seen his faults". Hence the saying, "Love is blind." More accurately, love without knowledge - which is projection - is blind.
Richard Roberts writes:
Naturally when one falls in love, some projection has occurred; otherwise the individual singled out as the source of our enchantment would not stand out from all the rest. When we see this happen to one of our friends we say, 'I wonder what he sees in her.' When it happens to us, we are quite sure the object of our love has special qualities others do not possess.Needless to say, no person can live up to the image of a god or goddess that their lover projects onto them. When the lover realises that the other person is imperfect, just as they are, disillusionment results and the period of "being in love" ends. With luck, the experience of romantic love may transform into the experience of loving - which is to appreciate the other person for what they are, not for what we would like them to be. Alternatively, it may lead the disappointed projectionist to seek another person to fall in love with.
The in love stage is a taste of paradise, but it doesn't last. The rest of the relationship cannot be lived on a constant 'high'. Naturally, we want to regain that wonderful feeling. But how? I wish I had the answer! Being in an on-going loving relationship has great rewards, but these are not as spectacular as those of the in love phase.
Hollywood and romantic novels have fostered the false myth of 'true love' - that if the ideal partner is found then love will magically solve all relationship problems. This fallacy is kept alive by the normal process of relationship growth and disintegration (for those relationships that do not last). A person going through this process compares the last partner at their very worst with the new partner at their very best. It would be hard for them not to do this, since the memories of the first partner as sweetheart would be badly faded, often overlaid by years of bitterness and acrimony. In this way, people are in danger of repeating an ultimately negative experience, perhaps even with a partner very similar to the previous one. Asked if he would remarry, a divorced man answered, "Nah, I'll just find someone I hate and give them a house."
As Samuel Rogers put it, "It doesn't much signify whom one marries, for one is sure to find next morning that it was someone else." Psychologist John Gottman has studied long-term relationships for more than 30 years:
Interviewer: "Are the things that make us fall in love with someone good predictors of a successful long-term relationship?"
Gottman: "As far as I know they are not predictive of anything. Romantic love is a poor basis for marriage."
Erich Fromm delves more deeply:
Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an orientation of character which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, not towards one 'object' of love. If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to other human beings, this love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism. Yet, most people believe that love is constituted by the object, not by the faculty. In fact, they even believe that it is a proof of the intensity of their love when they do not love anybody except the 'loved' person. Because one does not see that love is an activity, a power of the soul, one believes that all that is necessary to find is the right object - and that everything goes by itself afterward. This attitude can be compared with that of a man who wants to paint but who, instead of learning the art, claims that he has just to wait for the right object, and that he will paint beautifully when he finds it. If I truly love one person I love all persons, I love the world, I love life. If I can say to somebody else "I love you," I must be able to say, "I love in you everybody, I love through you the world, I love in you also myself."Being in love lacks some key components of loving. Firstly, acceptance - for we love the other because they appear to match our inner ideal, not for being who they are. Intimacy - since a relationship of deep trust has not yet been built up. Above all, knowledge - we simply do not yet know the other person. For that matter, respect is meaningless if we are respecting an idealisation, not the actual person. This gives us a clue why people are so bitter after the break-up of a love affair: they feel profoundly cheated. Cheated because the ideal person they saw in their partner turned out to be merely human.
Gloria Steinem observed, "Romance is a means to the end of self-completion, but love is an end in itself." This leads to the sharpest criterion for distinguishing 'loving' from 'being in love', penned by Margaret Anderson: "In real love you want the other person's good. In romantic love you want the other person."
This criterion can be applied to other kinds of love. Thus a mother who sees her child as a part of herself or even as a possession is not a loving mother. Fromm explains:
The mother must not only tolerate, she must wish and support the child's separation. It is only at this stage that motherly love becomes such a difficult task, that it requires unselfishness, the ability to give everything and to want nothing but the happiness of the loved one. The narcissistic, the domineering, the possessive woman can succeed in being a 'loving' mother as long as the child is small. Only the really loving woman, the woman who is happier in giving than in taking, who is firmly rooted in her own existence, can be a loving mother when the child is in the process of separation.Just as in erotic love, the parent needs to make the transition from one kind of loving to another - from loving the child because it is theirs to loving the developing adult for the unique person they are, not just as a son or daughter.
Working on a relationship necessitates withdrawing what we have projected onto the other person, so that we begin to see them as they are. The painful upsets in an intimate relationship serve to teach us what emotional stuff we are made of. Krishnamurti has captured this wonderfully:
Psychologist Charlotte Kasl compares the symptoms of romantic love to those of manic-depressive disorder, "mood swings... distortions of reality". It is hard not to label the state of being in love as addiction or obsession. It differs from these in that it is always curable, for example by marriage. It seems undeniable that the state of being in love is always temporary.
During the 'in love' stage we put no demands on the other person, allowing them to be autonomous. We accept and appreciate the differences between us. Afterwards, as we begin to merge our lives, we become demanding, wanting them to fit in with us. The very differences that attracted us become problematic under the stress of normal living. At this point, ego, the villain of the drama of relationship, enters.
What is the experience of 'falling in love'? Fromm describes it as "the explosive collapse of barriers between two strangers". Thus the ecstasy accompanying the experience results from a temporary pseudo-union. 'Pseudo' because it is the inter-locking of two projections, not the fusion of two people. By contrast, falling out of love is the process of the ego-boundaries snapping back: we realise that we and our beloved have different wishes, needs and timing. After sufficient contact with reality the projection has dissolved. At this point we have the opportunity to begin loving in a real sense.
Professor Mortley points out that the high divorce rate in Western society is less a symptom of widespread disillusionment than an expression of our tremendous idealism about love and marriage. Convinced that if they can just find the right person they really will live happily ever after, many people make two or three trips up the aisle.
Dr Candida Peterson suggests that contrary to the romantic belief that certain people are "meant for each other", the choice of partner may be one of the least important factors in deciding whether or not a relationship will endure.
Family therapist Hugh Crago analysed why people choose the partners that they do. On one level we unconsciously choose a person who has qualities we lack. This is what is meant by "opposites attract". At a deeper level we also seek someone who is the same: "Nearly all of us, with uncanny accuracy, seem to recognise and hitch ourselves up with a person who is our true equal."
The other observation that is often made regarding choice of partner is that one tends to unconsciously select a person who is similar in character to either one's father or mother.
Love is inexhaustible: there is no reason why a woman can't love her husband and her child, or five children for that matter. What does get divided is love's expression, which requires time and active giving of oneself. I also think it is possible for a man to love two women, though this leads to problems.
There are numerous forms of pseudo-love: sexual infatuation; pride of possession; pride of creation - including of one's children; sympathy; fear of loneliness; egotism a deux (enlarging the egotistical unit to two people); the team concept of marriage; loving the other through identifying with them; adoration at a distance.
Dependency is another form that is often mistaken for love. Scott Peck points out that, "When you require another individual for your survival, you are a parasite on that individual." He defines dependency as the inability to feel whole and function adequately without the conviction that one is being taken care of by another. Loving another person in the way one loves a pet is another form of pseudo-love described by Peck. He cites numerous cases of US servicemen who married Asian war-brides. They had idyllic marriages until their wives learnt English, when the marriages began to fall apart: "The servicemen could then no longer project upon their wives their own thoughts, feelings, desires and goals and feel the same sense of closeness one feels with a pet." The same applies to mothers who only love their children while they are small.
Nor is blind devotion, as to a guru, master, political leader or dominating husband, a true form of love. It fails, at least in part, the criteria of knowledge, receiving and intimacy. Devotion is unequal, relying on the subjugation of the lover to the beloved. It is fundamentally one-sided, involving projection and worship thereof. We can also see that admiration has a distancing effect. Moreover, you can be devoted to something you don't even know. In fact, being based on projection, devotion relies on ignorance. Those who are totally devoted to a living person or religious figure actively resist finding out the truth about that person's failings. The furore about "The Last Temptation of Christ" illustrates this factor. In my view it is possible to be devoted to God, but not possible to love Him/Her, since God is the ultimate unknown. The Eastern discipline of bhakti yoga is correctly seen as the yoga of devotion, not as the yoga of love.
Peter Hoeg gives us a clue why passionate love can turn into hate, "Deep within every blind, absolute love grows the hatred towards the beloved, who now holds the only existing key to one's happiness."
Sacrifice may be a measure of devotion, but not of mature love. Mature love takes into account and balances the needs of both parties. Though, of course, if we love someone we will express our caring by making sacrifices for them when this is needed. Otherwise we would not be truly giving. The old-fashioned criterion of sacrifice is based on placing other people ahead of oneself, on self-denial, ultimately on self-abnegation. Peck writes, "It is true that love involves a change in the self, but this is an extension of the self rather than a sacrifice of the self... it fills the self rather than depleting it." (Note that this directly contradicts Krishnamurti. The two men are exploring love at different levels.)
Making sacrifice into the highest good is tantamount to self-abasement. At best, the elevation of sacrifice as a value is a compensation for the natural selfishness we all seem to harbour. Yet the cure for selfishness is self-love, not self-denial.
It is absurd to say, "Love others, but do not love yourself." Why would you happen to be the only human being unworthy of your own love? Since all people are of equal value it is illogical to put another ahead of yourself.
Amanda Vallis wrote:
If we have contempt for attributes we see in ourselves then it follows we will have contempt for those same things in others, which keeps us from loving and accepting people as they are. If we look for, find and love the beautiful qualities we see in ourselves we are then able to do the same thing with other people.
The illusion, namely, that love means necessarily the absence of conflict. Just as it is customary for people to believe that pain and sadness should be avoided under all circumstances, they believe that love means the absence of any conflict. And they find good reasons for this idea in the fact that the struggles around them seem only to be destructive interchanges which bring no good to either one of those concerned. But the reason for this lies in the fact that the 'conflicts' of most people are actually attempts to avoid the real conflicts. They are disagreements on minor or superficial matters which by their very nature do not lend themselves to clarification or solution. Real conflicts between two people, those which do not serve to cover up or to project, but which are experienced on the deep level of inner reality to which they belong, are not destructive. They lead to clarification, they produce a catharsis from which both persons emerge with more knowledge and more strength.
Victor Frankl writes:
Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of their personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless they love them. Love enables them to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more they see that which is potential in the other, which is not yet actualised but yet ought to be actualised.The superficially untrue statement, "You are love," means that your most essential nature is the faculty or potential to love. This faculty is always there, regardless of whether it is exercised. Loving another person is the act of finding a focus for the faculty of love, of manifesting what is already within you. In the words of Vincent Van Gogh:
There is the same difference in a person before and after he is in love as there is in an unlighted lamp and one that is burning. The lamp was there and was a good lamp, but now it is shedding light too and that is its real function.By far the best treatment of the subject of love that I have seen is 'The Art of Loving' by Erich Fromm, from which I have quoted liberally. As my favourite teacher used to say to the class: "Read it before you die".
I'm impressed that Fromm's criterion is the sharpest characterisation of erotic love:
that I love from the essence of my being and experience the other person in the essence of their being.