Perhaps the biggest misunderstanding people have about love is confusing it with attachment. It is natural, normal, and good to be attached to people, but this is not love. For instance, I am attached to my car, which is why I would suffer if it were stolen, damaged, or destroyed. But I don’t care about my car itself. I only care about what my car means to me.
Yet many of the things people call love are nothing but such attachments to people instead of objects. Love often involves attachment, but the essence of love is putting someone else’s real needs first, whereas what we often call love is merely emotional self-indulgence: the pleasure-addiction of romance, the empathy-worship of sparing a child discipline, or even the grieving over lost companionship when someone moves away.
Pure love can only be shown when serving a person’s real needs will cause us pain, but we still do what is best for them rather than what feels good to us.
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