**What Makes Love Great?** Robert Heinlein said, *“Love is ..
Added 2023-02-23 04:45:15 +0000 UTC**What Makes Love Great?**
Robert Heinlein said, *“Love is that condition in which the happiness of the other person is essential to your own.”*
Erich Fromm in *The Art of Loving* famously wrote that the most important elements of love are ***care & respect.***
In a relationship with genuine caring and respect, Fromm said that a lover must feel towards the other as such:
***“I want the loved person to grow and unfold for their own sake, and in their own ways, and not for the purpose of serving me.”***
Fromm defined mature love as a *“union under the condition of preserving one’s integrity, one’s individuality… beings become one yet remain two.”* Love can be a vessel for self-realization but it cannot be a substitute for personal identity.
Without care and respect, our attraction for another person can only be an imitation of love. Respect allows us to value a loved one's identity and integrity and prevents us from selfishly exploiting them.
It can be difficult to tell the difference between between sexual desire and love since they’re both intense and passionate. The key feature is the depth and substance behind the feeling. Sexual desire is narrowly focused and easily dismissed while love is a constant and complex emotion. Love can still be accompanied by a passionate desire for sex, but the the primary concern is caring for the other.
