"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 toward one "object" of love. If a person only loves one other person and is indifferent to the rest of his fellow men, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism."
I have begun reading, or re-reading, Erich Fromm's The Art of Loving. I know I studied his writing in college but to read it again forty years later is another task altogether. With some luck we all will have a life long enough to find some understanding about subjects like..love. When picturing love most of us see a corny image of entwined lovers, that's what appeared when I googled it and that's what we are sold in our culture.
"In contrast to the symbiotic union, mature love is union under the condition of preserving one's integrity, one's individuality. Love is an active power in man; a power which breaks through the walls which separate man from his fellow men , which unites him with others; love makes him overcome the sense of isolation and separateness, yet it permits him to be himself, to retain his integrity. In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two."
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