"Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says 'I need you because I love you.'"
"If I love the other person, I feel one with him or her, but with him as he is, not as I need him to be as an object for my use. Respect thus implies the absence of exploitation: it allows the other to be, to change and to develop 'in his own ways.' This requires a commitment to know the other as a separate being, and not merely as a reflection of my own ego. According to Velleman this loving willingness and ability to see the other as they really are is foregrounded in our willingness to risk self-exposure."
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Source: Erich Fromm (2013). “The Art of Loving”, p.34, Open Road Media
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