Erich Fromm About Love

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-01-15 16:05

If I love, I care, that is, I actively participate in the development and happiness of another person, I am not a spectator.

If children's love comes from the principle: "I love because I love," then mature love comes from the principle: "I love because I love." Immature love screams, "I love you because I need you!" Mature love thinks, "I need you because I love you."

• Selfless obsession with each other is not a proof of the power of love, but only evidence of the immensity of the loneliness that preceded it.
• If a person experiences love according to the principle of possession, then this means that he seeks to deprive the object of his "love" of freedom and to keep it under control. Such love does not bestow life, but suppresses, destroys, strangles, kills it.

For most people, the problem of love is to be loved, not to love, to be able to love

Most people believe that love depends on an object, not on one's own ability to love. They are even convinced that since they do not love anyone other than their "beloved" person, this proves the power of their love. This is where the delusion manifests itself - an orientation toward an object. If I really love a person, I love all people, I love the world, I love life. If I can say to someone “I love you”, I should be able to say “I love everything in you”, “I love the whole world thanks to you, I love myself in you”

If a person is capable of fully loving, then he loves himself; if he is able to love only others, he cannot love at all

The selfish person does not love himself too much, but too weakly. He seems to care too much about himself, but in reality he only makes unsuccessful attempts to hide and compensate for his failure in caring for his own self

It is generally accepted that falling in love is already the pinnacle of love, while in fact it is the beginning and only the possibility of finding love. It is believed that this is the result of the mysterious and attraction of two people to each other, an event that happens by itself. They do not become loved by chance; your own ability to love makes you love in the same way that being interested makes a person interesting

In a loved one, one must find oneself, and not lose oneself in him.

A mother's love cannot be earned by good behavior, but it cannot be lost by sinning

Love begins to manifest itself only when we love those whom we cannot use for our own purposes

To be sexually attracted to someone does not mean to love; A warm, although not particularly close relationship between friends is nothing more than a manifestation of love

One of the forms of pseudo-love, often perceived (and even more often described in films and novels) as “great love,” is idolatrous love. If a person in his development has not reached the level when he realizes himself, his individuality, then he is inclined to “idolize” his beloved, to make an idol out of him. He alienates himself from his own forces and directs them to a loved one. Thus, he deprives himself of the feeling of his strength, loses himself in his beloved, instead of finding himself. Since no one can usually meet the expectations of the worshiper for a long time, sooner or later disappointment sets in

• Love is the only reasonable and satisfactory answer to the question of the meaning of human existence.