And it occurred to me some of the different things that happen under the name “love”. There is the person who sweeps in and takes over, who makes your bed, and ties your shoes, and packs your lunch and tells you where to go. This is “cloning of the self”. It is an aggression, committed by someone who wants to see more of themselves in the world. It has nothing to do with you at all.
Then there is the person who just wants to leave their scent everywhere, who affects a benign presence, and more or less “blesses” you.
There is the desperate need to get, from romantic love, what one did not get as a child. Both people demand of the other everything they have, while giving only their need. Sex can tie this together for a time, but not forever. It spins apart in various ways, although sometimes someone–usually the woman–can keep it together by giving much more than she gets, over a long period of time. The man, in this scenario, remains a child, with a lover/mother.
And it does occur to me that how a mother separates from a child, particularly a boy, is of vital psychodynamic importance. There has to be a union when the child is young, and a specific separation at an appropriate age. As I have said, I do believe in the Oedipal Complex, but I think Freud got it backwards: I think the children imbibe the unhealthy attachment of their mother, who is often using their child as an object to get the love they do not get from the father.
What I feel is that real love, true love, is a taking away of affect, not an addition. What I feel, what I see in my waking dreams, is all of us living in water, connected, naked to one another. We all live in bubbles which can be made opaque, which can be made larger and smaller. Love is not adding or taking anything away.
I am not sure what I mean by this. I am speaking aloud. Perhaps I will see more in time.