I feel love is not just about enjoying each other's company. It's more about caring for the other person and always longing to see them happy. But in this endeavour to see them happy, we tend to get hurt most of the times. Is it true that we can love any other person only when we stop loving our-self?
Is there a discussion in ethics that essentially argues that the love of self should be subjugated to the love of the other?
First note that there are different kinds of love:
Secondly, how would you quantify love? Is it simply there or not, or is it measurable along a continuous scale?
Notwithstanding, consider parental love primeraly being expressed in caring for a child. The parent need to take care of themselves, or risk leaving the child destitute. Similarly the happiness of a loved one is rarely served by neglecting one's own happiness. In short, there is a strong case for:
Love yourself before you can love another.
Love has depth. Love means to hug someone.Love means to kiss someone. Love means to be constantly mindful of someone. Love means to sacrifice yourself for someone else. Love means to constantly care for someone. Love means no hatred, not a little bit of hatred. Love means friendship. Love means joy in other’s success. Love means surrender.
We human beings care about other people's opinions on us: The majority of people will not obtain their self-esteem by a personal belief that they are consistent with their idealistic image for themselves, but rather by other people approval and confirmation. For example, if my idealistic self is nice and kind, therefore i want other people to see me so, but if my idealistic self is violent, therefore i want other people to see me as so.
From this perspective, when i love someone, this means that i'm completely sure that he sees me as i want to be seen and does not see me as i do not want to be seen.
This need for approval could seem subjective or trivial, but no it is not, that's because the urge for self-esteem is universal.
From a systemic-interactive point of view, love is a common interaction. Nevertheless, its mechanism is commonly misunderstood.
An interaction is an exchange of something between two entities. There are two parts: what the subject receives, and what the subject delivers (you are the subject because you are assessing the interaction, and she's the object of love).
The most common notion of love is love as receiving. The subject gets attention, care, sex, etc. It cannot be controlled, ergo, it is a passive form of love. It does not require nothing, it is egoistic, and tends to enforce self-esteem. People commonly thinks of this variant as the meaning of love. Sadly, if the subject is focused on this perspective, love will dissappear for sure. It is not really an interaction, so, the object could soon get tired of giving and not receiving.
The other perspective is love as giving. Of course, this is absolutely controllable, it is an active form of love, and it requires effort. It does not give nothing to the subject, nothing, except the pride of giving. It is not easy to perform, requires patience and constance. Of course, the object of love will feel pleased.
But here's the magic of human interaction: any action creates a tension, and our human nature demands us to relieve tensions in order to survive. So, if you give love, the other person will feel good, and if she's a normal, sane and mature person, will feel grateful. Gratefulness can be relieved only by mirroring the action, that is, performing an equivalent reaction.
The consequence of this natural behavior causality is obvious: if the subject receives love and returns less than received, the object will soon lose interest and the interaction will end. On the contrary, if the subject gives more than received, the object will get permanently engaged in the relationship.
But wait, you don't need to wait until receiving something to start reacting. You can be the causal generator. You can start giving and always give more than received (at a certain point, you will feel that her life is more important than yours, that's just part of the process, but it does not imply stop loving oneself: just having a lower priority than the other). As said, if she's mature, love will never end. Eureka, that's the real recipe for love: choosing a sane and mature interacting partner, and always give more than received. In fact, that's the same recipe for economic development and any other interaction. You can find all this on my last book.
"Subtle degrees of domination and servitude are what you know as love
But love is different it arrives complete just there like the Moon in the window
Like the Sun of neither East nor West nor of anyplace
When that Sun arrives East and West arrive
Desire only that of which you have no hope seek only that of which you have no clue
Love is the sea of not-being and there intellect drowns
This is not the Oxus River or some little creek this is the shoreless sea; here swimming ends always in drowning
A journey to the sea is horses and fodder and contrivance but at land’s end the footsteps vanish
You lift up your robe so as not to wet the hem; come! drown in this sea a thousand times
The Moon passes over the ocean of non-being
Droplets of spray tear loose and fall back on the cresting waves
A million galaxies are a little scum on that shoreless sea"
-'Subtle Degrees' by Jalal al-Din Rumi
"So come, my friends, be not afraid
We are so lightly here
It is in love that we are made
In love we disappear"
-Leonard Cohen
Love is care, or rather love incorporates care, at a minimum.
many find caring about your beloved for her sake to be a part of what it is to love her. The robust concern view of love takes this to be the central and defining feature of love
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/love/
Romantic love depends on intimacy to work, if not to exist
The three components of love in the triangular [psychology] theory of love are intimacy, passion, and decision/commitment (Sternberg, 1986).
and in its truest sense I'd have thought it exists independently of everyone else, including who you are kidding.
