Does true love demand reciprocation?

You’re full of them today aren’t you? Really true deep love has to be a two way street. I’m not talking infatuation, puppy love, or whatever. When you truly experience the sort of love that you can feel in your chest it only happens when it’s returned. And you can’t make any demands on the other person. It has to be freely given and returned.

True love demands nothing.

Did I just say that?

Oh true love has it’s demands, they just aren’t what you normally think of.

True love only wants the best for the beloved including their happiness. It demands nothing.

What @marinelife said. Though someone who truly loves another may want reciprocation or requited love, they do not demand it despite whatever pain or longing it may cause. The happiness and well being of the other individual is good enough.

I do not assume that true love refers to romantic love. In that respect, no, reciprocation is not required. Parents inherently will love children, although they may not enable them or tolerate their behavior.
I have been in love twice. Regardless of the relationships not working out, I truly want those two men to be successful and find what makes them happy. I want love for them, and have a kind of melancholy ache that our relationship wasn’t meant to be. I joke that I hope the new woman is somehow flawed, but I don’t mean it. So I believe if you fall in love with someone a part of that feeling will always remain and does not require, or even want, reciprocation.

Romantic love is a special kind of love. The desire is not so much for a quid pro quo arrangement but to be able to join together and transcend individual boundaries.. Mutual support is a necessary component of such a relationship.

You don’t get to demand anything. And if you demand or expect anything in return, you don’t really love the intended.

Love means wanting what is best for the intended without regard to what it means for you. It is selflessness, not self focused.

I can tell you from deep personal experience that true love makes no demands on the affections of the beloved. None. When you love someone enough to desire their happiness above all else, then you let them pursue it as they will, too. (That might change if you perceived their interests to lie in patently unsafe or destructive “interests” such as alcoholism or drug addiction, or even following a cult – anything that degraded their free will, that is.)

“If you love someone, set them free,” isn’t just a pop slogan from the 70s. It is “how to love.”

True love may not demand anything, but can’t exist without the people involved and every individual wants or needs something they consider a part of love.

It may not involve reciprocation, but we all have a list, even for our children, ice cream, and romance novels.

Being loved is not easy:

“Loving someone is easy. It’s your car and all you have to do is start the engine, give her a little gas and point the thing wherever you want to go. But being loved is like being taken for a ride in someone else’s car. Even if you think they’ll be a good driver, you always have the innate fear they might do something wrong: in an instant you’ll both be flying through the windshield toward imminent disaster. Being loved can be the most frightening thing of all. Because love means good-bye to control; and what happens if halfway or three-quarters of the way through the trip you decide you want to go back, or in a different direction, and you’re only the codriver?”
— Jonathan Carroll / Bones of The Moon

@zenvelo Very true.

I’ve lived and loved many years and I’m still not sure what is meant by true love. Even parental love, which is potentially the most unselfish, desires something back in the form of an ongoing interaction. I do think you can love someone romantically as well as companionably and accept that you will never receive romantic love from them but that takes a great deal of maturity. Certainly, learning to let go and not trying to control the other person is a component of “true” or mature love as is accepeting the other person for who they are.

W B Yeat’s take; a very complex little poem.

“Eternity”

“He who binds to himself a joy
Does the wingéd life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sunrise.”

After the opening introduction and remarks, in my first freshman English comp. class, the professor put this on the board and asked us each to write a little exegesis. I spewed out something mushy and got my first D ever. That was eye-opening.

I could not be deeply in love with someone unless they were deeply in love with me…so IMO, yes it requires reciprocation for me to be deeply in love with someone.

Blake, @gailcalled; William Blake. But a perfect example. One of my favorite quotations, along with all the others.

“Love” isn’t the same as “in love with”, @Cruiser. That’s why one can exist without the other. It can be painful, too.

Oh, man, CWOTUS. It is Blake, of course. I stared at his name when I checked my memory and brought up the poem. A least I didn’t attribute it to W.H. Auden.

As I keep saying, the surgeon removed a bit of my brain along with my left knee.

Or Philip Larkin of whom my favorite poem starts:

They fuck you up,
your parents do.”

Sometimes you can care about someone deeply and see how you could fit together with each other and the other person just doesn’t see things the same way. One way love never works and really isn’t worth fighting for if you know the other doesn’t want or isnt willing persue more with you.

Its hard to walk away from someone you truly cared about especially when you cared for them for a long time but for the sake of your heart you need to just let them go and hopefully in time the feeling will fade, maybe not go away altogether but the hurt will be less.

Most people live in a true love fraud. True love is not directed at a spouse, though you can love your spouse with a true love as he/she will fall under that umbrella as your fellow human being. True love will mean you will endure sacrifice to make sure another, not necessarily just your spouse/lover has it better and not for any self or personal gain.

• You will sleep on the floor, so long as they have a feathered bed.
• You will go thirsty so long as they have drink.
• You will go hungry if it means they will have a meal.
• You will go cold if it means they have a coat or is warmed.
• You will stand if it means they will sit.
• You will go last to make sure they get something.
• You will care for their well-being even if they never said “thank you” for it or showed they appreciated you.
• You will love them even if there is no sex from them on the table.
• You will love and forgive them no matter what depth of wrong they done to you.

Those are some of the traits of real deep and true love, how well are you doing? As much as I work on it I am by far not perfect on a lot of that, but knowing that I am not, I have something to work on.