Love is an absolute value

Just been thinking about my post about love from the other day and one of the comments from one of my regular readers, by the way I love getting your comments.

This what I think but of course it is open to debate.
 You have to separate love from feeling.
 Of course when you fall in love, the sort that makes your heart beat fast and feel all funny, you need that to make you want to be in a relationship with someone. A lot about falling in love is the way that person makes you feel. If they fall in love with you too then of course it makes life wonderful and you should both make each other feel good about yourselves. How wonderful it is to be able to say to someone that being with them has made you a better person, because that's what we all want to be isn't it? We want to feel good about ourselves and that we are getting better all the time. That's why it hurts so much when people harm you with careless and unkind actions or words.
Over time though love cannot always be about feelings, it has to be a value, that you live by and that guides your actions.

Friends and family can make us feel good about ourselves too. A parent has a lot of power in making children become the adults they will be. we try to please our parents and become what they expect us to be. So if throughout your child you hear that your elder brother is the clever/good looking one and that he needs to be looked after and you have to be careful with him because he is a bit fragile, then you do what they say. If you hear them say she's always going to come up smiling, she's got such a happy nature, then it reinforces your behaviour in that way.
Because you love your parents and your brothers or sisters you pretend that you haven't noticed that they consider the elder or younger one more, because you love them.
Friends can make you feel good about yourself too, make you laugh, let you know how much they enjoy your company, they might even let you know when you're going off track.
People that you love can hurt you , badly, sometimes just too much so you have to distance yourself from them, but that doesn't mean you don't love them anymore, as Shakespeare so eloquently phrased it in his sonnet.

'Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds..'


So to sum up for today love is an absolute value because it doesn't need anything else to survive, it stands alone. Other values  like honesty, loyalty, fairness, bravery can be relative and change and be interpreted in different ways, but love is love and that's that.
You cannot make someone love you, you can win their approval but do not mistake it for affection.