Wait, you mean actually feel safe, as in you can relax just as much as when you're alone with a good book, not just be aware that the person is allied to you? How does that jive with "using your conscious decision to behave nicely to the other person even if at the moment you don't feel emotionally compelled to"?
I was abused as a child. You seem to be very distressed about this, so let me make it clear that my life is pretty good and I don't have any awful traumas or anything. But all sources of advice about how to move on and go on about one's life insist on this: abuse screws up attachment. If I ever (ever, not "before I've healed enough") drop my CONSTANT VIGILANCE!, I will hurt people who love me for the power trip (this is confirmed by experience), and I will be abused again by someone who notices I'm an easy victim (this isn't; Shiny Boyfriend is astoundingly ethical).
There's probably a better way to keep those bad tendencies in check than through fear and guilt, which is why I brought it up. But your version of love seems incompatible with having bad tendencies in the first place.
Thanks! That doesn't match my experience at all, so it's nice to learn about.
maybe that's the gap that you have to overcome using your conscious decision to behave nicely to the other person even if at the moment you don't feel emotionally compelled to
Crushing fear of being abusive, and guilt about having hurt them in the past, works really well for this.
I think your classification is missing something. I've had close trusted friends I had sexual desire for (whether I acted on it or not) without wanting to date them. B, as lucidian suggests, probably contains more sub-components.
Because of this, I can't understand the rest of your post. Thanks for the advice; it's good, but not new.
Does a normal good relationship happen like so?: "You develop obsession and (possibly later) desire, then closeness, then the obsession fades." (I'm not sure many people agree that Mature Adult Love takes less than six months to develop!) What is it like when the obsession fades?
Everyone says "three to six months" (with a few outliers saying one, two, or three years), and I'm starting to think this is evidence they trust what everyone else says over their own experience, rather than separate observations matching, because reported experiences differ wildly. In particular, many people think of love as intense friendship plus sex, while many others have a completely distinct romance drive.
Well yes, I am very concerned, because you're talking about convincing people that it won't collapse ecosystems, and not about figuring out whether it'll actually collapse ecosystems in the real world that doesn't care how persuasive you sound.