ABSTRACT
Love, a commitment to another person – a commitment to putting the other's well-being ahead of one's own personal happiness – also involves the risk of deep pain if that loved person is then lost. Moreover, the experience of being loved and cared for by a good and consistent parent or caretaker forms the basis for, and the steady centre of the baby's rapidly developing personality. To achieve a relationship in which the emotional and spiritual experience of love can be joined with its physical expression is both the outcome of good early experience, and also in turn the cause of it in others. The sexual passion that usually accompanies falling in love takes care of the process of conception; the maternal passion that follows childbirth makes more likely the infant's survival. Idealisation perhaps develops into an especial tolerance, for the vagaries of that particular mortal, and hence difference, and yet continues to sustain respect and affection, loyalty and allegiance.
