Love is the will to nurture life and growth in oneself and in another… Love is personal; it is the sacred trust of living things. Likewise, love is neither need nor dependency. ‘I need you’ is not the same as ‘I love you’. Need as the basis of a relationship may lead one person to suffocate another through demands. Need may drive me to manipulate, intimidate, or coerce you into fulfilling me.

Love is so vastly different! It is freeing; it acknowledges the separateness of the beloved. It treasures the unique otherness of the beloved that is each one’s contribution to the relationship. Love calls for submission and sacrifice. It does not seek to possess, but rather to empty itself in nurture of the loved one.

Donald A Green, 1982