Love

I do not only see your face, your profession, or the life you show to the outside world. I see your soul.

I know, for example, whether there are people in your life with whom you can share your deepest secrets. Whether they understand you, do not laugh at you, and do not pass on what you entrust to them.

I know what happens to you when you are attacked. I want to understand what frightens you, what makes you calm, how your personality developed, and how your abilities came into being.

If, as a woman, I genuinely want to know who you are, I ask about your life. I discover your abilities, want to understand how they developed, and take joy in the value I discover in you.

And when you ask me questions and genuinely want to understand how I became the person I am, I become calm.

Not because you control me.

But because you understand me.

A woman can fall in love with this stability.

Not with material security. Money matters as long as it is lacking. But beyond a certain amount, more money becomes increasingly uninteresting. It can make many things easier, but it cannot replace understanding.

A woman can fall in love with an experienced and mature man who has understood how his own personality developed: which experiences shaped him, how his abilities arose, and how his unconscious patterns developed.

In the same way, he can understand how his wife's personality developed, where her fears and reactions come from, and help her recognize and change harmful patterns.

And if they have children, he can understand in the same way how his children's unconscious patterns are developing, and help them change harmful patterns so that they are spared unnecessary suffering.

With the same ability, he sees the connections behind the challenges of life. He understands how problems arise and tries to solve them without having to give up either his wife or himself.

Not the certainty that nothing difficult will ever happen.

But the security of living beside someone who understands what is happening, why it is happening, and what can be done about it – without having to give up who you are.

A woman can fall in love with that.

A man can fall in love with a woman who is curious and ready to learn.

She is genuinely interested in who this man is.

She asks questions.

She does not merely want to know what he owns, what he looks like, or what status he has. She wants to discover the abilities and values within him and understand how they came into being.

And when she discovers something valuable, she takes joy in it. She admires it, encourages it, and can genuinely rejoice in it.

I see something valuable in you. And I am happy that it exists.

The experienced and mature man brings knowledge, life experience, and the ability to recognize connections.

The younger woman brings curiosity, the ability to learn, and the willingness to discover these connections, examine them, and learn to understand them increasingly well herself.

And perhaps one day there is a child.

Then these very abilities become even more important.

A child needs a mother who is curious enough to discover, through questions, the child's abilities and values – and to take genuine joy in them. What she recognizes in the child, what amazes her, and what she rejoices in is given room to develop further.

And a child needs a father whose experience and understanding help recognize and change harmful unconscious patterns in the child, so that the child is spared unnecessary suffering.

Both need self-reflection, so that they do not unknowingly pass their own fears, wounds, and mistaken beliefs on to the child.

We do not only pass on to our children what we consciously teach them. We also pass on what we ourselves cannot see.

Love tests beauty, status, and desire less.

These things can be substitutes for something much deeper.

Real love comes from the abilities of the other person – from what becomes stronger, safer, easier, and better in our lives because of this person.

Love comes from seeing who the other person is, understanding how their personality developed, having compassion for them, and helping them continue to develop.

When another person's abilities make my life safer, more understandable, and better, a love can grow from this that is stronger than the brief intoxication of desire that we so often call love today.

And with it, we have lost the love that grows from this stability.

When stability is lost, people try to replace it with power.

When I do not feel secure, I may try to control the other person. When I do not understand my fear, I may try to control their behaviour.

But power does not create real stability.

From this instability come manipulation, abuse of power, and exploitation. Children grow up within it and carry the resulting psychological wounds and unconscious patterns forward.

The same mechanisms appear on ever larger scales – in families, groups, and societies, in the exploitation of other human beings, in wars, and in the way we treat nature.

Love says: I see you. I see your soul.

When I make the other person more stable and they make me more stable, exactly what a statue at Schönbrunn depicts happens:

Two lovers look into each other's eyes.

Beneath them, the message is essentially:

“May my strength be multiplied in you.”