Nikolina

“Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an orientation of character which determinates the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, not toward one object of love. If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to the rest of his fellow men, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism. Yet, most people believe that love is constituted by the object, not by the faculty. In fact, they even believe that it is a proof of the intensity of their love when they do not love anybody expect the loved person. This is the same fallacy which we have already mentioned above. Because one foes not see that love is an activity, a power of the soul, one believes that all that is necessary to find is the right object - and that everything goes by itself afterward. This attitude can be compared to that of a man who wants to paint but who, instead of learning the art, claims that he has just to wait for the right object, and that he will paint beautifully when he finds it. If I truly love one person I love all persons, I love the world, I love life. If I can say to someone else, I love you, I must be able to say, I love you in everyone, I love though you the world, I love in you also myself. Saying that love is an orientation which refers to all and not to one does not imply, however, the idea that there are no differences between various types of love, which depend on the kind of object which is loved.
Brotherly love
Motherly love
Erotic love
Self-Love
Love of God”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Love