XVI
The Other remains Other
To love someone is not to erase the distance that makes them someone else.
Love may compel the lover.
To desire is to be moved. The movement can be total for the one who feels it. That intensity is real as experience.
Love must never compel the beloved.
Another person retains interiority, freedom, choice, privacy, difference, the right not to reciprocate, the right to change, the right to leave.
A beloved is someone else. Even profound love does not create access to another person’s private mind. Longing is not evidence of reciprocity. Passion is not permission.
Desire tells us something about the desirer. It does not, by itself, tell us what the desired person feels.
Eve
The Other remains Other
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