Love is giving and taking; need and the fulfillment of need. If, sensing your thirst, I were to offer you a cup of cold water, my offer could be an expression of love, but if my gesture were to contain any motivation other than the simple fulfillment of your need—if I were motivated by a desire to manipulate your opinion of me, for instance, or to gain control of you in any way, there would be no love at all in my offer.

And if your perception was not clouded by any hidden motivation of your own, you would sense my lovelessness. You might accept the water, of course, and thank me for it, but you wouldn’t deliver yourself into my hands for it. 

True love is innocent and free, no strings attached. It gives and goes merrily on its way. False love poisons and possesses. But alas!

How many of us are so pure in heart that we have not at some time fallen prey to the blandishments of manipulating love? It’s like drinking salt water. You drink, and your thirst increases, until it becomes a craving and drives you to drink more and more, until the salt in the water kills you.

If you knew where to find fresh water, you would gladly go there and drink it. Even so, would you seek out true love if you knew where to find it? Our need for love is as basic and vital as our need for water.

So many of us are drawn to the poisoned well of “love” to drink deeply, desperately, compulsively, even though we know it will kill us in the end. 

Before you say to yourself, “Well, my love is pure—he can’t be talking about me!”, please take a good look at your relationships with those around you. By his rebelliousness, maybe your “ungrateful” son is trying to communicate something that he cannot find words for.

Or the violent behavior of your husband might be saying, “Stop loving me, stop possessing me. You’re eating me alive!” If he runs to the fountainhead of another’s “love,” he is saying that your “love” has become too destructive, demanding, and degrading.

He thinks, of course, that the other woman’s “love” is different, but he has forgotten how it all started with you. He may find fresher water, but he will be hooked by the same old bait. After all, it worked for you. Why shouldn’t it work as well for her? 

Do you remember what your thoughts were as you set the hook? Do you recall your secret motive? Did you not know in your heart that you could not be entirely honest with him and expect to have him at the same time?

"Our need for love is as basic and vital as our need for water"

Did you not know that you had to pretend to have thoughts and emotions that you did not have, that you had to exalt his ego, bring him down with flattery, and lock him in with sex? It worked, of course.

He soon became dependent on your false love. When he did, you felt that it was safe to start reeling in your catch—your turn to finagle some fulfillment of your own selfish needs.

But when the poor fish felt the tug on the line, he felt betrayed by the bait. He began to see your “love” in a different light, and to doubt the purity of your motives.

’Twas ever thus. Love on the rebound is such a universally-experienced phenomenon because we are all so hungry for love that we refuse to learn by experience. 

We simply get off one line only to be hooked by another. Only hungry fish bite. The hungry ego never gets to be a wise old fish.

So what is real love? Well, for one thing, it does not tempt. A recent TV ad for a chemical sweetener sells its product by saying, “It isn’t fattening, it isn’t bad for your teeth—it’s just plain satisfying,” and true love is a lot like that.

You can get to be a wise old fish if you can learn to identify the bait with the hook, and leave it alone. Just let it wiggle in its provocative, ego-tantalizing way, the way that turns on all the ego-hungry fools, and know that you don’t need it.

It has nothing to offer you once you realize that true love lies within you, trying to tell you what love is not.