According to the Encarta Dictionary, love is an intense feeling of tender affection and compassion; a passionate feeling or romantic desire and sexual attraction. Erich Fromm made these comments:

Immature love says: I love you because I need you.' Mature love says 'I need you because I love you.'

In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two.

Love is union with somebody, or something, outside oneself, under the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one's own self.

In the classic book, The Art of Loving, Erich Fromm writes that