To sum up: the qualities that arouse the protective instinct are the opposite of those that attract a sex partner.
Protector and protégé are outwardly alike; sex partners are complimentary opposites. Protégés are physically and mentally inferior to their protectors; sex partners are physically and mentally equals. These three sets of qualities, opposite and mutually exclusive, of protégés and sex partners, determine the basic attitudes towards each, also opposite and mutually exclusive. And yet we call these profoundly different emotions by the same name: love. Love has become of necessity, then, the most dangerously misleading word in the language.
Esther Vilar, The Polygamous Sex, 1976.
November 10, 2014
QotD: “[T]he most dangerously misleading word in the language”
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