IMO real and the purest form of love will act in a way that will always keep the highest, purest and most honorable interest of ALL people in mind. Therefore, real love will not want to act in any a way that might be destructive to oneself and/or others.
If looking at the above definition, it’s clear that the actions of a wayward person is the opposite of real love.
Underneath is also a copy of a post I send to someone on this topic a while ago:
The chapter on love in the Bible (I Corinthians 13) show/explain how real love is action and not feeling:
"Love is patient, love is kind.” – Patience and kindness is actions e.g. one chooses to act patient and kind. Therefore one chooses to act in loving ways.
“It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not rejoice in evil but rejoices with the truth.” – These also implicate action. One chooses to not envy; not boast; not act proud, rude, self-seeking, angry. One chooses to not keep record of wrongs and not rejoice with evil. In other words one chooses to NOT act in ways which will be unloving and destructive for self and others.
”It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails." – Again, one chooses to act protective; to trust, hope etc.
In “Road Less Traveled” the author (M. Scott Peck) also describes how real love is action and not feeling, but how the common tendency of people to confuse these two allows them all manner of self-deception e.g. possessing a feeling of love and then acting in response to that feeling in all manner of unloved and destructive ways (like WS’s and OP’s in A’s). Underneath are a view extracts from the book:
[color:"blue"] Of all the misconceptions about love the most powerful and pervasive is the belief that ‘falling in love’ is love or at least one of the manifestations of love. It is a potent misconception, because falling in love is subjectively experienced in a very powerful fashion as an experience of love.
Falling in love is not an act of will. It is not a conscious choice. Not matter how open to or eager for it we may be, the experience may still elude us. Contrarily, the experience may capture us at times when we are definitely not seeking it, when it is inconvenient and undesirable. We are as likely to fall in love with someone with whom we are obviously ill matched as with someone more suitable. Indeed, we may not even like or admire the object of our passion, yet, try as we might, we may not be able to fall in love with a person whom we deeply respect and with whom a deep relationship would be in all ways desirable.
This is not to say that the experience of falling in love is immune to discipline. Psychiatrists, for instance, frequently fall in love with their patients, just as their patients fall in love with them, yet out of duty to the patient and their role they are usually able to abort the collapse of their ego boundaries and give up the person as a romantic object. The struggle and suffering of the discipline involved may be enormous. But discipline and will can only control the experience; they cannot create it. We can choose how to respond to the experience of falling of love, but we cannot choose the experience itself.
Love is not a feeling. Many, many people possessing a feeling of love and even acting in response to that feeling act in all manner of unloved and destructive ways. It is not only possible but necessary for a loving person to avoid acting on feelings of love. I may meet a woman who strongly attracts me, whom I feel like loving, but because it would be destructive to my marriage to have an affair, I will say vocally or in the silence of my heart, ‘I feel like loving you, but I am not going to’. My feelings of love may be unbounded, but my capacity to be loving is limited. I therefore must choose the person on whom to focus my capacity to love, toward whom to direct my will to love.
True love is not a feeling by which we are overwhelmed. It is a committed, thoughtful decision. Genuine love implies commitment and the exercise of wisdom. When we are concerned for someone’s spiritual growth, we know that a lack of commitment is likely to be harmful and that commitment to that person is probably necessary for us to manifest our concern effectively.
Genuine love is volitional rather than emotional. The person who truly love does so because of a decision to love. This person has made a commitment to be loving whether or not the loving feeling is present. If it is, so much the better; but if it isn’t, the commitment to love, the will to love, still stands and is still exercised.
The common tendency to confuse love with feelings of love allows people all manner of self-deception. It is clear that there may be a self-serving quality in this tendency to confuse love with the feeling of love; it is easy and not at all unpleasant to find evidence of love in one’s feelings. It may be difficult and painful to search for evidence of love in one’s actions. But because true love is an act of will that often transcends ephemeral feelings of love, it is correct to say, ‘Love is as love does’. [/color]
