Love is, on the other hand, the wish to care, and to preserve the object of the care. A centrifugal impulse, unlike centripetal desire. An impulse to expand, to go beyond, to stretch to what is ‘out there’. To ingest, absorb and assimilate the subject in the object, not vice versa as in the case of desire. Love is about adding to the world – each addition being the living trace of the loving self; in love, the self is, bit by bit, transplanted onto the world. The loving self expands through giving itself away to the loved object. Love is about self’s survival-through-self’s-alterity. And so love means an urge to protect, to feed, to shelter; also to caress, cosset and pamper, or to jealously guard, fence off, incarcerate. Love means being-in-service, standing-in-disposition, awaiting command – but it may also mean expropriation and seizing of responsibility. Mastery through surrender; sacrifice .rebounding as aggrandizement. Love is a Siamese twin of power greed; neither would survive the separation.
If desire wants to consume, love wants to possess. While the fulfilment of desire is coterminous with the annihilation of its object – love grows with its acquisitions and is fulfilled in their durability. If desire is self-destructive, love is self-perpetuating.