Love is not a commodity

One Florida reader, apparently traumatized by personal experience, wrote to complain, "If I steal five cents of goods, I'm a thief and punished; but if I steal the love of someone else's wife, I'm fine." ”

　　This is a common illusion in the minds of many people that love, like a commodity, can be "stolen." In fact, many states have decrees allowing for the claim of "emotional transfer" compensation.

　　But love is not a commodity; truth cannot be bought, sold, exchanged, or stolen. Love is an act of will, a turn of feelings, a change in personality.

　　When a husband or wife is "stolen" by another person, that husband or wife is already ready to be stolen and is ready to accept a new partner. This "love bandit" is nothing more than something that others will take away and hopes that others will take away.

　　We tend to treat people like things. We even say that children "belong" to their parents. But no one "belongs" to anyone. People belong to themselves. Children are entrusted to their parents, and if the parents do not treat them well, the government has the right to revoke the parents' status of trusteeship for them.

　　Most of us have had the experience of a lover being taken away by someone more attractive and charming when we were young. At the time, we may have resented this uninvited guest —but when we grew up, we realized that our sweetheart did not belong to us in the first place. It's not that the uninvited guest "leads" to a breakup, it's the lack of real feelings.

　　On the face of it, many marriages seem to have broken down because of a "third party." However, this is a psychological illusion. The other woman, or the other man, was nothing more than an excuse to dissolve a marriage that had long since ceased to be intact.