Love means that I know the person I love. I’m aware of the many sides of the other person----not just the beautiful side but also the limitations, inconsistencies and flaws. I have an awareness of the other’s feelings and thoughts, and I experience something of the core of that person. I can penetrate social masks and roles and see the other person on a deeper level.
爱意味着我了解我所爱的人。我认识到对方的许多方面，不仅是美丽闪光的一面，还有能力上的不足、反复无常和性格上的缺陷。我了解对方的感情和想法，我能体验到那个人身上的某种本质的东西。我能透过对方社交场合的表现和在社会的角色，看到他更深层次的品质。
Love means that I care about the welfare of the person I love. To the extent that it is genuine, my caring is not a smothering of the person or a possessive clinging. On the contrary, my caring liberates both of us. If I care about you, I’m concerned about your growth, and I hope you will become all that you can become. Consequently, I don’t put up roadblocks to what you do that enhances you as a person, even though it may result in my discomfort at times.
爱意味着我关心我所爱的人的幸福。只要这种关心是真诚的，那么它就不会是某种压抑或占有性的依附。与此相反，我的关心会使我们两个都不受到束缚。如果我在乎你，我就会关注你的成长，我希望你将来成为一个有所作为的人。因此，对你为完善自己所做的一切，我决不设置障碍，即使你做的事情有时会使我不快。
Love means having respect for the dignity of the person I love. If I love you, I can see you as a separate person, with your own values and thoughts and feelings, and I do not insist that you surrender you identity and conform to an image of what I expect you to be for me. I can allow and encourage you to stand alone and to be who you are, and I avoid treating you as an object or using you primarily to gratify my own needs.
爱意味着尊重我所爱的人的尊严。如果我爱你，我会把你看成是独立的个体，有自己的价值观、思想和感情，我不会坚持让你放弃自己的特性，使你变成一个我期望你成为的那种人。我会允许并鼓励你保持独立，坚持自己的特色，我会避免把你当作一件东西对待或用你来主要满足我自身的需要。
Love means having a responsibility toward the person I love. If I love you, I’m responsive to most of your major needs as a person. This responsibility does not entail my doing for you what you are capable of doing for yourself; nor does it mean that I run your life for you. It does imply acknowledging that what I am and what I do affects you, so that I am directly involved in your happiness and your misery. A lover does have the capacity to hurt or neglect the loved one, and in this sense I see that love entails and acceptance of some responsibility for the impact my way of being has on you.
爱意味着对我所爱的人付责任。如果我爱你，我就会积极对待你的需要。这种责任并不等于我要为你做你自己能够做到的事情，也不是说我为你管理你的生活。它应该是承认我和我所做的事会对你产生影响，因此我直接与你的幸福和痛苦联系在一起。一个人的确可能会伤害或忽视他所爱的人。从这个意义上说，爱包含着我要为我(的生活方式)对你的影响承担一定的责任。
Love means growth for both myself and the person I love. If I love you, I am growing as a result of my love. You are a stimulant for me to become more fully what I might become, and my loving enhances your being as well. We each grow as a result of caring and being cared for; we each share in an enriching experience that does not detract form our being.
爱意味着和所爱的人共同成长。如果我爱你，我会为了对你的爱而成长。你将是激励我更加充实自己的动力，我的爱也会使你不断完善提高。我们因爱与被爱而成长;我们彼此分享积累的丰富经验而又不削减自己的个性。
Love means making a commitment to the person I love. This commitment does not entail surrendering our total selves to each other; nor does it imply that the relationship is necessarily permanent. It does entail a willingness to stay with each other in times of pain, uncertainty, struggle, and despair, as well as in times of calm and enjoyment.
爱意味着能够承诺我所爱的人。这种承诺并不需要我们相互放弃自身的特性;也不是指我们的这种关系一定要天长地久。这种承诺不仅包含着愿意在痛苦、犹豫、绝望的时候相互支持，也包含着共享平静与欢乐。
Love means trusting the person I love. If I love you, I trust that you will accept my caring and my love and that you won’t deliberately hurt me. I trust that you will find me lovable and that you won’t abandon me; I trust the reciprocal nature of our love. If we trust each other, we are willing to be open to each other and can shed masks and pretenses and reveal our true selves.
爱意味着相信我所爱的人。如果我爱你，我会相信你将接受我的关心与爱意，我会相信你不会故意把我伤害，我会相信你终将发现我的可爱之处，我会相信你不会把我弃于不顾;我会相信我们是相爱的。如果我们彼此信任，我们就愿意敞开心扉，摘下面具，去掉伪装，显示我们真实的自我。
Love can tolerate imperfection. In a love relationship there are times of boredom, times when I may feel like giving up, times of real strain, and times I experience an impasse. Authentic love does not imply enduring happiness. I can stay during rough times, however, because I can remember what we had together in the past, and I can picture what we will have together in our future if we care enough to face our problems and work them through. We agree with Reverend Maier when he writes that love is a spirit that changes life. Love is a way of life that is creative and that transforms. However, Maier does not view love as being reserved for a perfect world. ”Love is meant for our imperfect world where things go wrong. Love is meant to be a spirit that works in painful situations. Love is meant to bring meaning into life where nonsense appears to reign.” In other words, love comes into an imperfect world to make it livable.
爱可以容忍缺点。在爱的关系中，必然会有厌烦的时候，有我想放弃的时候，有关系紧张的时候，有我感到绝望的时候。真爱不仅仅意味着我们能共同分享幸福。在艰难困苦的时期我也能和你在一起，因为我记得我们过去在一起度过的时光，如果我们对问题给予足够的重视，面对问题并能度过困难时期，我能想像我们将来在一起是个什么样子。我们同意梅尔教士的观点，即爱是改变生活的精神力量。爱是一种创造性的生活方式并能使生活改善。但是梅尔并不认为爱是完美世界独有的。“爱是给予我们这个有问题的不完善的世界的。爱是在痛苦的情况下发挥作用的精神。爱就是要使看起来无意义的生活变得有意义。”换句话说，爱来到这个不完美的世界使它适合人们居住。
Love is freeing. Love is freely given, not doled out on demand. At the same time, my love for you is not dependent on whether you fulfill my expectations of you. Authentic love does not imply “I’ll love you when you become perfect or when you become what I expect you to become.” Authentic love is not given with strings attached. There is an unconditional quality about love.
爱是自由的行为。爱是自愿地付出，而不是要求之下的施舍。与此同时，我对你的爱并不取决于你是否能满足我对你的期望。真爱并不意味着“当你成为完美的人或当你成为我所期望的那种人时，我才爱你。”真爱不是带有附加条件的付出。爱是无条件的。
Love is expansive. If I love you, I encourage you to reach out and develop other relationships. Although our love for each other and our commitment to each other might bar certain actions on our parts, we are not totally and exclusively wedded to each other. It is a pseudolove that cements one person to another in such a way that he or she is not given room to grow. Casey and Vanceburg put this notion well:
爱是博大的。如果我爱你，我会鼓励你向外发展，建立其他的人际关系。虽然我们之间的爱和彼此的承诺不允许我们做某些事情，但是我们并不是完全彻底地拴在一起。把一个人和另一个人拴在一起，而不给予他发展的空间，这是一种虚假的爱。凯斯和温斯伯格对这个概念有很好的解释：
The honest evidence of our love is our commitment to encouraging another’s full development. We are interdependent personalities who need one another’s presence in order to fulfill our destiny. And yet, we are also separate individuals. We must come to terms with our struggles alone.
我们相互承诺要鼓励对方充分的发展，这就真实证明了我们之间的爱。我们是相互依存的，为了完成自己的使命，需要对方的存在。但我们又是不同的个体，我们必须各自面对自己的奋斗。
Love means having a want for the person I love without having a need for that person in order to be complete. If I am nothing without you, then I’m not really free to love you. I love you and you leave, I’ll experience a loss and be sad and lonely, but I’ll still be able to survive. If I am not free to challenge our relationship; nor am I free to challenge and confront you. Because of my fear of losing you, I’ll settle for less than I want, and this settling will surely lead to feelings of resentment.
爱意味着我需要我所爱的人，但并不是缺少他就不行。如果没有你我就无法生存，那么我就不能自由的爱你。我爱你，即使你离开了，即使我失落、难过和孤独，但我还能活下去。如果我的价值和我的生存过于依赖于你，那我就没有自由来审视我们之间的关系;也就没有审视和反驳你的自由。因为我害怕失去你，我就会降低要求，而这种迁就会使我产生不满情绪。
Love means identifying with the person I love. If I love you, I can empathize with you and see the world through your eyes. I can identify with you and see the world through your eyes. I can identify with you because I’m able to see myself in you and you in me. This closeness does not imply a continual “togetherness,” for distance and separation are sometimes essential in a loving relationship. Distance and can intensify a loving bond, and it can help us rediscover ourselves, so that we are able to meet each other in a new way.
爱意味着理解所爱的人。如果我爱你，我就能与你有同样的情感，我就能通过你的眼睛去看这世界。我理解你是因为我能够在你身上看到我自己，并在我自己身上看到你。这种亲密无间并不意味着持续地呆在一起，有时候，距离和分别对于相爱同样是必要的。距离会加强爱的联系，会有助于我们重现认识自己，使我们可以以新的方式面对对方。
Love means selfish. I can only love you if I genuinely love, value, appreciate, and respect myself. If I am empty, then all I can give you is my emptiness. If I feel that I’m complete and worthwhile in myself, then I’m able to give to you out of my fullness. One of the best ways for me to give you love is by fully enjoying myself with you.
爱中充满了自我。只有我能真正地爱着自己，珍视自己，欣赏自己，尊重自己，我才能爱你。如果我生活空虚，那么我能给予你的只能是我的空虚。如果我感到自己是完整的，有价值的，那么我就能让你分享我的充实。给予我对你的爱，最好的方式就是和你在一起充分享受我的一切。
Love involves seeing the potential within the person we love. In my love for another, I view her or him as the person she or he can become, while still accepting who and what the person is now. Goethe’s observation is relevant here: by taking people as they are, we make them worse, but by treating them as if they already were what they ought to be, we help make them better.
爱包含着看到我所爱的人的潜在能力。我爱那个人，我一方面承认他的现状，另一方面我现在就视他为他将来能够成为的那种人。歌德有一句与此相关的评论：我们如果按照人们的现状来对待他们，会使他们越来越差，要是按照他们应该达到的目标来对待和要求他们，我们就会促使他们变得更好。
We conclude this discussion of the meanings that authentic love has for us by sharing a thought from Fromm’s The Art of Loving (1956). His description of mature love sums up the essential characteristics of authentic love quite well:
我们把弗罗姆在《爱的艺术》里阐述的一个观点介绍给大家，以此来结束我们对真爱含义的论述。他对成熟的爱的归纳极好地总结了真爱的基本特征：
Mature love is union under the condition of preserving one’s integrity, one’s individuality. In love this paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two.
成熟的爱是两人的结合，但又不失各自的完整和特性。爱中有这种矛盾现象：合二为一，却又一分为二。