What counts as love?

[BrokenQuill92]

As someone that grew up with the Harry Potter series, I have been able to evolve my views as I grow from impressionable to more observant. I always remember focusing in on how Snape seemed to try and prepare Harry for what was to come. If I'm not mistaken he stated this several times. Given his hands on experience with the "the craziest wizard nazi ever," he knew that what Harry needed was much harsher than lovie dovie coddling. He tried his best to prepare Harry for relentless, senseless hatred the best he could.

Really?  I always saw Snape's actions toward and interactions with Harry as petty mistreatment of the son of the schoolmate he hated rather than him "preparing" Harry for being mistreated by others.  He seemed to find excuses to take points from Gryffindor and dole out punishments on Harry and his friends whenever he could which, in hindsight, is a really confusing action to take against the son of the woman he purports to love so deeply that he's willing to put his life on the line to protect her and then, when she dies, risk his life to protect her son.

For a long time I had delusions of grandeur where I was going to write James, Lily and Snape's final year at Hogwarts which basically would document how deeply Snape was becoming obsessed with Lily - not in love with her, but dangerously obsessed with her, while at the same time having this amazing cognitive dissonance about how he was obsessed with a muggle girl and joining a muggle-despising hate group around the same time.  I actually had it all plotted out, but I never actually wrote it.

So I guess that kind of answers the question of whether I think Snape actually loved Lily or not - in school I think he was more obsessed with her, or the idea of her, than he was in love with her.  Though he might have had a confusing mishmash of emotions tied up with Lily and one of those emotions was love to some degree.


Not to change the subject, but I've always wondered to what degree "unconditional" love exists, and whether such a type of love could be considered healthy or not.  But that is my own musing and not exactly on topic here.

So you think love could potentially be unhealthy? Explain?

[Clueless Morgan]

I think unconditional love could very well be unhealthy, but it all depends on how it is defined.  To me, unconditional love would mean "without any exceptions" or "no matter what this person says or does I will continue to love them" which does not bode well for people in, let's say, abusive relationships and, I think, can definitely lead to harm and people being taken advantage of.

But I think there's also a question of "can you choose who you love?"

For instance, I think the closest thing to "unconditional" love might be a parent's love for their child, but is there a limit to the extent of that love?  And if there is, does it really then qualify as "unconditional?"  Does a parent's love for their offspring extend indefinitely into adulthood?  I think it's clear that some parents will love their children (or claim to love them) even when they commit violent crimes against many people, or even the parent themselves, but would that type of love be considered "healthy?"  Are such parents who continue to love their child doing so out of choice?  Or out of biological programming, so to speak?

Speaking for myself, I have zero desire to love unconditionally.  My love is conditional on the way I am treated in the relationship.  But I am in something of a privileged position in that I don't have children and I get to make choices, as it were, about whom I love.  (At least, it feels like I do.  I could make an argument in the other direction for even myself.)

But that, in and of itself, is contingent upon the definition of "love."