Divergent sexualities

[FrustratedFool]

Consider a little thought experiment (along with the ones previously given):  You are in love with a beautiful man, who, unbeknownst to you, is a psychopath who is merely pretending to love you back in order to con you out of your wealth.  There is no true reciprocity of love, but your feelings are exactly the same as if they were.

Debatable. I'm of the belief that reciprocation of love enhances it.

We could tease apart the love itself from the reciprocal element (laying aside the illusion of reciprocity). So I can experience reciprocity separate from love.

Love plus reciprocity is better than love on its own, I totally agree. But the love element is the same emotion, I can assure you. Love, as in the bare emotion, is the same thing. The details around it vary quite a lot, as they do for all relationships.

I guess until you have the experience of both human love and objectum love it's hard for people to compare and assess. But many objectums are not exclusive objectums and have human relationships too (both the OS in the video shorts I posted above have human love relationships, for example) and yet use the same word and expressions to describe both and if asked will tell you it feels largely the same. It does for me: certainly enough to unhesitatingly call both love.