Do you believe in free will?

[genkaus]

I'm happy you're close to your family, so many are not and I think that's sad.

Depending on the family, not being close to them could be a good thing, not necessarily sad.

Maybe not, but when you get married I believe your opinion will change.

No, it won't. Since my marriage would be based on my beliefs.

Why would you think your love for your family is a selfish emotion,

Because it is an expression of my love for myself.

they helped make you who you are because they love you, and they loved you before you became that person.

They loved me for the potential I represented. I would not expect then to love me otherwise.

What if they had not contributed much to your development would you love them less, or would you be less grateful to them.

Yes and yes.

I do not think being thankful is quite the same as love, though thankfulness is a part of love.

Gratitude is irrelevant to love. I can be grateful to someone without loving them and I can love someone without having a cause to be grateful to them.

How is it that you see selfishness and love as the same thing, I find no definition of either to be compatible.

If you love someone, then they are valuable to you. To be valuable to you, they must hold more meaning (or more value) than others. The only way you can assign relative value like that, is if you have a relative importance of needs and desires with the value proportional to it. It is only when you are selfish, i.e. concerned with your own needs and desires, that you can assign relative importance to them. So, unless you are selfish, you are not capable of love.

A selfless person can never hold anything or anyone to be more important to him than anything or anyone else. So he cannot attach more importance to any particular entity. So he cannot "love" anything more than other - thereby making the word meaningless.

Before you are able to say "I love you", you should be able to say "I".