The full flowering of love involves an exchange of identity, a laying down of our life and a discovery of the other, and of ourselves in the other. We find ourselves no longer in the isolated state of our ego consciousness, but we find ourselves now in relationship, existing with the other, with others. The full flowering of love demands reciprocity, a mutual sharing, a giving and receiving. When we use the word ‘‘love’’, we always have to remember that it means two things, united in the same act. It means both loving and being loved. It is not fully love until the loving and the being loved have been balanced. Love is only fulfilled when the passive and the active dimensions or elements are balanced; and the receptive part of ourselves, the interior part of ourselves or the feminine part of ourselves, is balanced by the giving, the outward going or the male part of ourselves.
(Aspects of Love 3 by Laurence Freeman OSB )
