Mature love abandons defenses.

There are many ways in which we defend ourselves.  Love calls on us to abandon these defenses.

We rationalize our own behavior and explain it away.  We carefully hide our fears.  We attack when we should confess.   We retreat when full engagement is called for.  We deflect the arrow of truth from our partner.  We derail the dialogue when it comes too close.  We pretend apathy to hide our feelings.  All of these and more, we engage in to defend our fragile self.

Mature love, love that is authentic and responsible, presupposes a shedding of the ego.  The narcissistic shell that surrounds and comforts us must be let go of if the true self is to be revealed, to ourselves and to another.

This is not an act of self-betrayal nor of self-surrender, rather a revealing without mask or pretense.  This, in all my wonder, is who I am.

The surrender that comes with mature love is not a giving up to another person but a surrender to love itself.