Humans are complex beings, they are multifarious, they are not a single will but a fusion of distinct wills.
The concept of “will”, however, is a pretty weak one: wills merely reflect one’s abilities. So it is better to speak of abilities.
Humans, then, are a fusion of distinct abilities. The goal, as I’ve stated earlier, is to grow, to reach the limit of growth, that is to say, to develop these abilities to the max. But since we are not made out of a single ability but out of multiple abilities, the path of development is not a straight line. From the presence of multiple abilities in a single body, integrity and consistency follow (which basically amount to the same thing.) It is precisely for this reason that the path of development is a non-linear one: you cannot simply pick a single ability and develop it to the max while ignoring all the rest. People call it “overdevelopment”. Personally, I think that’s misleading: it implies that the goal of development is not the limit of development but a middle-point of some sort, which is not true – the goal is, at all times, the limit. The proper way to call it is “premature development”: one develops an ability too early. I also like to call it “cancerous growth”. You see, in order to keep growing as a whole, one has to make sure that the development of a new ability does not come at the cost of the whole. Nietzsche’s concepts of action and reaction, which I am very fond of, refer precisely to these concepts: healthy development is in Nietzsche’s terms action and premature development is reaction. So a development is said to be active if it promotes the growth of a whole and reactive if it promotes the growth of a part at the cost of the whole.
Your definition of “genuine love” is reactive. Why? Because you’re looking at it from the point of view of receiver and not from the point of view of giver.
See this:
Ironically, this is not seen from the point of view of loving parents, but from the point of view of child. Love, compassion, understanding and attention – this is what the child gains from the interaction. But what does the loving parent gain? That is what interests us here. If the loving parent is harmed by such behavior – if he loses the abilities that he’s been developing over the years – his love is not genuine (but cancerous or “overdeveloped”), though the child may perceive it as genuine. On the other hand, if through such behavior he grows as a whole, his love is indeed genuine.
It is our inner constitution – the abilities we are made out of – that define what kind of child, what kind of family, can help us grow holistically. We are not “free” here: you cannot make yourself love something you are not made to love (or something you cannot love yet.) Active people are characterized by their ability to know in advance what they want and what they do not want – they do not have to experiment too much (or at all.) Falling in love after the event is always a sign of decadence.
