Like any other value, love is not a static quantity to be divided, but an
unlimited response to be earned. The love for one friend is not a threat to the
love for another, and neither is the love for the various members of one’s
family, assuming they have earned it. The most exclusive form—romantic
love—is not an issue of competition. If two men are in love with the same
woman, what she feels for either of them is not determined by what she feels
for the other and is not taken away from him. If she chooses one of them, the
“loser” could not have had what the “winner” has earned.
It is only among the irrational, emotion-motivated persons, whose love is
divorced from any standards of value, that chance rivalries, accidental
conflicts and blind choices prevail. But then, whoever wins does not win much.
Among the emotion-driven, neither love nor any other emotion has any meaning.