True love requires conscious opposition, not spontaneity.

Evidence

Judging by the discussion of sexuality in Being and Nothingness, a Sartrean love affair was an epic struggle over perspectives, and thus over freedom. If I love you, I don’t want to control your thoughts directly, but I want you to love and desire me and to freely give up your freedom to me. Moreover, I want you to see me, not as a contingent and flawed person like any other, but as a ‘necessary’ being in your world. That is, you are not to coolly assess my flaws and irritating habits, but to welcome every detail of me as though no jot or tittle could possibly be different. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 679 (#expands, via linked claim)

Authentic love must be founded on reciprocal recognition of two freedoms; each lover would then experience himself as himself and as the other; neither would abdicate his transcendence, they would not mutilate themselves; together they would both reveal values and ends in the world. For each of them, love would be the revelation of self through the gift of self and the enrichment of the universe. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1883 (#expands, via linked claim)

The woman is of course unaware of the seduction she radiates; self-contemplation and playacting are always inauthentic attitudes; by the mere fact of comparing herself to Mme Roland, Mme Grandet proves she does not resemble her; if Mathilde de la Mole continues to be endearing, it is because she gets confused in her playacting and is often prey to her heart just when she thinks she governs it; she moves us insofar as she is not ruled by her will. But the purest of heroines lack consciousness of themselves. Mme de Rênal is unaware of her grace just as Mme de Chasteller is of her intelligence. It is one of the deep joys of the lover with whom the author and the reader identify: he is the witness through whom these secret riches are revealed; the vivacity Mme De Rênal deploys out of everyone’s sight, the “bright wit, changing and deep,” unknown to Mme de Chasteller’s milieu, he alone admires them; and even if others appreciate Sanseverina’s wit, he is the one who penetrates the deepest into her soul. Faced with the woman, the man tastes the pleasure of contemplation; she intoxicates him like a landscape or a painting; she sings in his heart and lights up the sky. This revelation reveals him to himself: one cannot understand women’s delicacy, their sensibilities, and their ardor without developing a delicate, sensitive, and ardent soul oneself; female feelings create a world of nuances and requirements whose discovery enriches the lover: when with Mme de Rênal, Julien becomes someone other than the ambitious man he had decided to be; he chooses himself anew. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 614 (#contradicts, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: True alterity requires a conscious peer, not a passive object to consume. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 317; Male love requires woman as an object who remains unconscious of herself — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 614; Authentic love requires reciprocal recognition of both partners’ freedoms — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1883 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Romantic love is a struggle over who gets to define the other’s freedom. #expands (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 679
• Male love requires woman as an object who remains unconscious of herself #contradicts (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 614
• Authentic love requires reciprocal recognition of both partners’ freedoms #expands (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1883
• True alterity requires a conscious peer, not a passive object to consume. #expands (0.78) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 317