This bears repeating and applies to all relationships (spouses, parents, children, relatives, & friends) :

1. Real love is development of self love first. Toxic love is development or obsession with the relationship.

2. Real love wants everyone to grow. It gives love room. Toxic- Security, comfort in sameness; intensity of need seen as proof of love (may really be fear, insecurity, loneliness). For example if he says he will kill himself without you, this is most likely because he is insecure and cannot imagine living without you.

3. Love – Separate interests; other friends; maintain other meaningful relationships. True love relishes in many relationships an self development. Toxic love – Total involvement; limited social life; neglect old friends, interests. People in toxic love have a need to isolate and be alone together.

4. Love – Encouragement of each other’s expanding; secure in own worth. Toxic love – Preoccupation with other’s behavior; fear of other changing (this is seen when one of the spouses gets a new job, or promotion. Anything that changes or threatens the partners security causes anxiety.

5. Love – Appropriate trust (i.e. trusting partner to behave according to fundamental nature.) Toxic love – Jealousy; possessiveness; fear of competition; protects “supply.”

6. Love – Compromise, negotiation or taking turns at leading. There is a balance within the relationship. Toxic love – Power plays for control; blaming; passive or aggressive manipulation.

7. Love – Embracing of each other’s individuality. Toxic love – Trying to change someone so they fit your image of what they should look like.

8. Love – Relationship deals with all aspects of reality. Toxic love – Relationship is based on delusion and avoidance of the unpleasant.

9. Love – Self-care by both partners; emotional state not dependent on other’s mood. Toxic love – Expectation that one partner will fix and rescue the other.

10. Love – Loving detachment (healthy concern about partner, while letting go.) Toxic love – Enmeshed. No clear boundaries between yourself and your partner. If your boyfriend or girlfriend is upset you cannot function for the rest of the day.

11. Love – Sex is a free choice growing out of caring & friendship. Toxic love – Pressure around sex due to insecurity, fear & need for immediate gratification.

12. Love – Ability to enjoy being alone. They like being different from their partner and having their own interests. Toxic love – Unable to endure separation; clinging. They are fearful of the partner having their “own thing”.

- Beattie and Gorski (via Mary Jo Rapini, chron.com)

If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you.

-Winnie the Pooh

Handmade paper Valentine card with gilt and flowers and LOVE THEE STILL poem: "I love thee still-I love thee still, As truly as when first we met, Ere grief oer life had breathd its chill, Or sorrows tear my cheek had wet. Location: United Kingdom Date taken: 1880 Size: 887 x 12

I love thee still-I love thee still,
As truly as when first we met,
Ere grief o’er life had breath’d its chill,
Or sorrow’s tear my cheek had wet.

I love thee still-I love thee still,
Thy changeless constancy and truth;
Thy name yet wakens pleasures thrill;
Star of my bright and joyous youth.

Handmade Valentine card with flowers and text: To My True and Only Valentine. Location: United Kingdom Date taken: 1880

Hark! my lover–here he comes
springing across the mountains,
leaping across the hills.
My lover is like a gazelle
or a young stag.
Here he stands behind our wall,
gazing through the windows,
peering through the lattices.
My lover speaks; he says to me,
“Arise, my beloved, my dove, my beautiful one, and come!

“O my dove in the clefts of the rock,
in the secret recesses of the cliff,
Let me see you,
let me hear your voice,
For your voice is sweet,
and you are lovely.”
My lover belongs to me and I to him.

He says to me:

“Set me as a seal on your heart,
as a seal on your arm;
For stern as death is love,
relentless as the nether world is devotion;
its flames are a blazing fire.
Deep waters cannot quench love,
nor floods sweep it away.

Song of Songs 2:8-10, 14, 16a; 8:6-7a

I hold it true, whate’er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
‘Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

Alfred Tennyson

Handmade Valentine card with two hearts joined with gold chain, surrounded with lilies of the valley and with text which reads Friendship--May this chain Be the one sweet tether That binds your heart And mine together. Location: United Kingdom Date taken: 1880

“Spread love everywhere you go: first of all in your own house. Give love to your children, to your wife or husband, to a next door neighbor… Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God’s kindness; kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile, kindness in your warm greeting.”
-Mother Theresa

“Love cures people – both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it.”
-Dr. Karl Menninger

Handmade Valentine card--owl on white lace doily with familiar verse: "Drink to me only with thine eyes, and I will pledge thee mine." Location: United Kingdom Date taken: 1880

Drink to me only with thine eyes, And I will pledge with mine.

-Ben Johnson (1616)

Handmade valentine with lacy edge, boy and girl at pond. Location: United Kingdom Date taken: 1880

The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.

-Eden Ahbez

Fear less, hope more;
Eat less, chew more;
Whine less, breathe more;
Talk less, say more;
Love more, and all good things will be yours.

-Swedish Proverb