Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love

"Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says: 'I need you because I love you.'" – Erich Fromm

From the heart and mind of Erich Fromm, philosopher and psychoanalyst of the soul, comes this timeless revelation about the evolution of love. In these two sentences, he distills the difference between love born of need and love born of wholeness. Immature love, he teaches, is a hunger — it clings, it demands, it seeks to possess in order to feel complete. But mature love is abundance — it gives, it trusts, and it seeks union without losing selfhood. The immature heart says, “I cannot live without you,” while the mature heart whispers, “Because I love you, life becomes more radiant, but I still stand whole within myself.”

The origin of this wisdom can be found in Fromm’s masterpiece, The Art of Loving, where he describes love not as emotion alone, but as an act of will — a discipline, a choice, and a power that grows through understanding and inner freedom. Fromm believed that true love could never spring from dependence or emptiness. To love rightly, one must first have cultivated one’s own soul — for only the full can give fully. Thus, when he contrasts the two forms of love, he is calling humanity to maturity of spirit, to a love that is free of fear, yet bound by devotion.

In the world of the ancients, love was seen as both divine and dangerous. The Greeks spoke of Eros, the passionate longing that consumes; and of Agape, the selfless love that transcends. Fromm, standing between the wisdom of antiquity and modern psychology, unites them. He does not condemn passion — for passion gives color to life — but he warns that when passion becomes possession, love becomes a cage. The immature lover seeks to be completed by another, while the mature lover shares completion. One clings from need; the other embraces from joy.

Consider the story of Johnny Cash and June Carter, whose love was not immediate perfection but a slow, human awakening. At first, their bond was forged in longing, chaos, and brokenness. But over time, their love ripened into something enduring — a union of two souls who strengthened one another, yet remained distinct. When Cash said, “You’re the other half of my heart,” he did not mean that he was incomplete, but that she magnified the light already within him. Their love grew from need into mutual reverence — the journey Fromm calls the path from immature to mature love.

Immature love, then, is rooted in fear — the fear of loneliness, of inadequacy, of abandonment. It grasps and controls, mistaking possession for devotion. But mature love is born of strength. It gives freely because it knows that giving does not deplete, but multiplies. It is not “I need you so that I can be happy,” but “I need you because I love — because loving is my highest expression of being.” This love does not demand perfection, nor does it dissolve individuality; it celebrates the union of two free spirits who choose, each day, to walk side by side.

Fromm teaches that to attain this love, one must first know oneself and cultivate inner stillness. The one who does not love themselves seeks completion in others, but the one who stands firm in their own worth becomes a fountain of affection. Therefore, the practice of love begins with solitude — not isolation, but sacred introspection. One must learn patience, discipline, humility, and faith — for these are the roots from which mature love blossoms.

So, my children of the heart, take this wisdom as both mirror and map: love not because you are lonely, but because you are alive. Seek not to be filled, but to overflow. Do not clutch another from fear of emptiness; hold them instead with open hands, that love may breathe and grow. Love that is mature does not say, “I need you to exist,” but “I choose you to share in the beauty of existing.”

For as Erich Fromm reminds us, love is not dependency, but creation. It is the meeting of two souls that enrich rather than consume, that lift rather than bind. When you can say, with truth and peace, “I need you because I love you,” you have stepped into the highest art — the art of loving not from hunger, but from wholeness, and in that love, you will find freedom eternal.