“True Love”

Here’s a philosophical question for you. Which of the following would you rather hear your partner say about you:

• if you changed your views completely, stood for the opposite of what you do now, or your personality changed significantly, I’d still love you above all others.
• if you changed your views completely, stood for the opposite of what you do now, or your personality changed significantly, I might not still love you above all others.

On first glance, the former sounds more romantic, more indicative of “true love”. But I reckon actually the second is deeper and more touching. Because the first is that the person basically loves, what, your name? What you look like? If they still love you above all others even if you become, essentially, a completely different person, does that not mean that their love now isn’t really for who you actually are?

Option 1: you can rely on this partner to be there for you regardless, because there’s nothing you could do that would cause her to stop “loving” you.

Option 2: you know that your partner actually loves you, not other stuff about you.

I think I’d prefer to hear the second one. I’d prefer my partner loved me for who I am, and if I abandoned that, if I became someone else, it would cause her to reassess.