The motivations are important - but they are not everything.

But they ARE more important in terms of determining what love IS. Which raises another point: I hope that people here aren't so literal-minded that they can't see that I'm NOT actually defending abusive or bad behaviors. The whole basis of my argument concerns how we define love and fully comprehend what it is. My contention all along has been that to define love simply by a set of behaviors is to misunderstand and oversimplify it. I am doing my best not to get pulled into any of those slippery things where Dante or qtns twists what I say to make seem like the opposite of what I actually mean. They're way better debaters (master debaters!) than I am, I acknowledge that, but it just means I have to pay strict attention to every single word they say so we don't get off-track.

You will know a tree by its fruit.

Well, I've stopped used the Bible as the basis for my wisdom.

Incidentally, it's no longer true.