The Greatness of the Beloved and Blind Love

10 May, 2026

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EduFamilia

Voices

06 February, 2026

12 min

The Greatness of the Beloved and Blind Love

Love is not blind: it is profoundly clairvoyant

1. Discover the current inner richness of the beloved

The sharp penetration of love

Far from being blind, love makes one see: it is extremely penetrating and sharp, perceptive, clairvoyant.

Although we all understand what the popular saying means when referring to the blindness of love, that is not the truest thing that can be said about it.

Much deeper is to maintain the opposite: his clairvoyance.

I’m talking about authentic, genuine love; not mere passion, whim, or a more or less disguised egocentrism.

And that real, well-tested love, far from clouding the vision of the person who loves, makes it more penetrating and astute, more subtle and understanding.

We are faced with a truth, succinctly expressed by de la Tour-Chambly with universal scope:

When you love, nature ceases to be an enigma.

But it is even more true when it refers to human beings.

As Alberoni effectively and graphically argues, by skillfully combining the past, the present , and the future, as well as the real and the merely possible,

Love reveals to us the infinite richness of the other person. Because we perceive in them all that they have been, all that they could have been, all that they are now, and all that they can be in the future.

Love reveals
all the wonder of the beloved:
it is perceptive, clairvoyant.

Intus-legere: to understand, “to read from within”

In such circumstances, the objectivity and detachment so often invoked as safeguards for authentic knowledge of the beloved can become counterproductive. For only committed love allows one to see the true wonders and the tremendous dignity that resides within every person, even those who least appear to possess it.

The loving gaze, which reaches the deepest part of the beloved’s soul, is the reason why only lovers are able to appreciate what the person they are going to unite with or have united with for life is truly worth.

Those around them only see them from the outside.
But spouses, to take the most frequent example, love each other with genuine madness, and this kind of ecstasy, this going out of themselves to enter into the beloved, makes them shrewd, understanding, and clairvoyant.

As Alice von Hildebrand writes ,

Only those who love see;
And those who see most clearly , love most deeply .

The same is true of mothers. Each one delights in praising her beloved son as her life, her everything, her love, her king, her heaven, while none of these epithets seem appropriate for the neighbor’s son.

And it’s not that she’s fantasizing about qualities her little one doesn’t possess. What’s happening is that love, clear and penetrating, allows her to discover real perfections that go unnoticed by someone who doesn’t love.

Only committed love
allows one to perceive the intimate dignity
and future fulfillment of the beloved.

2. To glimpse the future fullness of the beloved

The multifaceted insight of love

Blind love?

Many have already attested to this property of love, which reveals the riches of the beloved and kindly anticipates their fulfillment.

I choose, among them, the authoritative testimony of Chesterton:

Love is not blind; it is by no means blinded. Love is bound, and the more bound it is, the less blinded it is.

“The more tied…”: the reason for this truth is that, as the bonds that unite us to the loved one intensify, the identification becomes greater, essential for knowledge to occur and reach its zenith.

Let’s see how and why, although it’s not entirely easy.

Love, extremely intelligent!

To know is, in a way, to establish the identity between knower and known (in our case, between lover and beloved).

Becoming the reality we perceive.
To live one’s life, whether the loved one is a real person or a fictional character (in this sense, identification with the hero of a film or the protagonist of a novel is extremely revealing).
And, in the case of the one who loves, to become one with the beloved, to transform into him, without losing one’s own uniqueness.

Well, the greatest possible identity between two people, their greatest and fullest unity, is that which love achieves, which takes us out of ourselves and introduces us to the intimacy of the beloved; and which, precisely for that reason, helps enormously to know, from within, the best of the one we love, their possible fullness.

As positive bonds with the loved one intensify,
the identification becomes greater, essential
for knowledge to reach its full potential.

Delving into the present

Indeed, interpersonal love allows us to see in the present the greatness of the one we love, while also anticipating their future ideal, what they are destined to be.

As I said, it is a property that many scholars of love refer to .

But perhaps no one has exposed it with such finesse and delicacy as Alice von Hildebrand.

We read in her Letters to a Newlywed :

When you fell in love with Michael, you were given a great gift: your love stripped away past appearances and gave you insight into his true self, what he is meant to be in the deepest sense of the word. You discovered his “secret name.”
- Those who love each other are granted the special privilege of seeing the beauty of their beloved with incredible intensity, while others see only their outward actions, and particularly their mistakes. At this moment, you see Michael more clearly than any other human being.

And she concludes, resolutely:

People often say that love is blind. What nonsense! As I said before, it’s not love that’s blind, but hate. Only love sees.

To explain immediately that what most properly constitutes any person—their truest being, one might say—is the goodness within them:

When you fell in love with Michael, you saw both the good and the bad in him, and you rightly concluded that “the goodness I see is clearly his true self, the person he is meant to be.”
- I know that despite the flaws that mar his personality, he is basically a good person.
- (Or isn’t that the judgment implicit in your last letter when you said that “when he gets furious he stops being himself”?).
- Realize that your judgment involves not only a simple recognition of Michael’s virtues, but also grasping his weaknesses and imperfections.
- That’s why I tell you that love is not blind; it actually sharpens your vision.

Our good qualities
define us more and better than our flaws.

And to glimpse the future, also in concrete terms

To love, therefore, means to know in depth what the beloved is in the present and, progressively, to anticipate what they are destined to be, their future ideal, their fullness.

And that ideal will become more precise and defined as our love grows greater and deeper .

Indeed, what Ortega said about art and the sensory image is completely applicable to any other act of love and to the most eminently spiritual contours.

The Spanish philosopher writes:

Each face evokes, as in mystical phosphorescence, its own unique, exclusive ideal.
- When Rafael says that he paints not what he sees, but “ a certain idea that comes to my mind ”, he is not referring to the Platonic idea that excludes the inexhaustible and multifaceted diversity of reality.

No; each person is born with their own unique and irreplaceable ideal.
How often do we find ourselves longing for our neighbor to do this or that because we see with strange certainty that it would complete their personality!

Each face evokes, as in mystical phosphorescence,
its own unique, exclusive ideal .

3. You, now and forever

Logotherapy, from a theoretical-experimental perspective, which is that of psychiatry, arrives at the same conclusions, albeit with its own nuances:

The full perception of the other, brought about by love, reveals the best of one’s current self and the future possibilities that are contained in the beloved;
- and, moreover, it provides strength to strive towards that fulfillment.

Instinctive desire versus authentic love

This is evident in this long quote from Frankl, which I will divide into several fragments, anticipating what each one teaches.

One among many

Firstly, unlike what happens with merely instinctive desires, which are directed towards anyone who can appease them, true love is always directed towards a specific person , not interchangeable with any other:

Love has nothing to do with an anonymous partner in instinctive relationships; for example, a partner who can often be replaced by another person who has identical properties.
- In the case of the instinctively chosen individual, what is sought is not the person, but a type […]. The partner in a purely instinctive relationship (also the partner in a social relationship) is more or less anonymous.
- In contrast, a partner in a true love relationship is treated as a person, is considered as a “you.”

You, only you

From that point of view, as I have suggested, love confirms the beloved in their full singularity: as someone completely unrepeatable, unique and therefore endowed with immense value.

We could say that loving means being able to say “you” to someone; but not only that, but also being able to say “yes” to them: that is, not only to grasp them in their entirety, in their individuality and uniqueness, as we have said before, but to accept them in all that they are worth.
- Thus, it is not about seeing only the “being-this-and-not-other” of a person, but at the same time seeing their “potential-to-be,” that is, seeing not only what they really are, but also what they can be or what they should be.
- In other words, to quote a beautiful phrase from Dostoevsky: “To love is to see the other person as God intended.”

Only love can reveal
the full richness of the beloved,
their present or future fulfillment.

Love and personal encounter

The same can be seen when comparing a simple encounter , considered in a generic way, with love, in its most proper sense.

As Frankl understands it, the encounter takes place between two human beings, taken in general, as individuals of the same species: any two, undifferentiated, one might say.

On the contrary, love reveals the absolutely unique and unrepeatable character of the beloved, who can in no way be replaced. It is directed, to use Frankl’s own terms , to the beloved ” you ,” precisely as “you,” unmistakable as any other:

However, it seems that love involves a further step beyond the encounter and that it is not limited to welcoming the fellow human being in their human condition, but also in their uniqueness and singularity, or in other words, as a person.
- Because a person is not a human being like others, but different from others, and in this difference turns out to be something unique and singular.
- And only when the lover welcomes the beloved in his uniqueness and singularity does he become a “you” to him.

Love not only welcomes the fellow human being in their human condition,
but in their strict uniqueness and singularity:
as a person, as a unique, unrepeatable you.

Practical consequences

Personal development is not just a matter of knowledge

These are not merely suggestive theories, but fruitful truths, full of practical repercussions.

I will point out one, applicable to all of us who, in one way or another, have the function of educating.

When we are unable to discover the paths to guide those in our care… When their flaws outweigh their strengths, overshadowing them and preventing us from recognizing the positive reality of those strengths… When we don’t know how to help those we wish to help grow…

In many of these situations, neither the diagnosis nor the therapy is overly complicated.
- At its core, it often hides a lack of genuine love.
- And the appropriate treatment, then, consists fundamentally in increasing and purifying our affection.

Knowledge is necessary,
but not sufficient.

Any attempt at improvement involves, above all, genuine love

Undoubtedly, in some cases, it will be necessary to understand something about pedagogy or psychology, or to consult experts in these disciplines. But what matters most is increasing the intensity and depth of our love: making it deeper, more generous, and more selfless.

For example, when faced with one or more reprehensible actions, one would have to overcome the initial anger that, unintentionally, distorts our perception.
- Or, if that were the case, to eliminate that kind of personal affront, which we often experience when it seems that a loved one, and perhaps very particularly a child, fails us .
- An offense that, so often, is the consequence of an affection that is not entirely pure or selfless: still very much laden with self-love.

Only then, by improving and increasing our love, will the corresponding intensification of the scope and penetration of our knowledge allow us to see what our child or friend needs .

And, moreover, our anticipatory vision and the strength of our love will propel them forward along the paths of their own progress, until they approach their full potential.

This is confirmed by Elisabeth Lukas , with the authority derived from her many years of professional practice as a psychologist and logotherapist :

In short, it’s not just psychological “strategies” that help, but above all, the “loving presence” of a person. […]
- To rescue someone from a void of values, two things must truly converge: sufficient knowledge and an open heart.
- Bernhard von Clairvaux must have already known this in the 12th century, when he wrote: “What would careful education do without love? Boast. What would love do without careful education? Go astray.”

To rescue someone from a void of values,
two factors must come together:
sufficient knowledge and an open heart.

Far from being blind,
love is tremendously perceptive, clairvoyant:
only love allows one to discover and value
the unfathomable richness of the beloved.

(To be continued)

Tomás Melendo,
President of Edufamilia
http://www.edufamilia.com
[email protected]

EduFamilia

Edufamilia es una asociación sin ánimo de lucro, nacida en el año 2005. Su fundador, Tomás Melendo, advirtió que una mejora en la calidad de las familias facilitaría la resolución de bastantes de los problemas que aquejan a la sociedad de hoy. Y, apoyado siempre por su mujer, decidió lanzarse a esta aventura que cuenta con casi veinte años de vida y con múltiples ediciones de los distintos cursos formativos: Másteres y Maestrías, Expertos, cursos más breves, conferencias, ciclos culturales, seminarios y otros programas educativos. Aunque las primeras ediciones tuvieron carácter presencial, actualmente se ha hecho un gran esfuerzo por promover la infraestructura virtual para adaptarse a los nuevos tiempos y que la formación en torno a la familia alcance al mundo entero.