Setting the other (and yourself) free

"'I leave you free to be yourself, to think your thoughts, to indulge your taste, follow your inclinations, behave in any way that you decide is to your liking.'  Say these words to someone you are trying to make special to you and: he/she becomes important the way a sunset or a symphony is lovely in itself, the way a tree is special in itself and not for the fruit or the shade that it can offer you.  Your beloved will then belong not to you but to everyone or to no one like the sunrise and the tree.  Test it by saying these words again:  'I leave you free to be yourself...'  In saying thse words you have set yourself free.  You are now ready to love.  For when you cling, what you offer the other is not love but a chain by which both you and your beloved are bound.  Love can only exist in freedom.  the true lover seeks the good of his beloved which requires especially the liberation of the beloved from the lover."

Anthony De Mello