The best way to examine whether emotions give you a reliable internal guidance system is looking at the flip side of emotions.
In emotional terms, for example, love’s opposite is hate, disgust, being appalled, repelled. But if you look at your emotions, these opposites are right there, right behind the emotion: love… They come together like the front of your hand and the back of your hand. You are in perpetual ambivalence, yoyo-ing back and forth, ups and downs, and incoherence.
Love, the one that vibrates at 525 or so, is not an emotion. Love is a commitment to love.
Love is a commitment to accept another human exactly the way they are and exactly the way they aren’t. Whether they do the right thing, love you back, chew their food with their mouth open, lower back the lid on the toilet, or leave the top off the tooth paste.
Commitment. Not a promise, a commitment.
No ifs, no buts, no conditions.
No action necessary, just acceptance.
No show of love, no giving till it hurts, no nice talk… those are not part of love, they are societal demands.