The Little Prince on Love: People who keep you tangled up usually aren’t the ones who truly love you. Real love doesn’t cling—it does three things.

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A writer once said: people who cling and badger you aren’t deeply in love; they’re racing their own egos. Real love won’t grovel—self-respect won’t allow it. Loving someone means giving them the best of what you have, including their dignity.

In the world of love, it isn’t about endless taking or grasping. It’s two people meeting each other with respect, understanding, and room to grow.

For the Little Prince, once he had tended his one-of-a-kind rose—watering it, sheltering it—no other landscape, however breathtaking, could compete. Some sights don’t just dazzle a moment; they soften the years. One glance, and it stays with you.

Even after his travels, even after meeting the gentle fox, he still knew the rose he’d cared for shone brightest. The fox showed him what love is, but she wasn’t his rose.

Reading their story, you realize that to truly love someone is to do three things.

01
Love isn’t possession—it’s letting the other person become who they’re meant to be

When the Little Prince meets the fox, she teaches him what “taming” really means: making each other matter. If you open your life to me and I to you, we become necessary to one another—one of a kind to each other in a world of look-alikes. In that moment the Prince understands love, and understands, too, that the one he loves most is the rose on his tiny planet.

Knowing where his heart truly is, the fox doesn’t hold on. She urges him to look again at the other roses so he can feel, in his bones, that his rose is the only one for him. She is wise enough to step back and bless his choice.

To love someone doesn’t always mean you’ll end up together. Sometimes love is the courage to make room for the other person’s happiness—even if it costs you.

Think of The Bridges of Madison County: Francesca and Robert share four luminous days and are forever changed. When he asks her to leave with him, she weighs her loyalties and stays with her family. Robert honors her decision and disappears from her life, because that’s what love required.

When you love someone deeply, you respect their wishes and their path. At its deepest, love is an act of completion—of setting the other person free to be whole. It’s hard, yes. But inside that surrender lives a fierce, unsullied kind of love.

02
Love isn’t clinging—it’s taking responsibility

The fox tells the Little Prince that if he chooses to “tame” her—if they make each other matter—her whole life will fill with light. She’ll know his footsteps anywhere. Other footsteps send her scurrying; his will call her out like a melody. She doesn’t eat bread, so fields of wheat mean nothing to her—until she notices his golden hair. Then the wind in the wheat will always sound like him.

When the moment of parting comes, the fox says quietly, “I’m going to cry.”
The Little Prince protests: “It’s your own doing—you wanted me to tame you.”
“Yes,” says the fox.
“But you’ll be sad.”
“Yes.”
“Was there any good in it at all?”
“There was,” she says. “Thanks to the color of the wheat.”

The Prince knows where his duty lies: with the rose. Even if he has tamed the fox, he can only tell her he’s sorry. And the fox—wise as ever—lets him go. She understands that “taming” without shouldering the weight of care is empty. Love isn’t tug-of-war; it’s owning the promises you make.

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03
Love isn’t a finish line—it’s the way you walk together

There’s a line I love: dating is a journey; marriage is only one possible stop along the road. Whether a romance felt true or hollow isn’t decided by the ending; it’s written in how the days were lived.

The rose, the fox, the Little Prince—each is a mirror we meet in real life. You might be any one of them at different times. The rose doesn’t understand her love until he leaves. The fox proves love by letting go. The Prince only knows his deepest love after wandering far enough to miss what was his all along.

So no, love isn’t just the outcome. It’s the becoming. The fox is clear-eyed and restrained: she faces what she feels, knows the Prince isn’t hers, and exits with grace.

Love has more than one ending. Sometimes soulmates build a home. Sometimes love looks like blessing, like stepping aside, like wishing someone well as they take a road that doesn’t include you.

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A note to end on

Love is never shallow. It asks for patience, for giving, for waiting—and most of all, for the courage to set the other free. Some people will never end up together, yet a feeling can live quietly in the heart for a lifetime. Time may change our faces, but it can’t erase what’s genuine.

In the world of love there are a thousand shapes: some unresolved, some deep but poorly timed. Liking wants to keep; love, at its strongest, knows when to let go. To complete someone else’s story is also to complete your own. Better to step forward and bless each other’s path than to drown in a story that can’t be written to its end.