Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says 'I need you because I love you.'

Erich Fromm, a German-born psychoanalyst and social philosopher, develops this contrast between “immature” and “mature” love in his mid‑century humanistic psychology. The line is associated with his popular book on the art and ethics of loving, written in the postwar period when Fromm was critiquing modern consumer culture and emotional dependency. In that framework, he distinguishes forms of attachment rooted in neediness, possession, and anxiety from a more developed capacity to love grounded in autonomy, responsibility, and genuine concern for the other person’s growth. The quote is typically cited as a capsule summary of that distinction.

The aphorism reverses the usual logic of romantic dependence. “Immature” love treats the other person as a solution to one’s inner lack—love becomes conditional on being needed, soothed, or completed. “Mature” love, by contrast, begins from an active capacity to care: need is not the cause of love but a consequence of valuing the other and choosing connection. Fromm’s point is not that mature love lacks desire or attachment, but that it is compatible with independence and respect; it does not reduce the beloved to a possession or a psychological crutch. The line thus functions as a moral-psychological test for whether attachment is primarily self-serving or genuinely relational.