It desires to be irresistible, to rule. Bonhoeffer thinks that human love has little regard for truth. It makes the truth relative, since nothing, not even the truth, must come between it and the beloved person. But spiritual love is different from this. Spiritual love does not desire, but serves.
Human love makes itself an end it itself.
It creates of itself an end, an idol which it worships, to which it must subject everything. I watch liaisons form, emotionally incestuous liaisons, and I wish people knew that there is something better. But instead, they opt for a boundary-less mode of relating, they make infinite demands on each other for complete nurture, perhaps to make up for the nurture they never received as children. But Bonhoeffer in his youthful maturity, and with all his own emotional needs, nevertheless sees that for Christians there is something better. Because Christ stands between me and others, I dare not desire direct fellowship with them.