lash out in anger and destroy the people that make them feel that way

Small correction: “… destroy the people that they think make them feel that way”.

You are younger than me.

What’s something the 50-something-year-old knows that the 40-something-year-old doesn’t, and what does the 40-something-year-old know that you don’t?

Slowpoke Rodriguez!

Some of the things you mentioned in your first comment really point to infatuation to me, like your perseonal identity becoming secondary to a shared identity, and “Anything that contradicts being with or caring for them is basically impossible to even think.” These sound like elements of an unhealthy relationship.

This sounds more like infatuation than love, TBH.

The full text of the “umbilical dirt” paper (cited at the end of the WaPo article) is freely available.