You speak undiluted truth. That’s my thinking as well, growth is, for better or worse, a collective effort even when talking individually. It is unreasonable for us to expect a single person to figure everything out by themselves, especially when societal conditions are heavily biased toward romanticising everything down to friggin’ toilet paper. This also applies to larger groups in my opinion - thinking about how many languages have entirely unique words for concepts which basically don’t even exist within others, that’s a clear sign to me.

Speaking from personal experience, the only reason why I reached the opposite conclusion about love is because I had the (mis)fortune of being an awkward bookworm from the start, which meant I got an extra dose of information and managed to develop relatively robust critical thinking (at least enough to know not to trust everything which pops into my head by default). But I can clearly see every point where things could’ve gone very differently in my development. Which is also why, as frustrating as it is, I cannot blame an individual for this. Not until they demonstrate that they’re in wilful and fully cognisant contempt of the truth.

We really need to up our game in terms of education and the standards we choose to promote - not saying “we” as though you and I have a say in this matter, appealing to the collective yet again.