This is my response to fans who believe Damon's sacrifice was a sign of his romantic love for Bonnie in the books. Both book readers and TV viewers often point to the books without ever truly reading them.
Most dictionaries define love as feeling a certain way. They refer only to the emotion one experiences, depending on what or who caused it, not to what or Who it essentially is. Something or Someone outside of ourselves that makes us feel a certain way, depending on our relationship to it. Love for it to be authentic, has 'to love', to take action(s),behave according to what is felt,believed, and decided on based on that relationship. A person can not physically see the actual 'emotion'one is experiencing; the saying, 'I'll believe it when I can see it' might apply here.
“Greater Love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” The term friends, or neighbor, includes other human relationships such as family, romantic love, and friendship.
Human Relationships
1) Maternal-(mother),Paternal-(father),Familial-(family). The love for and within one's family. I am the older sibling,and my brother is two years younger. Being older I have always felt responsible for him and his safety, making sure I set a good example (I was not always so good about that), and doing what I could to encourage him and make him smile. His joys were and still are my joys, his tears were and are still my tears. And I love him fiercely, and yes I would die to save him. *This is how I believe Damon loves Bonnie as a younger sister.*
2) Fraternal. Friendship. I have known my bestfriend Rachel for over twenty years. I know her strengths and weaknesses, as she knows mine, and we have managed to maintain our closeness for that length of time because of our efforts to stay in touch. My love for her as my friend, motivates me to look out for her, to want her happiness and good, and I will gladly offer my life to save hers, because I love her more than myself. But friendship has boundaries that has its own defined feelings and actions.
*Damon's love for Bonnie as a friend*
Deep and close friendships (which I wouldn't say Damon and Bonnie have) do often develop into romantic relationships, but for Damon and Bonnie,it never does.
3) Romantic love was designed to bring two people, male and female, into a GREATER and more intimate relationship than friendship, expressed physically in very personal and sensual gestures at times and a very deep and intense spiritual/emotional connectedness that is limited to this form of love. Damon/Elena embrace,caress, kiss intimately, share blood...(Damon and Bonnie never do these, nor is it ever mentioned that he wants to).The thoughts that Elena and Damon have in these moments are amazing. When you have events like fireworks going off and literally feeling and sharing each other's pain and joy when you kiss...then I think you've got a romance that is epic. 'The two shall become one flesh', or for us VD fans, "Twin flames that merge into one." ****Damon's love for Elena****
Romantic love, for it to be true Love, also calls one to put the beloved's well-being before your own, and that may mean sacrificing everything you have even to the point of dying for that person, your other half.
In the show...
...so far, as Damon gets to know Elena and opens himself up to her and his own humanity, you can tell how he feels for her just by the way he looks at her whether she is close or far away, the way he talks or flirts with her and gets close to her, his eyes tend to stray to her lips a lot, the sacrifices he makes for her safety and happiness (even sacrificing his own desire for her to be his---EP. ***ROSE***, and anybody is welcome to continue the list :) When Damon went to retrieve Elena from her "suicide mission" Elijah, an Original vampire showed up. Damon's devotion to Elena is clear as day when he moved protectively in front of her and stared Elijah down with the look that said, "over my dead body."
Sorry guys!
