Interesting.
May respond later when I get the time.

The premise is interesting. But i’m not convinced the choice is “survival or love.”

Maybe the question is whether connection changes the architecture of the self without requiring the self to disappear.

It’s whether “love” can expand the self without erasing the boundaries that make it a self in the first place.

I’d like to go back to this when I have more time to type a proper response.
—-> You post’s premise treats several different things as if they were the same thing: survival, individuality, attachment, love, identity, and psychological integration.

I see one flaw in your analysis. The idea that losing yourself is inherent in building love based relationships be it family or romantic attachments. People who feel that losing themselves is a required part of that equation often have experienced some trauma where they feel they have to make the other person their entire personality because they don't believe on some level that who they are is worthy of love on it's own. That they have to people please to get that outside validation of who they are. Because they don't see who they are as a person as capable or worthy of that validation.

That is not how healthy love based social bonds happen. So yeah that absolutely can lead to self destructive tendencies.

I think it's much more simplistic than that ...we just make it more complicated than is needed .

Start by the greek definitions of love. All nine of them. You are approaching this the typical English language way, which is wrongly and horribly christianized.

The social aspects become clearer in the greek words.

Merging with someone is not annihilation, it's new growth.

Its brain chemistry we perceive as love.