[will_brown]

I think a big problem with your concepts about altruism and selflessness is assuming the actor had the choice to act or not act, so by definition if they acted it must be because they wanted to; therefore, its not selfless.

However, life is not usually a choice of act or don't act (help a love one or not). Moreover, when people make selfless decisions, we usually define them as such because the choice is action A or action B (buy a loved one a gift instead of yourself) and action A is objectively more beneficial to the actor (buy oneself a gift) but they still choose action B because the benefits it brings to others and the decision was based on putting others before oneself. In other words by sacrificing act A to do act B, you are right the actor will usually receive some subjective inherent benefit of doing B (it feels good to buy loved ones a gift), but the decision is not made on that basis because A would have made the actor feel even better than B, but the actor made the decision on the basis of putting others needs before their own.

Have you never done something you don't want to do to help someone else?