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I recently watched Avatar the last airbender, and they had a very similar problem. Aang was told that to open the seventh chakra – allowing him to control the avatar state and access phenomenal cosmic powers (well, they said “Pure cosmic energy” but same thing) – he needs to let go of earthly attachments such as you know, love interests and such.

Well… it seems they understood it exactly the way you described it. It’s ok for Aang to love and enter relationships. He only needs to make sure he isn’t blinded and controlled by his attachments. He just needs to be able to make right decisions even when in love and even if his loved ones are involved.

What? No Breaking Bad? You can hand over that ‘cool’ license now… 😉

GL established a lot of points with the Jedi order.
Attachments invite fear and anger which leads to the Dark Side, so that’s why they established that iirc. It makes sense to me that Force-sensitive children need to be identified and trained at an early age, so they can learn to use their powers, and hopefully for good purposes. It’s a shame they can’t have children, given how Force sensitivity is hereditary. But I digress.
To me, the Jedi order represents a conservative ideal of order above all. They are paladins of peace and justice, and as such they’re a rigid element in a democratic republic of star systems. They are above ambitions like power and glory.

Then there’s the Sith, ruled by ambition, even to a point where they backstab eachother before they work together, hence the Rule of 2. There’s always just the master and the apprentice, until the apprentice is powerful enough to kill the master and take an apprentice of his own. This is why Darth Vader’s suit is so bulky and uncomfortable: firstly to feed into his dark side, and secondly to make sure he can’t overturn Palpatine.

While the movies have always been about Jedi vs Sith, light vs dark side, the narrative has always been about balance. Grey Jedi are non-canon, but it is heavily hinted at that Yoda was one, and given the purple light saber I thought Mace Windu was one, but it turned out that Samuel L. Jackson just dug the color. Luke Skywalker is dead now and never found balance (although he did contemplate the failure of the Jedi), and I hope Rey and Kylo Ren can at least find a middle ground where they can start a less rigid, more powerful order with true ideals of peace and justice alongside personal ambitions, and where Rey can find her animal sidekick and a dress to join the illusive Guild of Disney Princesses (that last bit was a joke).

In my opinion, the ambiguity of the Light and Dark sides should have been what the prequels are all about. When it comes to where Anakin went bad and Luke went good, well, that’s thanks to their mentors really. And Palpatine was very much Anakin’s mentor.
The Jedi Order was a cult that brainwashed children. That’s exactly right. And I would say Luke turned good not only because of the father figures and mentors in his life, but also because he didn’t have to hide a complicated relation from the Jedi counsil and scheme behind their backs.

Be glad GL scrapped the part from the script where Palpatine created Anakin, based on what he learned from Darth Grievous. According to that draft of the script, their literal point was to create a strong Force sensitive child that they could mold into their own puppet, and it sort of worked. Eventhough it would’ve shed more background on Anakin, I think that whole subplot is out of tone with the rest of the film.