"I feel that humans have put their own fairy-tale definition on what love is." Agree. Many animal species exhibit a temporary period of consorting pairs.

Tim Roth provides a pretty good definition . . .

Love varies from type of love.
My love for my mother
My love for my brother
My love for my friends
My love for my kids
Every one of those is different the only feeling that is shared between them is fondness

Love is what you and the person you love agree that it is.

I found this article on ancient Hawaiian culture. I think it speaks to the difference between Christianity’s influence on how we view sexuality and at least one indigenous culture’s. I also think the idea of “love” is also closely related.

[hawaii.edu]

One, its about perpetuation, and that picture in our minds of two people sharing intimacy. Two, its about our amnesia. There is an aspect of the mind where you can concentrate on something but at the same time are also completely forgetful.

Love is when you are able to add affection to your kindness.

Love is always wondering how long it will be until they return. Everytime they leave the room.

Addiction to neurochemicals.

A healed cut? Could you explain?

Love is so many things to so many people. Love to me is a willingness to give up resources for another. Emotional resources, material ones.... Many things masquerade as love; lust, obsession, being in love... Love to me is sacrifice. But to be healthy sacrifice it requires a equal return of some kind. Like most things love from the outside view can seem to be wrong. Gay love, mixed racial love, even I dare say young and old love. The rub is in the individuals versus the groups perception, expectation and wants. It like most things is not a simple answer. So the better question is what is love to you. And an understanding that it may not be the same answer I would give. I have little interest in BDSM but others find something in it I do not and as long as both parties are willing and understand the give and take more power to them. I am not gay but I love plenty of men. And much like my spiritual life I reserve final judgment for the moment. Maybe I will meet a man and fall hard for him who knows? I think far more damage is done by our group thinks need for control and simple definition than the fringe of what is love or what is truth.

Love comes in so many forms that to define all of it you'd have to make it something vague like: "A willingness to make sacrifices" (for the person in question)

Why? Because you're addicted to the chemical release you feel around the person in question.
It's like paying for drugs. You give, you get.
We feel this way because most of our existence as a species we were to undeveloped to intellectually understand the advantage and the necessity of group cohesion; so our emotions encouraged that behavior. (to be pedantic, those who developed this particular emotion raised their chances at survival, and we inherited their traits)

To me romantic love is our biological predisposition to reproduce and destress one another, but just because its that to me I do still desire to have it. As far as love for family and friends I say look up kinship, it explains pretty well why we as animals protect each other.

"Love is a healed cut"

Interesting definition. To me, the spectrum of Love Definitions are like the difference between looking through a microscope and looking through a telescope. Finding internal self love is what gives perspective to the understanding Universal love and adds to it's depths and appreciation of self, family, and community. The value of what one's own connection to another is based on the ability to give to one's self. When you find your worth, (not assuming you haven't) ....The Way to loving yourself..., then and only then will you learn how to love someone else but more importantly, how to let someone love you. Learning to love myself was one of the hardest things I had to learn to do. The other, was learning to communicate that standard without feeling selfish. When I learned to define love as a gift, sharing that gift became just as important as breathing. Sure, neurobiology will talk about pheromones and chemisrty, and a poety may talk about situational connection and serendipity. A psychologist may bring up codependency or associative tramas but in truth, to love is to know yourself, your place in the world and your value in it. I hope your learn how to love someone more than yourself. That is the truest form of trust and vulnerability. Vulnerability is living without fear, and trust is believing in someone else to not abusebyour vulnerability Anyhow, that's my blah blah blah. So cheers to you and finding love.

Ya love is mad and crazy about fell like

love is an action, but often advertised as an emotion i guess

Love is when you can not stand being apart each other Love is when you finish each others sentences Love is powerful it is painful and it is Wonderful It will make you lie cheat steal and also make you the best version of who you are all at the same time. Lastly Love is a friendship that can with stand anything

Dopamine? Approximately 3 years

I was married for nearly 27 years but I never felt loved either, we are the same I think.

Love is a decision and a commitment. It usually works until something goes wrong and both parties are not going in the same direction.

I defintely agree! Love is messy. A lot of people think that there is someone out there who has been chosen for them in a divine or spiritual way. Thats bs. Love takes hard work on both sides, it is never something that is given by god or anything else. Love is a choice but it can also be demanding but beautiful at the same time.

I've learned to love myself. For me that's enough at this point though it would be nice to have another I at least respect and care about and get it in return.

Love is putting up with each others' manure.

Love is what we call the bond between people who care for each other... Heinlein once said it was when you cared more for the other person's needs than you did for your own (Time Enough for Love)... Is it true? Who knows because to each person it means something different. I see you are only 24 so you have the time left in your life to figure out what it means to you. There are some poor sods that never are able to love someone else because all they have is self love. Those are the narcissists, sociopaths, and psychotics who work towards making the world a miserable place for everyone instead of just themselves...

I don't think you can make love happen, it just happens. I think you will truly know love when you feel like you have lost that person forever and at that crucial moment in time, you cry in an uncontrollable and unexpected way. I think getting to that point is something that will take multiple years for a person that has a forcefield around their emotions, but for others who connect easily, they may be able to find it faster.

I'm one of the types that have that forcefield around the heart, and I've only felt this type of loss once in my life was when my best friend in an extremely drunken state told me he wanted to kill me numerous times after we fought in the back of my car on my birthday. He pinned my head against the car wall, and I threw one punch and landed it in order to dislodge my self from the wall and he missed knocking off my glasses. He was super pissed but my younger brother calmed him down enough for us to get back to the house, without further fighting in the car. At the house, while I was getting my stuff to move out, my younger brother and his older brother held him back initially while he raged more. I left the room I was renting at his older brothers house we were all living in thinking that I had lost my best friend forever.

I, fortunately, had someone give me free Pistons tickets 1.5 years later on the last day of the season, but I couldn't find anyone that could go at my work, at last, the last minute. I resigned my stubbornness and called his house to drop off some extra tickets to the game. When I got to his house they showed up unexpectedly after they were done with work and we all went to the game like the fight we had never happened.