Various definitions:

• "Love represents a magnetic attraction between two persons."

• "Love is a feeling of high emotional affiliation...which sends a person's ego to dizzying heights."

• "Love is the emotional feeling two people receive when they both have Platonic love in the proper proportion."

• "Love is the mental compatibility of two people."

• "Love is the end result of a mature union of two compatible personalities."

• "Love is helping the other person whenever he needs it...being his companion. It's having common goals, dreams, and ambitions."

• "Love is doing things together and liking it."

• "Love is giving--time, understanding, yourself."

• "Love is to give of oneself to another."

• "Love is giving trust."

• "Love is a give and take relationship--and mostly give."

• "Love is having security in being wanted and knowing you have someone to rely on."

• "When a person is in love, the world is right and a person has security."

• "Love for the girl is cooking for him, washing his clothes and keeping the home in order. For the man it is providing security, safety, and helping his wife."

• "Love to me is faithfulness to my mate and caring for our children."

Love at First Sight

Love at first sight is rather considered to be attraction at first sight. The attraction may be of love -- the same attraction may remain as the relationship develops and bestows its unfolding benefits and blessings -- but it is unpredictable. For the relationship might not hold or extend sufficient joy and good to warrant being called love; and the attraction, whether it lingers or fades, will only then have been infatuation at first sight....

Being Loved for Yourself

Often the grief is heard that one doesn't feel loved for herself /himself, but instead is loved or liked for some characteristic or set of characteristics he/she has -- beauty, wealth, personality, job, physical attributes, social prestige, special skill, or whatever. It is easy to see why the grief may be justified with respect to such superficial or impersonal things as wealth, prestige, or job when the job is only a means to earn a living, not a reflection of genuine personal interest or inner self....

... When the grief is because one feels loved for one's personality, skills, or particular actions -- things that seem closer to "self" -- it is always vague how justified the grief is or whether it actually means what it seems to mean on the surface. It would seem odd to want to be loved and appreciated for something other than one's actions, looks, character, personality, and mind, etc. What else physical attributes, could there be? Is there a "self" that can be loved apart from these traits? And doesn't one have to "earn" love in some way anyway, or is it supposed to be totally unconditional?