It's difficult to define love since there are many different types. I "love" pizza but it's a fickle affair.
Come on, Beth. You know you only.'like' pizza. It's not like the little frozen sausage and cheese biscuits I buy. I do love them.
He/she might think you are a particularly tall and an ugly dog but he loves you anyway. I wish my ex-wife had felt the same.
Another man's opinion: "Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained." C. S. LEWIS
It's 4am and I'm the only person awake in the USA. Time for me to reply to my own post. I disagree with Lewis here. Love is as he says plus affectionate feeling - covers all the bases.
This isn't entirely responsive to the OP, but it relates. There's a quote that really resonates with me. I've never determined the actual author, though it's been attributed to many. It speaks of friendship more than it does love, yet I believe firmly that the concept it conveys is an integral part of loving someone, that gives the emotionality of love depth and essence. “A friend is one to whom one may pour out the contents of one's heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that gentle hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.” Love is a complex emotion and I don't think it's ever been adequately defined, in part because everyone feels love differently. For me, it requires a level of emotional intimacy and vulnerability that has been difficult for me to attain because of past experience and trauma (abusive ex husband)
It's an interesting and age-old question. I don't think there is just one answer. It's a multifarious phenomenon - mental, emotional, spiritual, biochemical, somatosensory, interactional, selfless, and mutual. I think love has many expressions, depending on whether I'm receiving it or giving it. Not sure I'd want to reduce it, or that it can be reduced, to just one definition. Perhaps I'd say: Love is a bodily felt sensation and intuitive knowing that motivates me to engage in selfless acts of empathy.
I've wrestled with love thy neighbor. I decided it is more acceptance than wanting a date. Let them be as they are, not wanting anything from them and not wanting to change them. Accept them as they are as you do yourself.
I struggle with love thy neighbor. Especially mine! LOL Love comes in many forms. I prefer the love of a cat as opposed to the love of a person sometimes because I know where I stand with the cat.