What does love mean ?

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So, that's what I thought, what most people describe as "love" is not love and love does not always mean that you are going to feel the need to spend the rest of your life with someone. Thank you.

I can't separate love out into its various components. All I know is a basic affection that is associated with anxiety. It feels good and horrible at the same time.

I don't see why it must be unconditional. If the person changes into something they previously were not and you don't like what they've become, how does "love" remain?

I suppose this depends on whether or not you believe there is an aspect of a person that is a eternal. For me, I think that for all a person may change throughout their lives, there is some element that always remains the same; if this is what you love, then it too can be eternal.

Good question. I've been thinking about that, too. I've been married 12 years and I'm not sure if I really understand love. My husband is my best friend and we're fiercely loyal to each other. We talk and think like one, but is that love? Sometimes it feels like we're really just best friends. That's just fine for me, though I do sometimes wonder what's this love thing other people talk about. It almost sounds like it's too much trouble to maintain.

Love is just a human label for something quite miraculous yet scientifically explainable.

That's a little little too spiritual to be practical. This is wholly dependent on you "loving" something about the person that will not change, like their hight or skin color. Personality is always subject to change.

Wouldn't go there if I were you.

But that would simply be you, not me.

Clever retort, but still does nothing to validate the assertion that a philosophical construct is "scientifically explainable".

Philosophy may try to explain what love is, but love (whatever you define it as) is simply an emotion and emotions are nothing but abstracts applied to influential physical reactions that occur in your brain in response to certain stimuli.

Yep. Love, and all other emotions, are chemicals, nothing more. Love isn't a "philosophical concept." It's a mixture of chemicals.

I believe you took my statement as somewhat the opposite of what I meant; I am not talking traits like height or skin color; what I meant by the "thing that doesn't change" is a persons base nature and character. Circumstances of life change, a person's interests may change, and maybe even their outlook to some degree-but think of anyone you have really know well for many many years, isn't there a core in them that is still the same as the person you first knew? I think this is very much a reality, and not only in the realm of abstract philosophy.

Love or altruism, is not a concept but a phenomenon – an enduring and ill-defined principle affecting interactions in the physical world. In this way, it is potentially measurable, not of itself but by its effects. It is usual to employ philosophy or the ‘though experiment’ to investigate uncertain or apparently anomalous laws – this is not unscientific, but it is basic.

If a change occurs within a system, particularly one involving phase transactions, such as the exchange of ‘love’ between individuals, the change does not remove or void the posterior interactions, those interactions instead cease because they are no longer necessary not because they no longer exist. ‘Love’ is both transcendent and transitional. This does not mean that an apparent absence means that it does not remain or that its previous effects have been invalidated by the observer’s note of its supposed absence.

Physical 'love' of infatuation is often confused with 'love' of itself, that is, measurable altruistic behaviour (in this context, 'immediate' or 'confined' altruism).

It means not hurting the person who's in love with you, or who has a crush on you.

When you put their needs before your own.

What you two have done is gone backwards, ascribing a process to "love", rather than "love" to a process.

You assume a consensus that "love" even pertains to the chemicals. Love, as with all philosophical constructs, is not bound to interpretation as an emotion - that's just the most convenient. I could say love is the desire to better humanity by changing the world's economic situation to something that benefits all equally. This asserts "love" is an ambition. Am I right? Not necessarily. Am I wrong? Not necessarily. Why? Because it's a philosophy, and nothing philosophical is "scientifically explainable", nor will they ever be so.

Emotion may not be a philosophical construct, but love most certainly is.