WHAT is the Definition of Love ?

Wow, David, that actually fits pretty well with what I think. The key difference to me is that I am strongly inclined to love people who I can trust.

Mr. Clown,
I invite u to CONSIDER:
Stalin, Hitler, Mao & Pol Pot cud be TRUSTED
to be cruel, sadistic & authoritarian, based upon known observation.

I have never been inclined to love any of them.

Love is the memory of one who got away, to the indoor boat show at the civic center.

Love is a rainstorm, beating against the windows of an Icelandic brothel.

It is toothpick with a flag in a club sandwhich.

Love is a toilet water anus-spalsh.

Love is a badger riding bigwheels through a field of dandelions.

Love between an young man and an young woman has many things
which are not obviously known to conscious mind.

The Oxford English dictionary describes love as: an intense
feeling of deep fondness or affection for a person or thing
and to fall in love as: to develop a great love for.
This may well be a basic description of what love feels like,
but why do we love, what is passion, and why is intense
desire between two people sometimes called 'chemistry'?Heart Box

There are, in fact, three distinct stages of love; each with
their own characteristic emotional profile and scientific explanation.

First is lust. Lust is driven by our sex hormones testosterone
and oestrogen. These hormones are what get us 'out on the pull'.
After lust comes attraction. This is the love-struck phase;
the time when we lose our appetite, can't sleep, and can't
concentrate. This is what we know as falling in love.

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/articles/article/clairemcloughlincolumn1.htm/

Imagine an invisible, undetectable force that's powerful
enough to override your sense of reason yet draws you
to someone with an almost animal passion. These aren't
Cupid's mythological arrows, but real shots of human
pheromones.

http://health.discovery.com/centers/sex/aphrodisiacs/phermones.html

Welcome to The Scent of Eros:
Mysteries of Odor in Human Sexuality -

'Scientists in Philadelphia have established for the first
time that the human body produces pheromones, special
aromatic chemical compounds discharged by one individual
that affect the sexual physiology of another'....

http://www.athenainstitute.com/discovery.html

Do pheromones work in human sexual attraction?

They may be odorless and colorless and their function may be
mysterious, but human pheromones at last have the zest of
scientific truth. Researchers at the University of Chicago
have demonstrated that compounds swabbed from the
'underarms' of young women at different times of the month
can alter the length of other women's menstrual cycles,
compressing or expanding the cycles in predictable
fashion....

http://www.ishipress.com/humanodo.htm

http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/9803/11/pheromones/index.html

What is the force that lights the fuse between two
complete strangers? What current pulses through their veins,
engorges their hearts, occupies their minds and numbs their
texting fingers? Ah, if only

I knew. As magic formulas go, sexual chemistry must surely
be the most valuable. It's intoxicating effects are more
pleasurable and more powerful than any drug and when it hits,
it hits hard. There are the rushes of ecstacy, the gut wrenching
anticipation, fluttering, dizziness, and the diminished
concentration that turns day-dreaming into a full-time job.
And then there are the side effects. A positively Colombian
annihilation of appetite and its confidence- boosting by-product,
weight loss. And it is free. And it is legal. It is bloody amazing.

But no one knows what "it" is. Scientists have managed to
map our genetic blueprint. They understand the subtleties
of hormones and the complexities of the emotional brain.
But the thing that makes two people click remains a mystery.
Theories abound as to what, or why. Those looking for a
magic bullet (or Cupid's arrow) tend to favour the notion
of pheromones - scents secreted by the sweat glands in the
'armpits' and pubic hair. And the relatively recent discovery
of the vomeronasal organ, a small chemo-sensory structure in
the human nose, lends the concept some weight.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4159/is_20030629/ai_n12741733

Science of Love - Cupid's Chemistry:

There are, in fact, three distinct stages of love; each with
their own characteristic emotional profile and scientific explanation.

First is lust. Lust is driven by our sex hormones testosterone
and oestrogen. These hormones are what get us 'out on the pull'.
After lust comes attraction. This is the love-struck phase;
the time when we lose our appetite, can't sleep, and can't
concentrate. This is what we know as falling in love.

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/articles/article/clairemcloughlincolumn1.htm/

I'm inclined to think love as chemical thingy in our brain. I heard it's the equivalence of eating large amount of choccolate, oh wait....that's from the movie devil's advocate Ah well... that still clarifies my point.

Love is made of chemistry ?

Heinlein once wrote that love is where your happiness depends upon the happiness of another. I think that sums up one specific kind of love very well, although there are many others that have been extrapolated on already.

In the most simplistic sense love is a series of human behaviors and reactions to which we assign the word "love". Teleological enough for ya?

Does that deny the existence of sedentary love,
devoid of human behaviors; loving silently from afar ?

I hold Heinlein in high esteem ( for the most part ).
David