Your heart soars whenever you are together. You are in love! But the term has many different meaning as each of these common example statements illustrate: I love my wife. I love my son. I love my parents. I love riding my bike. I love psychology class. I love Linda Ronstadt and Rod Stewart. I love the move Thirteen days.

Forms of Love

Many words in our vocabulary describe forms of love. Here is a partial list: affection, attachment, tenderness, devotion, amity, regard, adoration, adulating, ardor, and passion. Companionate love describes the love of children for parents, siblings for each other, parents for their children, and the love of close friends. Erotic passion is the key distinction between romantic love and the various forms of companionate love.

Definitions

1. A caring relationship between two people,
2. Desiring or participating in affection and physical intimacy, usually but not necessarily reciprocated.
3. A deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person.
4. Limbic Resonance.

Emotion or Sentiment

The word "love" can refer both to an acute passionate emotion, lasting for minutes, hours, or days as well as to a lasting sentiment, enduring for years through many ups and downs. The phrase "in love" often refers to the sentiment. "Passion" describes the emotion.

Limbic Resonance

Emotions allow us to sense the inner states and motives of the people around us. We can detect what others are feeling and rapidly adjust our own thinking, feeling, physiology, and actions to precisely match the situation. We have a capacity for limbic resonance—a complex and rapid exchange of information, largely non-verbal, between two people about our own state and our adaptations to the other's state. This limbic resonance is what makes gazing into the face of another person so fascinating. The eyes truly are the windows to another's soul. Limbic resonance allows for a deep, personal connection, below the level of consciousness. It draws emotions into congruence. It is the mechanism that provides the "bonding" between mother and infant and even between an owner and his dog. Limbic resonance is the mechanism of love.

Asymmetrical Attraction

The term "unrequited love" refers to a person who is in love with someone who does not love them back. It is a one-way, or asymmetrical, love relationship and often leads to hurt and pain. As described below in the triangular theory of love, love has several components. Each of these components can be asymmetrical in any given relationship. For example you may feel sexual passion for the boss, but the boss may feel only commitment for you. The ideal, enduring, romantic love is a strong and balanced consummate love, where commitment, intimacy, and passion are all strongly felt by both people in the relationship.

Love, Sex, and Procreation

Sex is essential for procreation. The linkage between love and sex is less clear, and somewhat culturally determined. 

The Triangular Theory

Robert J. Sternberg’s triangular theory of love considers three independent components of a complete, enduring, and romantic love he calls "consummate love". The three components are intimacy, passion, and commitment, with these definitions:

Intimacy is defined as feelings of being close to and bonded with a partner. Agreement with the statements: “I feel close to my significant other” and “I receive considerable emotional support from my significant other” measure intimacy.

Passion refers to the arousal you experience toward your partner, including sexual attraction. An example is agreement with the statements: "I find my significant other to be personally attractive" and “I fantasize about my significant other”.

Commitment consists of making two decisions; one, that you love your partner, and two, that you desire to maintain that love and stay with your partner. It is a long-lasing and stable concern for the other. A person committed to a relationship tends to agree with the statement: “I will always feel a strong responsibility for my significant other.”

But what if one or more of the three essential elements of consummate love are weak or absent from a relationship? The theory goes on to define and name the six other possibilities as show here:

References

[laz] Passion and Reason: Making Sense of Our Emotions by Richard S. Lazarus, Bernice N. Lazarus

The Triangle of Love: Intimacy, Passion, Commitment, by Robert J. Sternberg

A General Theory of Love by Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, Richard Lannon

[Ekm] Emotions Revealed : Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life by Paul Ekman

[OCC] The Cognitive Structure of Emotions by Andrew Ortony, Gerald L. Clore, Allan Collins

[Gol] Destructive Emotions : A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama by Daniel Goleman

Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Create Your Life, Your Relationships, and Your World in Harmony with Your Values, by Marshall B. Rosenberg, Arun Gandhi