It is immensely challenging to define the concept of love because every person has a unique understanding of this concept. From the scientific point of view, love is no more than a chemical reaction in the brain. At this point, it should be noted that, according to the study conducted by Manoharan and De Munck (2017), love is most frequently associated with sex and vice versa.
However, in my opinion, it is cynical to simplify such a complex feeling as love to biochemical processes and equate it to the mixture of passion and care.
As it has already been mentioned, love is not only about sex. Interestingly enough, men can separate the concept of love from sexual activity, whereas women tend to unite these two notions (Fincham and May 2017). I believe that true love combines passion, gratuitous desire to be a support, and the source of inspiration, as well as a deep understanding of the partner and awareness of how to make him or her, feel better. The prominent theater director Konstantin Stanislavsky once said that love means the want to touch a partner. This view is peculiar because it combines both scientific and philosophical approaches to love.
Often people confuse love and dependence on a partner, obsession with a partner, and fear of loneliness. By the way, an excessive interest in a partner is called love addiction and is classified as a mental disorder that requires treatment (Sanches and John, 2019). Therefore, love is the feeling that could be experienced by psychologically mature individuals who know their self-worth and love themselves. Even though there is no standard definition of love, one thing is undoubtedly true: love does not equal infatuation; the latter could appear at first sight, whereas the former requires a lot of time and effort to emerge.
References
Fincham, F. D., & May, R. W. (2017). Infidelity in romantic relationships. Current Opinion in Psychology, 13, 70-74. DOI: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2016.03.008
Manoharan, C., & De Munck, V. (2017). The conceptual relationship between love, romantic love, and sex: A free list and prototype study of semantic association. Journal of Mixed Methods Research, 11(2), 248-265. DOI: 10.1177/1558689815602151
Sanches, M., & John, V. P. (2019). Treatment of love addiction: Current status and perspectives. The European Journal of Psychiatry, 33(1), 38-44. DOI: 10.1016/j.ejpsy.2018.07.002