Caring about the other person like you do yourself.
Unselfish, not putting oneself first.

Guess that's why I fail at love; I always put myself first. I found you can't depend on anyone but yourself.

I think, when You fall inlove it will happen for You. There are men out there that can truly love a woman. I am not speaking of people just dating one another, often times, that is all it is, is a date. Many people do not know the real meaning of true Love.
You should care for your Partner like you do a close family member.

"Love can sometimes be magic, and magic is sometimes an illusion."
Love is the world's greatest magic trick.

God is love.

Love is inner joy.

Love is life bursting forth.

Love is the creative energy of life.

I agree that you should care for your partner like a close family member but even with my family; I will put myself first. My health and mental wellness has to come first as if I don't take care of myself; how can I care for anyone else.

the Definition by Ayn Rand.

Love, friendship, respect, admiration are the emotional response of one man to the virtues of another, the spiritual payment given in exchange for the personal, selfish pleasure which one man derives from the virtues of another man’s character. Only a brute or an altruist would claim that the appreciation of another person’s virtues is an act of selflessness, that as far as one’s own selfish interest and pleasure are concerned, it makes no difference whether one deals with a genius or a fool, whether one meets a hero or a thug, whether one marries an ideal woman or a slut.


¶

Romantic love, in the full sense of the term, is an emotion possible only to the man (or woman) of unbreached self-esteem: it is his response to his own highest values in the person of another—an integrated response of mind and body, of love and sexual desire. Such a man (or woman) is incapable of experiencing a sexual desire divorced from spiritual values.



¶

Man is an end in himself. Romantic love—the profound, exalted, lifelong passion that unites his mind and body in the sexual act—is the living testimony to that principle.


¶

There are two aspects of man’s existence which are the special province and expression of his sense of life: love and art.

I am referring here to romantic love, in the serious meaning of that term—as distinguished from the superficial infatuations of those whose sense of life is devoid of any consistent values, i.e., of any lasting emotions other than fear. Love is a response to values. It is with a person’s sense of life that one falls in love—with that essential sum, that fundamental stand or way of facing existence, which is the essence of a personality. One falls in love with the embodiment of the values that formed a person’s character, which are reflected in his widest goals or smallest gestures, which create the style of his soul—the individual style of a unique, unrepeatable, irreplaceable consciousness. It is one’s own sense of life that acts as the selector, and responds to what it recognizes as one’s own basic values in the person of another. It is not a matter of professed convictions (though these are not irrelevant); it is a matter of much more profound, conscious and subconscious harmony.

Many errors and tragic disillusionments are possible in this process of emotional recognition, since a sense of life, by itself, is not a reliable cognitive guide. And if there are degrees of evil, then one of the most evil consequences of mysticism—in terms of human suffering—is the belief that love is a matter of “the heart,” not the mind, that love is an emotion independent of reason, that love is blind and impervious to the power of philosophy. Love is the expression of philosophy—of a subconscious philosophical sum—and, perhaps, no other aspect of human existence needs the conscious power of philosophy quite so desperately. When that power is called upon to verify and support an emotional appraisal, when love is a conscious integration of reason and emotion, of mind and values, then—and only then—it is the greatest reward of man’s life.



¶

To love is to value. Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self-esteem, is capable of love—because he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed values. The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.

The Virtue of Selfishness

“The Objectivist Ethics,”
The Virtue of Selfishness, 32

¶

[In The Fountainhead] the hero utters a line that has often been quoted by readers: “To say ‘I love you’ one must know first how to say the ‘I.’”

Playboy Interview: Ayn Rand
Playboy, March 1964

¶

[Selfless love] would have to mean that you derive no personal pleasure or happiness from the company and the existence of the person you love, and that you are motivated only by self-sacrificial pity for that person’s need of you. I don’t have to point out to you that no one would be flattered by, nor would accept, a concept of that kind. Love is not self-sacrifice, but the most profound assertion of your own needs and values. It is for your own happiness that you need the person you love, and that is the greatest compliment, the greatest tribute you can pay to that person.

Playboy Interview: Ayn Rand
Playboy, March 1964

¶

One gains a profoundly personal, selfish joy from the mere existence of the person one loves. It is one’s own personal, selfish happiness that one seeks, earns and derives from love.

A “selfless,” “disinterested” love is a contradiction in terms: it means that one is indifferent to that which one values.

Concern for the welfare of those one loves is a rational part of one’s selfish interests. If a man who is passionately in love with his wife spends a fortune to cure her of a dangerous illness, it would be absurd to claim that he does it as a “sacrifice” for her sake, not his own, and that it makes no difference to him, personally and selfishly, whether she lives or dies.



¶

The practical implementation of friendship, affection and love consists of incorporating the welfare (the rational welfare) of the person involved into one’s own hierarchy of values, then acting accordingly.


¶

To love is to value. The man who tells you that it is possible to value without values, to love those whom you appraise as worthless, is the man who tells you that it is possible to grow rich by consuming without producing and that paper money is as valuable as gold . . . . When it comes to love, the highest of emotions, you permit them to shriek at you accusingly that you are a moral delinquent if you’re incapable of feeling causeless love. When a man feels fear without reason, you call him to the attention of a psychiatrist; you are not so careful to protect the meaning, the nature and the dignity of love.

Love is the expression of one’s values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another. Your morality demands that you divorce your love from values and hand it down to any vagrant, not as response to his worth, but as response to his need, not as reward, but as alms, not as a payment for virtues, but as a blank check on vices. Your morality tells you that the purpose of love is to set you free of the bonds of morality, that love is superior to moral judgment, that true love transcends, forgives and survives every manner of evil in its object, and the greater the love the greater the depravity it permits to the loved. To love a man for his virtues is paltry and human, it tells you; to love him for his flaws is divine. To love those who are worthy of it is self-interest; to love the unworthy is sacrifice. You owe your love to those who don’t deserve it, and the less they deserve it, the more love you owe them—the more loathsome the object, the nobler your love—the more unfastidious your love, the greater your virtue—and if you can bring your soul to the state of a dump heap that welcomes anything on equal terms, if you can cease to value moral values, you have achieved the state of moral perfection.


Galt’s Speech,
For the New Intellectual, 147

¶

Like any other value, love is not a static quantity to be divided, but an unlimited response to be earned. The love for one friend is not a threat to the love for another, and neither is the love for the various members of one’s family, assuming they have earned it. The most exclusive form—romantic love—is not an issue of competition. If two men are in love with the same woman, what she feels for either of them is not determined by what she feels for the other and is not taken away from him. If she chooses one of them, the “loser” could not have had what the “winner” has earned.

It is only among the irrational, emotion-motivated persons, whose love is divorced from any standards of value, that chance rivalries, accidental conflicts and blind choices prevail. But then, whoever wins does not win much. Among the emotion-driven, neither love nor any other emotion has any meaning.



¶

Let us answer the question: “Can you measure love?”

The concept “love” is formed by isolating two or more instances of the appropriate psychological process, then retaining its distinguishing characteristics (an emotion proceeding from the evaluation of an existent as a positive value and as a source of pleasure) and omitting the object and the measurements of the process’s intensity.

The object may be a thing, an event, an activity, a condition or a person. The intensity varies according to one’s evaluation of the object, as, for instance, in such cases as one’s love for ice cream, or for parties, or for reading, or for freedom, or for the person one marries. The concept “love” subsumes a vast range of values and, consequently, of intensity: it extends from the lower levels (designated by the subcategory “liking”) to the higher level (designated by the subcategory “affection,” which is applicable only in regard to persons) to the highest level, which includes romantic love.

If one wants to measure the intensity of a particular instance of love, one does so by reference to the hierarchy of values of the person experiencing it. A man may love a woman, yet may rate the neurotic satisfactions of sexual promiscuity higher than her value to him. Another man may love a woman, but may give her up, rating his fear of the disapproval of others (of his family, his friends or any random strangers) higher than her value. Still another man may risk his life to save the woman he loves, because all his other values would lose meaning without her. The emotions in these examples are not emotions of the same intensity or dimension. Do not let a James Taggart type of mystic tell you that love is immeasurable.

http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/love.html

First Love is God and is also sacrifice and selfless and blind and love longs to see her...or him always

"Love is the active concern over the growth and well-being of that which is loved"- Erich Fromm

"Love is the over-infatuation with the eroticized object."- Freud

Ranking is considered a logical fallacy and would therefore invalidate such definitions as agape.

Conrad - WAY DEEP.

ALCON - So we agree then!?

Tangent much? Remember the Love is... comic? Here's a few from Darnell:

Love is your day brightening-up just thinking about them
Love is unselfish
Love is patience
Love is maddening
Love is forsaking yourself and your own needs
Love is sharing your worldly possessions
Love is DEATH of your individual soul, and the birth of a combined one
Love is <insert pretty much anything here>

I would kill to get back in love but fear the extremely high possibility of it NEVER happening again because of what has happened in the past. That, and I think too much.

Love is, in many ways, insanity.

it is the warmth you feel in your heart when someone makes your heart feel warm

I remember when I proposed to my ex-wife, and how I had this feeling that she was everything that I truly wanted. So many aspects encompassed this feeling. I knew I would give me all for her, would laugh and cry with her, would support her, would adore and cherish her, and would treat her as the greatest treasure on Earth. Plus, I knew she (back then) felt the same way too. And to me, that is what love (in a relationship) is all about. When two people have this undying, unquestionable loyalty to one another that connects them.

"Love is a battlefield."

- Pat Benatar.

I take care of myself too; however, I love my Children like I do my self. My other family is next in line.

Lov is sacrificin everytin 4 sum1 without xpectin anytin in return.

Love is...
..my father singing with the voice of an angel
..my mother making sure she cooks my favorite meal when I come home to visit (even though I'm 40)
..my little sister telling me to stop worrying about everyone else, and to start thinking about myself
..my big brother dropping everything to help me move (twice)
..the first time you look into your child's eyes
..when your child gives you those big sloppy baby kisses
..the willingness to sacrifice everything to protect your children
..the fury of a mother defending her young
..the ability to walk away
..a hot desperate need to feel and be felt
..a hard, rough, deep f***
..a gentle repeat of the above
..emotionally exhausting & mentally draining

its the thing in which two personnel's hearts are adjusted in such a way that it can take all thing equally and simultaneously (sadness and happiness)

but this love may be of two types on affection for someone and other is only the infatuation

an acute delusional disorder generally the result of either a chemical imbalance or after receiving a slight contusion upon the cranial region located near the occipital lobe

" Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another."
"Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence"
H.L. Menken

Let's face it, 'love' is not the dying moan of a distant violin; it's the triumphant 'twang' of a bedspring!
Be it a 'love story', cop stories, someone gets chased, someone gets caught, a woman screams at the end...
"Love is two minutes fifty-two seconds of squishing noises. It shows your mind isn't clicking right..." Johnny Rotten