What is love? Is love just an illusion? St Valentine's Day!

As a 21 years old male i had my fair share of experiences regarding this subject. I've been in love a few times and I was loved, or at least I think that's what it was. So what actually is love? How do we explain it? How do we know that it's love and not just an ideea that we creat ourselved in our heads? Let's talk a little about it!

Louis de Bernières once said : “Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, and it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No, don’t blush, I am telling you some truths. That is just being “in love”, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.”

So this is the first mistake that we do when we think about love, or at least teenagers nowadays and people who don't give much thught to what they're feeling do. The feeling of beeing in love is truly energizing. No doubt about it, but that is not true love! Indeed, we feel like our partneres are all we ever wanted and that we can't live without them but in our daily lives I can bet we've seen our fair share of breakups and divorces. Why's that? Because those people thought they were in love, but all that happened is that their bond was not string enough. The feeling of beeing in love was gradually going extinct and the roots of their relationship were'n strong enough to give birth to the real emotion, the true feeling of love.

More and more people hang tight to the ideea of beeing in love. That's right, the IDEEA and not the pure feeling. Whenever we are in a relationship that we think we enjoy, we might be blind to the changes that occur within it. And we sometimes find ourselves in love with an ideea of what something once was without noticing that that thing is not there anymore. That's one of the biggest lies that someone can experience

So let me ask you, what does it mean? To love?

I'm not trying to imply that love doesn't exist. Some will argue that it's just a simple reaction that occurs in our brains that triggers our pelasure receptors or some will say that it's simply a lie that the humanity has invented so we can keep reproducing and keep our species going.
I'm not a fan of either of that even though they might have a little truth withing them (very little). I'm a dreamer and I want to think that true love exists. I think we all do, because deep down in our hearts we all need it.
Nowadays we get a pretty bad ideea about the feeling just because that's just what society induces us. We see it promoted all around us, used in commercials, movies etc. And there is no wonder about why that's happening. Because most people LOVE the ideea of LOVE.

In my opinnion love is something that you first have to give in order to recieve back. Love is the sincere feeling, unaltered and uncorrupted, one that takes roots deep down in our hearts and just needs someone able and willing to water them constantly in order to bloom and flourish with the same pure feeling of love. No one says it's easy to find that someone and not as many people as you might think really manage to find it. A lot of people just settle. Please don't settle!
Love must be mutual. Love must pe be pure and unconditioned. If someone tries to change who you really are that's for a reason. They don't love who you really are and that's the first sign that must raise you some question marks. Love is an experience so great that when you will feel it, when you will live it, you will know it's love because I want to think there is not one more special and strong feeling in this world.

I don't want to bore you to death right now so I'm going to stop right here! xD You can tell me if you have other opinions and feel free to contradict what I've said in the comments. I keep an open mind and I'm willing to discuss anything you want!
Never stop loving, it will come back at you! <3