Love

Love encompasses a variety of different emotional and mental states, typically strongly and positively experienced, ranging from the most sublime virtue or good habit, the deepest interpersonal affection and to the simplest pleasure...
We love along grooves formed in childhood. We look for people who in many ways recreate the feelings of love we knew when we were small. The problem is that the love we imbibed in childhood was unlikely to have been made up simply of generosity, tenderness and kindness. Given the way the world is, love was liable to have come entwined with certain painful aspects: a feeling of not being quite good enough; a love for a parent who was fragile or depressed; a sense that one could never be fully vulnerable around a care-giver.
An example of this range of meanings is that the love of a mother differs from the love of a spouse differs from the love of food. Most commonly, love refers to a feeling of strong attraction and emotional attachment......
Love can also be a virtue representing human kindness, compassion, and affection, as "the unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another".
Theoretically we are free to select the kind of person we love. We might have chosen someone else. We’re not being forced into this by social convention or match-making aunts or dynastic imperatives. But in reality our choice is probably a lot less free than we imagine. Some very real constraints around whom we can love and feel properly attracted to come from a place we might not think to look: our childhoods. Our psychological history strongly predisposes us to fall for only certain types of people.
---It may also describe compassionate and affectionate actions towards other humans, one's self or animals.