What is Love?

Love: An intense feeling of deep affection.

It seems simple by that definition, an intense feeling of deep affection. For some, it is that simple no more and no less. For others, it manifests as an intense almost spiritual feeling so overwhelming that they can not put it into words. How convenient. I know that I love my parents and my grandparents and my brother. That is obvious but that is familial love something that almost everyone knows the feeling of. I love my dog, obviously, but everyone loves their pets intensely it's almost a requirement for being a pet owner. I love my friends, though I don't have many I know I love them.

What I don't understand is romantic love. I have seen it in romance books but those are fantasies that rarely exist in the real world. I have seen it in period romance movies but again those are fantasies. Of course, I have also seen it in those videos where people are sharing how disgustingly in love their parents still are after 20 years. Those are few and far between so much so that they feel like a fantasy. I have seen examples of romantic love in almost all the media I consume I have even felt that pull on my heartstrings and the butterflies in my stomach when I have seen it. I still don't understand it.

What does it mean to truly love someone? When people try to describe what it means it just sounds like words to me. Trivial things that I have seen people do or feel for strangers that they could not possibly love. Trivial things that we have learned are supposed to be the bare minimum. It almost seems that the word itself has become trivial. Love being thrown around like it's nothing just to describe something you really like or someone that you truly care for. Even when I try to describe what I think love is it feels like a lie kind of like a child just spouting off what they heard mom and dad say. It doesn't feel genuine.

If you try to search what the definition of romantic love is the articles try and break it down into a science but it's not a science. Obviously, there is scientific reasoning behind what love is all the chemicals and neurons doing their jobs. Romantic love isn't science though it is more than just chemicals I just don't know what that more is. I could be overanalyzing this. I could be a victim of the romance genre. The genre that leads me to believe there is an inexplicable magical feeling that I will feel for another person and that other person will feel just for me. My soulmate, my true love, my always and forever.

Am I just too young to have felt it? Do I just need to live a little more life to finally understand what love is? Is getting your heart broken by your first love some sort of rite of passage I have to go through to be able to understand? If so, that doesn't seem fair. What if I never get a true first love? What if I am so wrapped up in trying to understand what it is I am supposed to be feeling that I miss it completely? What do I do when I don't know what I am supposed to feel?

I feel like I am somehow behind in life because I don't know what love is or I haven't had a dramatic breakup to show me what love is. Your 20s are supposed to be the best years of your life. It's supposed to be the time that you go out and experience what life has to offer. It's supposed to be adventurous, dramatic, and chaotic filled with love and loss and lessons. I am 23 but I haven't experienced any of that. Am I broken? Am I behind because I don't know what love is? If love is this much trouble, what is it good for anyway?