How Do You Define Love?

How do you define love?  I do a lot of pre-marital counseling and I always ask this question of couples preparing for their married life together.  I  hear a lot about feelings, meeting each others needs, giving, caring, and understanding.  Couples often talk about how they fell in love.  The idea of falling in love is one of the most ridiculous ideas conveyed in our popular culture.  You don't fall in love, you fall in ditches, potholes, trenches, and man holes without a cover.  The idea of falling in love conveys the idea of something happening to both people in a dating relationship, like some kind of force or power or emotion that comes over them.  Now I am all for romance, and the excitement of meeting someone and growing to love them.  The problem with the idea of falling in love is that if you fall in love, you can just as easily fall out of love, with no sense of commitment or personal responsibility.  Love is really all about choice, you chose to love to love someone and act in ways that are consistent with that decision. Certainly you may find yourself attracted to someone more than other people you may meet.  And that initial attraction will cause you to pursue a relationship with him or her.
When it comes to a definition of love, I think the best one ever written is found in the New Testament, in the book of 1 Corinthians, chapter 13.  As you read it, look at how much of what is described has to do with commitment, choices, actions, and how much has to do with emotion.  Let me share it with you:  Love is patient, love is kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it odes not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never fails.  As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.  For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.  When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.  when I became a man, I gave up childish ways.  For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.  Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three, but the greatest of these is love.  
I don't know about you, but I have never found a better understanding of love.  Of course, the next challenge is to put it into practice.
Blessings,
Dr. Paul