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Love is a condition or phenomenon of emotional primacy, or absolute value. Love generally includes an emotion of intense attraction to either another person, a place, or thing; and may also include the aspect of caring for or finding identification with those objects, including self-love. Love can describe an intense feeling of affection, an emotion or an emotional state. In ordinary use, it usually refers to interpersonal love, an experience usually felt by a person for another person. Love is commonly considered impossible to define.

The concept of love, however, is subject to debate. Some deny the existence of love, calling it a recently invented abstraction. Others maintain that love exists but is indefinable; being a quantity which is spiritual, metaphysical, or philosophical in nature. The views that love does not exist or is indefinable may underlie the fact that approximately 13 percent of cultures have no word for love. The remaining 87 percent attempt to define this abstract concept and apply it to everyday life. Love is one of the most common themes in art and often times is an excuse for " bad art". Some psychologists maintain that love is the abstract action of lending one's "boundary" or "self esteem" to another.

Love in Cultural View....

Although there exist numerous cross-cultural unified similarities as to the nature and definition of love, as in there being a thread of commitment, tenderness, and passion common to all human existence, there are differences. For example, in India, with arranged marriages commonplace, it is believed that love is not a necessary ingredient in the initial stages of marriage – it is something that can be created during the marriage; whereas in Western culture, by comparison, love is seen as a necessary prerequisite to marriage.

Love.. in definition issue

Dictionaries tend to define love as deep affection or fondness.In colloquial use, according to polled opinion, the most favoured definitions of love include the words:

1. life - someone or something for which you would give your life.
2. care - someone or something about which you care more than yourself.

   In common use, care refers to a mental or emotional state of predisposition in which one has an interest or concern for someone or something. To care for someone, may also refer to a disquieted state of mixed uncertainty, apprehension, and responsibility; or a cause for such anxiety. Caring for an object, such as a house, refers to a state of attendant maintenance; or may also refer to a state of charge or supervision, as in under a doctor’s care.

3. friendship - favoured interpersonal associations or relationships.
4. union
5. family - people related via common ancestry.
6. bond.

References:

Ackerman, Diane (1994). A Natural History of Love. Vintage Books. ISBN 0679761837.

Jankowiak, W.R., & Fischer, E.F. (1992). A cross-cultural perspective on romantic love. Ethnology, 31, 149.

Oxford Illustrated American Dictionary (1998) + Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary (2000).

'04 Poll of 250 Chicagoans – Institute of Human Thermodynamics (Chicago)

Roger Allen, Hillar Kilpatrick, and Ed de Moor, eds. Love and Sexuality in Modern Arabic Literature. London: Saqi Books, 1995.

Shadi Bartsch and Thomas Bartscherer, eds. Erotikon: Essays on Eros, Ancient and Modern. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.

Helen Fisher. Why We Love: the Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love

Gabriele Froböse, Rolf Froböse, Michael Gross (Translator): Lust and Love: Is it more than Chemistry? Publisher: Royal Society of Chemistry, ISBN 0854048677, (2006).

Thomas Jay Oord, Science of Love: The Wisdom of Well-Being. Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation Press, 2004.

R. J. Sternberg. A triangular theory of love. 1986. Psychological Review, 93, 119–135

R. J. Sternberg. Liking versus loving: A comparative evaluation of theories. 1987. Psychological Bulletin, 102, 331–345

Sternberg, Robert (1998). Cupid's Arrow - the Course of Love through Time. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521478936.

Dorothy Tennov. Love and Limerence: the Experience of Being in Love. New York: Stein and Day, 1979. ISBN 0812861345

Dorothy Tennov. A Scientist Looks at Romantic Love and Calls It "Limerence": The Collected Works of Dorothy Tennov. Greenwich, CT: The Great American Publishing Society (GRAMPS), [1]

Wood, Wood and Boyd. The World of Psychology. 5th edition. 2005. Pearson Education, 402–403

 Thanks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love