Love is an act of the will

Love is an act of the will. It isn't a feeling or an emotion or an attraction or something one falls into. It is an action verb if it is anything at all.

To love is to exert a constant act of your will, to continually and repeatedly decide and to act toward the good of the other person.

Actual love is first a response to something worthy of love. GK Chesterton said, "Man cannot love mortal things. He can only love immortal things for an instant. That leaves out chocolate (sorry ladies) and football (sorry guys).

So, perhaps our properly ordered feelings of attraction that prompt emotions of affection are natural responses to our recognition of something that is worthy of love. But those feelings aren't love. We must choose to respond to the object to be loved. And we must choose the nature of our response. The best hint I know of to how to respond it the fact that the Latin word for love is Caritas, from which we get the word, charity. I may want to possess something I like, but I should wish to give to that which I love.

One of the possible difficulties that flow from that dichotomy is that I usually (but not always) like what I love. So, it seems to me sometimes perfectly reasonable to want to possess the object of my love. That's natural and most often good, as long as my desire is held in check by my desire for the good of the object of my love.

Another difficulty is confusing like and love; so that if, for some reason I mistake a temporary dislike for a "loss of love", I mistakenly stop actively loving - I quit willing myself to love that which is worthy of love. "I don't love you anymore" doesn't describe something that's happened to you, but rather to a decision you have made.