Love is the feeling you have about someone who, if were in danger, you would protect even with your life if you have to without thinking about the consequences of your own actions. “Without thinking about the consequences.” That is the clause that separates love from everything else that feels like it. To answer if you would risk your life for someone, you would have to put your life next to theirs and begin comparing. The comparison is the answer. Love does not win that comparison; love is what happens when that comparison never exists in the first place.
Here’s an example of what true love is: A mom sees her baby walk off the curb onto the road. Her body moves automatically, and even before she has a chance to think, she’s on the road to protect her baby. If you ask her later, “What went through your head before you decided to run off onto the road?” she will tell you, “Nothing did; my body moved automatically.” To the mom, her baby counts as part of her. Her body defended her baby the way it would pull her hand out of a fire, which is to say it never compared. This is love.
This question is actually a neat framework to find out whether you love someone or if it’s just attraction and/or closeness. Just ask yourself this question: If [whoever you think you love] were in a life-threatening situation, then would I protect them even if it could cost me my life? A slow answer is a no because you unconsciously started comparing your life with theirs. Most of what we call love will not survive that question because it was not love to begin with, just attraction and/or closeness.
Now I’m not implying that attraction and/or closeness are bad things. What I’m implying is that they are different from love, and believe it or not, the confusion between those is responsible for a remarkable amount of human misery.
If I were to explain love in one line, it would be this: love is the feeling that destroys the illusion of “I” and “the other.” Their suffering, their fear, their joy can no longer be understood by you as something happening to someone else. Deep down in your heart, their existence somehow becomes entangled with yours.