I agree to much that is expressed here about the word. I do not know whether Mr. Fuller would be in a position to say that NO animal, person, thing etc is in a position but point taken. I have had issue with this word and its use from my teen years and as time goes and I am exposed to relevant information I am beginning to understand my initial reluctance to adopt it to describe my feelings. It bothered me that people claimed it to be a selfless feeling but it seemed to die as soon as ones do not fulfill the desire of the one who supposed once said they loved them and who they supposedly loved. This has been dealt with here before (see bottom) so I need not belabour it. And I do understand that love as you state it there is being looked at in a wider sense.

Another word whose use bothered me was "relationship" in the way that it was used almost exclusively to describe the so called "romantic" variety. To me there is so much illusion and personal and interpersonal dishonesty often tied in with such that it cannot be relationship par excellence and there may be so many more important and valuable relationships in people's lives. People need to examine closely many words, their denotative and connotative meanings as well as their origin, etymologies and evolutions of meanings.