Love looked different at different times and stages of my life, but yes I always did and still do believe in love, that it's something different from affection or lust.......yes a bit of both yet more than either alone, and part completely different..
The other obvious thought of course is that love is not just the erotic kind, not just about passion or sex, that we can love all kind of things or people in other ways, and perhaps they love us back, in their own way.
I wonder if it could be that love vibrates out from me and then when it reaches a harmonious object it is mirrored back so that I feel the vibrations too.......perhaps the love I feel towards X is the same as the love I feel from X.....so where would love have started from if that was true? And could we each have our own "frequency" that appears as compatibility?