Human beings experience love in direct proportion to their level of consciousness. Love is our natural state. Love imposes nothing on another, and in turn requires nothing but merely delights in the uniqueness of each being. Freedom is always an essential ingredient of true love.
Since consciousness is as yet a rare state for human beings, the love that we feel at our present level of consciousness is coloured by several factors including our conditioning, our desires, and the behaviour of our beloved. We fall in and out of love. We establish social formulas and rules within which we experience romantic and sexual 'love'. There may be moments of stillness when we feel a surge of pure love for another being. Sooner or later however, most people become disillusioned with romantic love when they realise that happiness and security cannot be guaranteed by another.
We blame our partners for not accepting us, for not loving us, for not giving us what we need. The constructed self identifies completely with the beloved, and seeks to control and possess the object of affection. Confusion, anger, conflict, violence, pain and deep unhappiness most often result from unrequited love or failing relationships.
The focus of our love must be inward in terms of connecting with the deep source of love that is our essence, and outward in terms of loving others. It is a futile exercise to become caught up in whether other people love us or not. We can never control what another person feels for us. In reality we can never fully know what anyone else feels because that depends on their capacity to open to consciousness and hence to experience true love.