I think there’s a lot that goes into this, including what “love” looks like in other countries/time periods, so don’t consider these thoughts as exhaustive, but here’s what comes to mind.

1. Tolerance. Everyone you get close to will hurt you, maybe even intentionally. Understanding this, and learning to see people as people, goes a long way to minimizing personal emotional damage in a relationship.

2. Forgiveness. Kinda goes hand-in-hand with 1, but probably needs stated explicitly.

3. Realistic expectations. Love is not the Hollywood or Disney version you’ve been raised to believe it is.

4. Selflessness. You have to realize that the other person’s feelings are just as important as yours. You have no right to try to control or manipulate them, regardless of how bad their actions may hurt you. Either accept it or move on.

5. Patience. Disregard social/religious pressures to marry too early in life. You can’t realistically vow to love your partner for better or worse if you have never seen them at their worst. It takes time to get to know someone, and for people to reveal themselves fully to someone else. It also takes time to heal.

6. Openness. Let your likes/dislikes and needs/wants be known. Your partner isn’t a mind reader.

7. Respect. There should be certain lines that are never crossed. Violence is the most obvious, but also things like not using their vulnerabilities/insecurities against them, demeaning them, or disregarding their opinions/dreams/etc. Personally, I also think simple manners and politeness are important.

8. Sex. I’m not one to advocate for celibacy until marriage, but your infatuation with your partner should be recognized as such so it isn’t confused for love.

I love the list you made up. These are all good qualities for an individual to have in any relationship. Then, could you answer what properties or characteristics of love that could allow us to understand the way it works?

Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new. — Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

And made by hand and muscle and patience, not by machine. If you think love is a feeling you have rather than a labour you work at, there is not much hope for marriage or for child rearing.

And made by hand and muscle and patience, not by machine. If you think love is a feeling you have rather than a labour you work at, there is not much hope for marriage or for child rearing. — unenlightened

Can we get a show of hands?

There are problems for which there is no solution. Someone wiser than me said that interpersonal relationships are like those established by hedgehogs on a snowy mountain. If the hedgehogs wander away, they will freeze. But if they get too close, they will hurt each other. Love is the deception of nature to force us to reproduce.

Love is the deception of nature to force us to reproduce. — Miguel Hernández

if it's is deception then I am surely fooled!

-Do you accept Mary in health and in sickness, in wealth and poverty until death do you part?
-Yes, no, yes, no, no.

Lasting relationships are based on choice. I choose to lay with my wife at the end of the day, she chooses me. Every night, every day. I choose her above all others, she chooses me. simple enough in concept.

The interesting thing about laying out the rational characteristics of love is that it ceases to resemble ‘love’ as we experience it.

I agree that @Pinprick’s list outlines what should be characteristics of all relationships, regardless of whether we classify it as ‘love’. This often leads to sexual compatibility and/or physical attraction seen as the distinguishing feature of ‘love’ within a marriage. I would say that a sexual aspect to any relationship intensifies the implications of the other seven - we don’t have anything to smooth over the sharp edges of our personality or to shield us from the damage we inflict.

For me, the idea of love is pure relation: if we could understand fully how the world works, theoretically speaking, then we could love the world fully. That includes ourselves. But we partition our relation to the world because some aspects may be beyond our capacity to understand - right now, under certain conditions, yet or ever.

Love is not a resource one is able to use in this way or that. If you accept it as your only guiding light then who knows what will happen next. Maybe some really terrible things.

Seems like LOVE is tangled in knots? What if in the present and there are so many moments to be present there is love without catastrophe and rumination...Love exists without marriage and marriage exists without love...when self love brings confidence and enjoyment why isn't that enough? Personal boundaries seem more of an issue especially when here is contempt for others peace happiness and LOVE...

Love is nothing, non-existence, infinitely undefined

I was reading that 80% of marriages end up soon after in divorce and that 10% are unhappy that they are married. — Thinking

This is not necessarily a bad thing. What is the reason you are dismayed by this?

Why is it not a bad thing? The 10% are the people who were not divorced and unhappy... although do check on those facts.

Love is not nothing because it can be seen and felt.

Love is the principle cause of all things in the Universe it is a resource the is infinite to tap into.

There have existed many happy marriages that filled Mans days with love so I do not see your point.

I responded to another post...there might be happy marriages however my post suggests there is and will be love without marriage and love doesn't need to be corporeal desire and it can involve physical intimacy...love needs to be there first and within the person to nurture, respect and have in all relations...if not, then emptiness and grabbing at anything is existence and dissatisfaction as well as discontent and resentment or ressentiment...images of celebrities,.models and empty relationships, and broken marriages without support which creates the dominant IMAGE in my society (can't speak for India, for example) which is predominantly white western capitalism.

Love is a serious mental disease. Plato

Love is the principle cause of all things in the Universe it is a resource the is infinite to tap into. — Thinking

Personally I disagree. I guess the principle cause of all things is the faith of believing we can change the reality to better.
Love and it’s forms are overrated marketing to be honest...

To me it's about not blaming my parents anymore. Because it's really the question whether they could have done any better.

Just this...

Life without love has a seriousness to it. It is a heavy weight one has to carry, or like a hypnotic sleep. For one who loves knows many things that the one without does not.

From my perspective, material existence is antithetical to love. Marriage is only an institution created to procreate. Since people love to talk about love, but nobody has a clue what it is or what it means, the institution of marriage has dissolved into nothingness.

There's no love in this world. You can only love yourself. If you want love, you need to start spiritual practice. Because you're not going to find it on this planet. You'll find a lot of crap with the label of "love" though, but it's cheaper than the crap you buy at Walmart. At least you'll get something out of that purchase, not so with "love"

Love and it’s forms are overrated marketing to be honest... — javi2541997

Exactly.

Love is the deception of nature to force us to reproduce. — Miguel Hernández

Love is a Platonic Form that exists in the spectral realm, however, in it's imperfect form it takes the form of self-satisfaction, egotism and narcissism while here on the material plane.

Life without love has a seriousness to it. It is a heavy weight one has to carry, or like a hypnotic sleep. For one who loves knows many things that the one without does not. — Thinking

Not a single person on planet Earth knows "love" the way you describe it. Many Sages know love in it's true sense. Sat Chit Ananda. But not in this false sense. It's basically a fraud created by capitalist marketing. There's no content to it. Emptiness.

For one who loves knows many things that the one without does not. — Thinking

What if give love but I don’t receive it back? Sometimes love is overacting. I guess the properly word here is “respect” because this is the truest cordial representation between individuals. Love can be sometimes so toxic

for me in my practice the more bring love into my life the more I listen with my feelings. You could call it intuition or following your heart, and intuition is very intelligent.

I will call it maturity. I understand your point. That period of time where you start accepting or respecting yourself and also the path of life starts having another point of view. Yes, we can call it intuition, because as you said intuition is somehow intelligent.
But... love is not here too. I can’t believe in love but in myself or intuition. I think theses concepts can survive separated from each other.

Say Love resides in your heart and it is a great feeling. When you say you are following your heart many mean you are using your intuition. When you listen to your feelings they will express a good deal of information that could take books to describe them in words, kinda like the concept that a picture can be described in a thousand words. When you listen to those feelings it is the intuition... Love just happens to be the greatest among these radiant feelings. Intuition is intelligent in this aspect.