What is often called love can be something entirely different.
The feeling can get so entangled in the dark web of personality that what emerges is of a very different essence.
When love draws mainly from the outside for its sustenance and not from the inner resources, when it seeks to receive and not to give, demanding and not easily accepting, it becomes something else, a negative force.
Whether it be the relations between man and woman, parents and children, person and person, or group, in order for love to be "true," the self has to be diminished and not augmented.
The ultimate test of love is the degree of nullification of the "I" and the amount of space thereby provided for the other.
Love is thus seen as a dynamic relation, based on the thoughts of others and not on the thoughts of oneself.
–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
From In the Beginning by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz