What Exactly Is Love?

So lately I've found that so many teens today say that they're "in love" and I wonder to myself, how does someone so young know what love is? I know that there are people out there that say that love is something like the warm embrace of someone that shares your life with you but what happens when that dies? My grandma told me that in your life there will be three loves:

1. You're too young to understand
2. Will break your heart more than anyone else has ever done
3. Will scare you but only because they are the one that will spend forever with you

But to me, my biggest question was how do I know which love I'm on. I'm not going to lie, I'm still pretty young and I have a lot more heartbreak to go through, but how do I know when the "one" is really the one? I recently just got out of a relationship of almost two years (tonight actually) and something bothered me. There were so many times that we almost split in the beginning up until tonight and all those times I would spend the night crying and begging things to work out. Then we would fight some more, calm down, talk, then have some killer after fight sex, but then a few days after we had made commitments to fix things and work on ourselves it would all just happen again. My overall point it that tonight I just feel... that. I feel nothing. Does that mean that I don't love him?

Now a little back story on our relationship. First things first, we met on a dating app and I totally thought that it was one of those "let's meet and fuck" kind of things but then he (let's call him E for now) told me that he had just gotten out of a long relationship and wasn't looking for anything but a friend, so I was like "okay." Well, after talking a little while through snapchat—I wouldn't give him my phone number—things started to develop and we both decided to meet. When the time came for me and E to meet, I brought my good friend along just to make sure that nothing fishy happened. Well, the meeting went decent and we spend the night hanging out. Flash forward a couple months and the three of us are all sitting in this nice coffee shop and so of course I tell my friend to ask him what he thinks of me while I have to "take a phone call." At first, he said that he wasn't looking for anything serious and that at first bothered me but then flash forward again to another few months and we're dating because he thought about it and decided that he really liked me. Our relationship from there on out was pretty good until another few months had passed and he got kicked out of his parents' place. We did live with each other for almost a year at my mother's house because she was in love with him and truly liked him. That, my friends, is when the fighting began. I won't be going into too much deal but just know there were months of us fighting and falling into the same circle, fight, talk, sex, repeat.

I truly thought that I loved this man because every time I would go back to him and every night I would spend crying over him because I just wanted things to go back to the way they were before. Well, tonight I just don't know. Was this supposed to be my second love? Do I not feel because I've just reached a point of being done? I'm confused and slightly scared about everything that's happening. (Oh, I forgot to mention the part where he also cheated on me several times and was on the dating site we met on again and I still went back to him.) So my big question is, does anyone really know if you're in love and if you do could you let me know? Because I feel like the world has got it out for me. My heart can't handle this shit anymore, and is it all worth it? Is there really a light at the end of this tunnel? And how is it that teenagers that are barely out of high school can say that they're in love?

Now back to the main reason I'm writing this, when a man meets a woman and there's this "connection," how is it that we truly know there is a connection? I know that in my mind I picture someone that does not exist because no human is without flaw and that is something that we all have to accept, but when faced with these flaws, how does one combat them? We as humans always are seeking what we don't have and I feel that could be true in some relationships, I was seeking someone that was compassionate, kind, wanted to spend time with me, and was honest with me. Now I know that those are fairly simple things but for me to want them at all times is difficult for my partner to achieve. In most relationships, partners sometimes set the bars too high and then it almost seems as though your significant other is not trying to reach your standards. Another thing is trust. Can a relationship ever work out if there is no trust? But with the technology that we have today, it makes things so easy for us to sneak around and tear apart that trust, but why is the temptation to do such a thing so great if you "love" your SO? If you feel the need to sneak behind a partner's back, then why not just speak to them about it because there is obviously something there that they aren't giving you. I feel that in today's society, the standards for both men and woman are set too high and that may affect the outcome of our relationships and technology can truly hurt us. If I had known the things I do now, I wouldn't change them because from all of this, I know now that for me to love someone, I need to stop looking for love. I feel that for a long time now I was in love with the idea of being in love rather than actually in love and maybe if I stop hunting it down, it'll find me. But maybe I won't even know it's love because who really does?