What is love?

How important is romantic love in one's life? Are people who have someone to love them on a deeper level happier? More fulfilled? More confident? Do they live longer?

I started thinking about how I've only dated one person who loved me, and that relationship lasted only one year. I wondered if that brings me down or makes me stronger. I see many people on facebook who are so fully loved by their partner... who receive gifts, who get a hug or kiss every day, who hear the words "I love you" on an incredibly regular basis. And I wonder if, being someone who gets none of those things, I've got to be the type of person with floundering self-assuredness, self-worth and self-confidence. Or does that mean I am rather strong, in a way that allows me to go on while so severely lacking in that little four letter word that makes the world go 'round? 

My family was not the type to say I love you. We still don't. I've never had a problem with that, but it's occurred to me that maybe it's affected me more deeply than I ever thought. Maybe now that I don't have anyone who loves me other than my parents and a couple girl friends, I take it harder than someone who was told he or she was loved regularly. I know that whenever one of my close friends tells me she loves me, I almost feel like crying. 

Something tells me that's not healthy.

That tells me I don't feel like I'm worthy of love. As something that has never come regularly or naturally, will it ever come easy, be it from me to someone else or to me from someone else?

But it also brings up another point. Is there a substitute for romantic love, I wonder? To be loved by someone else, someone who is not a friend, who is not a parent or sibling, is such an important feeling (I imagine). And I imagine that those of us who do not have that, who have had that for only a small fraction of their lives, cannot possibly be as happy and fulfilled as their counterparts. But this is not an easily solvable problem, so then what? You can't go buy love. You can't just decide to be in love and have that person love you. And at the same time, you can't constantly feel bad for yourself. I mean, you can, but that's lame.

So really. Where can unromantically-loved people get a replacement? Is it possible? Can you live a full life, fully happy and fully satisfied, only subsisting off of platonic parental and friend-based love?