KittenKoder, I disagree with you on love being strictly chemical. It may start with attraction or "a feeling" (and often does), but to persist it needs to become something more than that. Real, relational love takes a lot of hard work to maintain, and has less to do with chemicals and more to do with making the decision to actively love that person every moment of every day. Love also exists that is not based on attraction or feelings for the most part, such as familial love and love of mankind. That's why you can be really angry at a parent or sibling and still love them when you come around.
That being said, I do not subscribe to the whole "true love" thing. I think love is a commitment you make, and a process you undertake, to care about someone else more and more. I think people can be more and less compatible, but I don't believe in having one true love.
If it takes a "lot of hard work to maintain," then you are saying it's not something that exists on it's own anyway, that makes it artificial, a construct. Decisions are also chemical processes, well, chemical and electrical processes really. Thus if it is a decision, it's still just a chemical process.
If it is not based on attractions, then what is it based on? If you cannot find a better explanation then the simplest one is the correct one, that makes it based on attractions. Of course, if you remove the attractions for the love that entail mating, then you also remove the mating, and thus it becomes nothing more than an artificial construct again.
Love without mating is not definitive, I know many people who hate one parent, or both, and some who hate their entire genetic families. That means what you are calling love there is in fact a decision, thus it is a chemical and electrical process. I know many parents who also honestly hate one or more of their offspring.
Everything about life is chemical and electrical processes, everything. All emotions are quantifiable as such, and pretty well understood. The things we call "emotions" are really collections of physiological responses to given stimuli, for love it is either attraction or an active choice as the stimuli, the responses included are different depending on the culture and which type you are talking about.
The thing I find funny is that people seem to think adding some mystery to how something works makes it more meaningful, seems we are still stuck on elevating ignorance at this point. But the chemical processes involved in the emotional reactions of a complex organism, such as homo sapiens sapien, is one of the most incredible and fascinating, and very beautiful, things on this planet. Once you see the cascading effects of the chemicals and hormones released by the various cells, the processed by other cells to produce different chemicals and electrical signals ... you gain a special appreciation for emotions and find yourself taking them for granted less.
Consider those with the genetic sequence for physical attractions to others of the same species, the visual, audio, and olfactory signals are processed by the brain. These signals cascade through the neurons, eventually ending at the neurons that cause the release of a series of chemicals that get transported by the blood. Those then trigger other various metabolic and physiological changes resulting in a slightly elevated heart rate, causing an increase in temperature, resulting in a response from the sweat glands and "blushing" of extremities. The neural pathways involved, alone, are a wonderful fractal like maze, visualized by a network of flashing sparkles, as they cascade through the network, each point weighing in on which way the signal should progress, until finally resolving itself into the neurons responsible for responses to stimuli.
