What is Love?

What is love? What is it REALLY? 
When you meet a special person and you 'fall' in love with them, or maybe you become friends and eventually grow to love them, what kind of love do you have?
Is it a self-serving kind of love, where you feel a strong tie and commitment to them because they flatter you with compliments and shower you with gifts? Does that love diminish and fade if the compliments cease and the gifts no longer arrive?
Is it a selfish love where you feel strongly for the person because of how they make YOU feel, what they do for YOU, how they make YOU look to others? Does this love die when you no longer feel satisfied in the relationship, when you no longer feel the other person is doing enough for you and for whatever reason the other person no longer causes you to look good in front of others?
Are these examples of REAL love?
(I'm not talking about abusive situations where one person causes danger to another person and the only means of safety is to flee the situation. So let's not even go there because that's a completely different topic.)
I'm talking about two people who claim to love each other, who commit to each other, create a home, have children, make a life and then...the love is replaced by some real or imagined hurt, then anger, followed by resentment, followed by hatred.
So my question is...Was it ever really love in the first place? Was it a love grounded in faith, selflessness and sacrificial giving of one's self to another simply because you truly loved them, and by truly loving the other person, you put their needs and their happiness ahead of your own because you loved them so much their happiness was more important to you than your own? 

I Corinthians 13:
1. If I can speak in the tongues of men and even of angels, but have not love (that reasoning, intentional, spiritual devotion such as is inspired by God's love for and in us), I am only a noisy gong or clanging cymbal.
2. And if I have prophetic powers (the gift of interpreting the devine will and purpose), and understand all knowledge, and if I have (sufficient) faith so that I can remove mountains, but have not love (God's love in me) I am nothing (a useless nobody).
3. Even if I dole out all that I have (to the poor in providing) food, and if I surrender my body to be burned or in order that I may glory, but have not love (God's love in me), I gain nothing.
4. Love endures long and is patient and kind; love never is envious nor boils over in jealousy, is not boastful or vainglorious, does not display itself haughtily.
5. It is not conceited (arrogant and inflated with pride); it is not rude (unmannerly) and does not act unbecomingly. Love (God's love in us) does not insist on it's own rights or it's own way, for it is not self-seeking; it is not touchy or fretful or resentful; it takes no account of the evil done to it (it pays no attention to a suffered wrong).
6. It does not rejoice at injustice and unrighteousness, but rejoices when right and truth prevail.
7. Love bears up under anything and everything that comes, is ever ready to believe the best of every person, it's hopes are fadeless under all circumstances, and it endures everything (without weakening).
8. Love never fails (never fades out or becomes obsolete or comes to an end)...{Prophecy will be fulfilled and pass away; tongues will be destroyed and cease; knowledge will pass away}...
13. And so faith, hope, love abide....But the greatest of these is LOVE.
[Amplified Bible]

THIS is LOVE! THIS is REAL love! Anything else is lust, narcissism, obsession or manipulation!