This may sound overdramatic, but I think we broke love. Conditioned by generations of fairy tales, movies, sappy poems, pop songs and romance novels, modernity seems to have concocted itself a notion of love that is unsustainable and self-destructive.
Ask a random person on the street, and they will more than likely describe love as something someone feels or encounters, an outside force that grabs hold of them, regardless of whether they actively choose it. While it may be compelling aesthetically, this approach to love is severely problematic when lived out in reality. 
I believe an alternative philosophy might very well provide a more reasonable mindset for thinking about love. My proposition boils down to this: love is something you choose, not something you feel.  
Frankly, today’s prevailing expectations for what love should be bear an embarrassing resemblance to Disney princess narratives. By this, I mean there seems to be a persistence in equating “love” with things like “attraction” and “happiness.” Attraction and happiness are obviously good things, but they are also capricious and fleeting.
Think of the impossible standard this sets for us when building our lives around long-term relationships with people, romantic or otherwise. Of course, nobody claims to be in a perfect relationship, but that’s exactly my point. If love is simply a state of joy or affection, then a perfectly loving relationship is not a human one.
I can’t help thinking about the shame and anxiety these ideas have produced in people when their relationships inevitably fall short of a lasting bliss. St. Thomas Aquinas, a thirteenth-century philosopher and theologian, proposes a much more sensible take on love. For Aquinas, love means to “consistently will the good of another.” This perspective places love beyond fleeting feelings and into the realm of action and intent.
Love is something someone chooses and works on over time. In recent years, others in different schools of thought have come to similar conclusions. Rabbi David Wolpe, a prominent Jewish scholar, wrote in Time magazine, “There is a lover and a beloved—you don’t just love, but you love at someone. And real love is not only about the feelings of others; it is not egotism. It is when one person believes in another person and shows it.”
Renowned journalist and blogger, Maria Popova quoted feminist philosopher Judith Butler, holding similar convictions. Butler stated, “Love is not a state, a feeling, a disposition, but an exchange, uneven, fraught with history, with ghosts, with longings that are more or less legible to those who try to see one another with their own faulty vision.”   
I don’t mean to sterilize love in seeing it as distinct from emotions. Of course, love can trigger emotions; what’s important is that love is not those emotions in themselves. When we see love as something we choose for the sake of someone else, we’re less distraught when a relationship takes a less idyllic turn. Love can cause joy, pain and frustration while still being love. Love rooted in will is about affirming life and finding meaning, not emotional gratification.
Although I can understand how the fine-tuning of abstract definitions might seem detached from our daily lives, how our culture comes to define fundamental concepts, like love, is instrumental in shaping who we are and what we value as individuals. In many ways, love, willing the good of the other, is the foundation upon which all societies rest. If a foundation is unstable, it’s only a matter of time before everything else comes crashing down.  
Evan Leonhard is a 19-year-old English and Philosophy major from New Orleans, Louisiana.