I think "love" is one of the most useless words in the English language. I'm not saying that the concepts behind the word are useless, or making some bitter manifesto about how lonely the world is. On the contrary, I think English is woefully inadequate to express the many intricate joys one can find in affection.
The value of a word is directly proportional, in my mind, to its ability to accurately convey meaning between the speaker and the listener. In this department, "love" is far too context dependent. You cannot tell a woman (or a man) that you love them without pulling their entire personal history to the fore-front. The word is so laden with individualized emotional baggage that it has no adequate universal sense. Instead of having different words for different types of affection, we burden ourselves with one, imprecise word.
Thus, when I am with someone whom I care about a great deal, I have no clear way to express it. To my mind, that is one of the greatest tragedies of life.
I think you read too much into these things. Love is the perfect word to describe how I feel about Dove dark chocolate.
Yep. That's love.
(kidding of course. sort of.)