A lot of people have a fantastical and immature idea about what love is. It's not a warm feeling in your heart...it's not lust, or obsession, or pining. Love is respect and respect is a choice. If someone is not deserving of that respect because they cheated, abandoned, abuse, don't care about you etc then it's just self flagellation to say you "love" them. You don't love them...you love a fantasy ideal that isn't real and it's easier to pretend you can't help it or it's some magical power than to face the painful reality. Someone very important to me ctb because of "unrequited love" and it infuriates me that this person, who didn't care about them at all, was able to take so much from them because of this ridiculous and made up idea that "I cannot live without this person" (who wasn't even actually the person they fantasized they were) wasn't seen as it's reality: "I am so hurt from the rejection that I am turning it inward" by it's victim. It's a very human thing...people do it all the time...but it's no less a choice and the excuses are no less excuses. It's how victims stay with abusers...it's how people fall for scams...it's how so many of us suffer because we want to be loved and need to believe it's some supernatural force to justify the pain not having it causes us.