I wouldn&#x27;t be so quick to label and put experiences into boxes. Your experience and your culture and your understanding of love can be so different than another person&#x27;s that labels mostly just get in the way.<p>To look at it in information-theoretic terms, you need a higher-bandwidth channel to communicate about &quot;core&quot; experiences like love. Labels condense information by encoding culture and definition into them. So it&#x27;s tempting to reach for them. But if the person you&#x27;re communicating with doesn&#x27;t share the same culture and definition, then you wind up mis-communicating until you can work out the source of the disconnect.<p>Labels are great for talking about computer software systems. Not so much for love.<p>For me, and to use your terms, I can&#x27;t feel romantic love for someone without also having desire for them. I can care deeply for them, want the best for them whether it&#x27;s with or without me, but in order for me to have a loving relationship with someone, desire has to be a constant undercurrent. I cannot spend copious amounts of time with a person otherwise, I start to retreat back into myself. Desire is that thing that draws me out and allows others in, it&#x27;s absolutely essential.<p>So, while your love &#x2F; desire divide may work well enough for your purposes, it won&#x27;t necessarily for other people. You can try to adapt the framework to accommodate them, but do this too many times and you&#x27;re left with a mess.<p>It&#x27;s best to just share your own experiences with as plain of language as you can and let other people come up with their own abstractions.