I think love is like faith. We can say that we have faith, but if we have no actions, we probably don't have faith. If we say we have love and we don't demonstrate that love, we probably don't have love. You will know that the person loves you by what that person does.
When we talk about love for, or with the opposite sex, I think a big part of that is respect. If we are a man we are to treat older women as we would treat our mothers. We are to treat younger woman as if they were our sisters, nieces, or children. When we have love we will behave appropriately with respect. When we are married we will not abuse our marriage partner, and that goes for men and women. Women hurt men sometimes, and men hurt women, and that is not love. Some hurt their marriage partner because they want to be the controlling one. Others hurt their marriage partner because they are jealous, and many have both problems. Abuse is not love. Lust is not love. The abuse can be physical in that one of the marriage partners break the other person's bones, blacks their eyes to the point that their eyes nearly swell shut, or damages their joints in their conflicts and struggles. The abuse can be mental also in which one marriage partner intimidates the other. They can threaten, screem at them, or black mail them in one way or another. Any time one partner puts fear in the other partner that is abuse and not love. Some people start this behavior even before they are married, and they get married and the abuse continues and escalates. Each time the marriage partner is beaten, those beatings become worse. Often times the one who is beaten has to apologize, and admit they are wrong, even though they are not. One marriage partner tries so hard to make the marriage work that they are willing to stay even after getting beaten almost to death. Some leave after such behavior, then they return and get more beatings. Sometimes with the beatings there are verbal thrats to kill as well, and every once in a while people in those kinds of relationships do kill each other.
Love is showing kindness and treating each other as God would want us to treat each other. Ephesians 4:31; "Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: 32: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you."