Honestly, it's not something you can describe easily. I thought I've loved previously, in previous relationships. I did to a degree, of course. But not in the current way I understand it.
This is gay so bully me if you want, but when I was reading Viktor Frankl's book "Mans Search For Meaning", I didn't expect to feel impacted in the way I did. I originally felt dread when I read the stories he had written about living in and surviving the Holocaust. The betrayal, the abuse, the struggle to find a reason to keep living. I thought the impact would've came from recognizing and listening to this man's story of horrific abuse. How I could never truly understand what he went though. How through it all, he managed to come out of it alive and how he's going to share with with the readers how he survived in this book.
Although it's true it was horrific, the actual part that shocked me and impacted me the most was his writings about his wife. He had no idea if she was alive or dead, but the thought of her alone motivated him to stay alive. When he reached rock bottom, he didn't cry about losing her - he felt happy thinking about her. Normally when someone is hungry, thinking about food can be frustrating. It makes you feel more hungry and if you're starving to death, the thought alone could make a grown man weep at the thought of having one more good meal before you die. His writings about his wife were not like that, though. It wasn't a desire to beg for his old life back, it was... well, love, in it's purest form.
I think I understand that now. Past me thought he did, and I guess current me thinks I do. So what do I know? It's hard for me to explain it other than I understood what he meant when he wrote it.