What is Love? How and why can it survive beyond all limits?

How is that love can be such a torment? Does anyone really know what love is? I do, I have had and I have felt it for what seems like forever. I met a boy when I was just a girl. We had something, something special that has never died not in twenty years. But, how can you love someone and not know it or love someone and choose to stay away. Life circumstances have always worked against us and this time is no different. I have realized that I have always love this boy now a man but still a boy for more than half my life. I have suffered in relationships that have nearly torn me to pieces and kept my heart always one beat away from the people I dated. I have tried over the years but have not been successful at loving anyone else, not the way that I love this man. You think about soulmates and relationships and they are so complictaed. Mine has always been complicated and timing just never seemed to be with us, in fact it seemed to be working against us. Why? I ask this of myself. Why do I love this man so? Why does my heart yearn for no one the way it yearns for him? And, Why after all the pain do I always go back? I offer something that most people would cherish and I myself can not seem to comprehend that is  love, true and without the tanglements of others or tricks and games. I offer him my love unconditional. It's true, there are some people that are able to give of themselves unconditionally and I have found the one person that both enlights my heart and tears my world to shreds. I wonder, what did I do to deserve the treatment that I have got all these years. It hasn't been cruel, it has been difficult. Why, you might ask. Because the love I have is reflected within this person to me and for me but, we never seem to get it quite right. I don't understand it all. I have finally reached a point that I feel numb. That life has given me so much sorrow that I am beginning to feel nothing. Nothing, I say that now but I know that it will only take one phone call and he and I will be sitting next to each other uncertain of whether to slide ourselves closer to each other and not let go or sit apart and hope that the distance that we keep between us will keep us from getting hurt. Ours has always been a strange relationship and if I told you that prior to this past October we had only ever kissed once you would probably be thinking What! Yes, it is true, I have always loved the smae man and we only ever kissed once prior to last October. It sounds odd I know but we always shared a closeness that most people would died for. I know him and his heart so well and over the years I have stood back and let him live his life the way he felt that he needed to. I was his rock, his "Voice of Reasons" and the one girl, woman that he always truly loved. Love is a strange thing though and can take you down roads that you may not want to travel, especially when you don't want or can't let yourself realise that you love someone. Yeah, I know sounds weird but although I am now aware of the extent of the love I have always kept for him in my heart, I hid it even from myself for fear. Fear maybe of letting myself love so completely and fear that this man could tear my soul to pieces. We have always been dancing with one and other. But, fear of our love has kept us distant. Lately we have been struggling to be together and yet we keep running away. I can't tell you why but we will always run back to each other as if in each other we are home and safe and yet we fear. He fears and I feel a great sorrow for his uncertainity. Now that uncertainity is slowly breaking us both and yet I know that we will keep this terrible dance going. How do I make it stop? I can't I have tried. He can't he always runs back and even in our most angry moments we are unable to debase each other. I wish sometimes that I had never met this man and yet I know that my life would have a hollow spot where he exists within me. I know that I may have loved but never like I love him. I just want to understand what it is that keeps us from letting go because slowly we are drowning in this love, drowning from fear but survive because of the purity of the feelings that we both share. It seems though that when I offer myself he is never ready and when he offers himself I am never ready. Will we ever be ready together? Is there anybody out there that can understand?