Love doesn't mean a thing.

The two types of love described have their own respective origins.

The sentimental variety as described in the vindication of love is characterized by sentimental tradition based on rationalistic views that the reformist bourgeoisie exhibited. It was as if sentimental love was an act everyone played, so they would be socially accepted.

Then you have the Romantic Love, which is based on, "fantasies of the Other that arose from needs within the self." From there Leach, describes it as being cloaked the object of desire in a magical and bejeweled aura. This alludes to a type of spirituality that is synonymous with "romantic love."  He builds a bridge between them saying unlike rational, sentimental love, romantic love required conflict, tension, resistance, or, broadly speaking, "evil." This is like saying it's the atheist type of love. It runs on the total chaos of the world and is consequently put into the fabricated "bejeweled aura." This directly contrasts the social order implied with sentimental love.

To me, it seems, that love is just another thing that people learn, like any type of culture. People certainly have natural reactions to one another, but how those actions are perceived is based on contextualized experience. It is no wonder that Tilton is a romantic wreck that moves to Paris (where every romantic goes to 'escape'), because his life has been contextualized by chaotic and irrational grasps on love which has taken a psychological toll. Whereas sentimental love is just based on social order and keeping within that.