"Fall in love,"  is the phrase.  When I first experienced this kind of love, I did actually have a sensation of falling.  Sinking into a soft featherbed.  Relaxing.  Once I had let myself fall in love with my beloved, it was the easiest thing in the world.  It felt very natural!

Before I came to the decision that  I could let myself be in love with my beloved, however, I experienced some unease.  Because I was not fully committed.  To fall in love is to give one’s heart away.  Could I trust my beloved with it?  Would I be hurt?  I had an approach/avoidance problem. 

It took time, but my beloved made me fall in love, or rather, I let my beloved make me fall in love.  And, I finally felt able to freely give my heart.  With Love: The Decision, the lover has the potential for love in his or her heart, which can only truly be born with a decision to let oneself love.  It is not like Passionate Love, with which one has no choice but to love.  Decision Love exists because the lover lets it. 

As Jean Anouilh said: 
"Love is, above all, the gift of oneself."

Since reasons for being in love can be cited, Decision- Love is a conditional variety.  We give our hearts away, usually on the condition that the beloved is deemed worthy of it.  This way, the love has been earned.  The beloved "made the cut."  It is a "reward" for worthy attributes or behaviors. 

So, on the other hand, if the beloved starts behaving unworthily-- in the lover’s mind-- he or she may choose to withdraw the love.  Decide to not let him/herself love any longer.  The love is allowed to exist by the discretion of the lover.  The lover can either actively decide to stop, or passively, by allowing it to die through abuse or neglect.  He or she has control, so he or she must sustain the love, rather than be sustained by it.  Therefore, the lover must put conscious effort into keeping the love alive.  It does not sustain itself. 

Since Decision- Love is a conditional variety,  many may not consider it real love.  It is real, it just can be based on rational (relatively speaking) conditions.  People fall (read: jump first, then they fall) in love, and fall out of love, all the time.  In between, they do actually love their beloved.  The beloved has their heart, there is just a string attached...  It's not an eternal, divine type of love, which never ends no matter what.  So, it's temporary.  Therefore, Decision Love is a human-level love.  It can and does pass away, just like we do.  But, it's still love. 

I have heard the phrase, "Love is not an emotion, it's a decision."  If you can decide to love, you can decide to not love.  This human love is based in our minds and hearts, not our spirits.  So, it is perfectly reasonable that our minds would enter the equasion, in deciding to love someone.  And the emotions of our hearts playing a role in this kind of love is also perfectly reasonable. 

Therefore, you cannot separate the Decision from the rationality of our minds and the emotions of our hearts.  It is an emotion and it is a decision; and it is a (more or less) rational- and- emotional decision, which the logic of our minds and the feelings of our hearts help us make. 

It is possible that we can choose to love, regardless of the worthiness of the beloved.  We then would choose to love someone, in spite of any worthiness or lack thereof, on the beloved's part.   We are able to choose to love regardless of worthiness, and can, at any time, choose to cease loving.  For any reason, or no reason at all. 

Love: The Decision is defined as a love that can be freely given to another at the discretion of the lover.