Through my experiences I have learned that learning to love yourself is a very important step before you can fully love another person. By loving yourself, I mean to be completly happy with yourself, comfortable, and continously wanting to grow positively. You can only give what you have, so the more you have the more you can give those you love.
When you love someone, you want to give them as much of you as possible, you want them to grow with you, not only do you meet both your expectations, but they are exceeded by each others want for growth. True love never dies because it is never stops growing, now this doesnt mean that the rate of growth will be constant, because the experiences you share together feed the growth, and the rate of experience is not constant.