Was it Love?

So I found out today that someone I know dumped a girl when she told him she'd just found she is pregnant with an ex-boyfriend's child.

Obviously I don't know the entire situation, it's not my business and I'm staying out of it, but it did get me thinking in an abstract hypothetical way about the situation.  

Arguments in favor of the dumper include:

• She needs to try to get back together with the baby's father and work it out
• This baby isn't his problem, it is the fault of the woman and her ex-boyfriend

These are reasonable arguments.  Whether or not she decides to get back together with her ex-boyfriend, the child is her responsibility and the dumper is at liberty to walk away from the situation.  It truly isn't his problem.

I only have one problem with all of that.  He said he loved her.

Was it true or was it false?

Is it really love if it is that easy to walk away from someone when there is risk of inconvenience?

What if the pregnancy never happened.  The two of them lived together without reproducing for several years, but then the woman developed a benign tumor around her pancreas that secreted loads of insulin and caused her to rapidly gain fifty pounds.   

Would that man, who would have run for the hills at the prospect of raising some other man's child, stick around to care for his sick wife?  

Being sick isn't sexy.  

If a man loves a woman for ten or twenty years and then he leaves her when she gets older because she's no longer attractive to him, was it ever love in the first place?

Some people argue that this is love but that love can only last so long, so we should enjoy it while we have it.  If that is love, I don't know why people are so desperate to find it.

Maybe it is the shadow of love.  A shallow fondness.  I wonder if these people who perpetrate this pretentious form of love even realize that it isn't real; that it isn't deep; that it won't last.  

Some people claim that love doesn't really exist.  We only call it "love" when we live with someone who benefits us and who doesn't pass over our threshold of tolerance.

One person might gladly adopt another man's baby, or accept a few extra pounds, but that might be a deal breaker for someone else.

So what do you think?  Was it love, or not?