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drethelin comments on Open thread, Dec. 22 - Dec. 28, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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It's not going through the motions, you're just placing too much of an emphasis on love, and probably love at first sight. When people meet someone who is attractive, they have certain emotions toward them. When they start to interact, they get more and more information about well they get along, the kind of things the other person enjoys etc. This is a fun process if you're attracted to someone, and you can get more and more interested in them. This isn't "Going through the motions" but neither is it love at first sight. It's development of relatively minor feelings into a long-term, very emotional commitment, which we generally refer to as love. The reason romantic love is often bidirectional is because it's not random: Its the outcome of a process of mutual attraction and interaction.
TLDR: Love is not assigned by cosmic die roll, but an emotional outcome of human behaviors towards those around them.
This applies equally to getting to know someone in a non-romantic context, and in fact fairly well describes my excitement at meeting someone who I think might be a potential friend. Why is it sometimes feelings of love instead of friendship?
(Note that this is in the context of not really understanding the difference between a friend-relationship and a romantic-relationship.)
Could be just context and interpretation, which do make the psychological reality of the situation different.
I don't think there's a good answer to that apart from some mishmash of happenstance, pheromones, social context, and neurological variation.