the "love" part is - as always - difficult to define. its a word widely abused by those who abuse in other ways anyway, while in non-abuse circumstances, "love" is kind of a word without clear definition. In some aspects this is very similar to love itself - as love has many ways and facets to it that can vary greatly - okay, but that possibly is only a thought fed by a lack of a more precise language and overall use of way too generic words.
A young child that is abused might not have experienced love in its short lifetime, yet it might use the word it once heared in different context out of just trying to get word meanings - that is learning to speak - or trying to figure out what could stop the abuser from abusing it, while their abusers might personally use the word "love" instead of "abuse" because abusing others - for the abuser - might be the one thing which makes them feel something that most closely matches what others say about how love feels.
For the kid, love then is a wierd word with very contradicting meaning, which in turn would be said to be so by nearly all adults, but mostly for other reasons.
Please try to be more precise when talking about serious love questions about abusive contexts =)
let me now do a step aside to the literally cold part of the world.
One knows snow and ice, but i once read in a documentation that some culture in an icy region has 32 words for different types of ice and snow for their daily use and i assume that this happened due to the need of definition what type of snow to expect 'over there', or maybe "tomorrow" or in discussions where to settle or how to reach a site..
that is having only one word that has to fit-them-all yet beeing so important and prone to be abused(abuse of the word here) it seems to me that the lack of words for defining a bit more precisely if it is
loving like a (non-abusive) mother
loving like a real friend
loving sth like an enthusiast
...
could probably have a slightly bigger role in the overall problem than anticipated in general.
but yes, the brain is programmable, you do it when learning to ride a bicycle. Social programming may work differently, but is also possible. See how many people are trained like apes to always shout how great their country is, how civilized etc they are, yet if you really look it, all the lies just stinc horribly and that so called civilisation is very far away from beeing civilised. yet all the programmed apes prodly shout the greatness does not even exist there, but maybe it exists in their dreams (only)...
but now to answer the question with what i personally think:
while the mind is still developing to actually come into existance, conciousness still is a rare visitor as it comes into play and drifts away again without having a way to make it stay, one has only few things randomly choosen that can be directly remembered and huge parts of time inbetween conscious moments which start with a fast-forward in time while the inbetween is like the memory of a bad dream, blurred, not in order etc, but yet is the actual reality consciousness then stepped into. Stepping in of not yet developed consciousness may also have an incontrollable timing of stepping in-and-out, making decisions very urgend to do before blurrtime starts again and consciousness stepsl out.
While not having consciousness at hand alltime, one can - during conscious times - only act or even think so little until unconscious time of "instinc-only" starts again. Again in nonconcious time contra-abuse actions cannot be performed or even thought of. body screams in pain, making the abuser causing more pain to victim which causes body to scream more until finally passing out. however thinking how to get out is only available in moments when the currently developing consciousness actually steps in again which can be quite short and not so easy to predict when that happens or when it ends again.
In later stages where consciousness - while not fully developed - at least is nearly alltime available -that is until passing out of course- actions can be adjusted to like not(!) crying in pain when waking up from passing out (while still beeing abused though) so to disrupt this specific downward spiral of screaming-is-punished-by-more-abuse.
In later stages when beeing able to observe the little hints of psychological instabilities of the abusers and their "abuse triggers" a "profile" becomes visible -that is when the victim has sort of a years long running statistics about that broken abusers "personality" not because the victim wants to make statistics but because of intentionally forgetting things is just not yet available to the under-stress-developing personality / brain functions of the victim as same as also intentionally remembering things (in general or circumstances related) too is a not yet available brain function. Also some parts of a more developed brain hide horrible experiences from consciousnes while other parts try to reach the memories to not only complete development but also to maybe find solutions to get out of the danger by analyzing memories of what happened when and why, when did it stop and maybe what caused the stop so one can start to handle it somehow.
So it all forms a rather horrible yet "luckily incomplete" statistics done under stressfull fight against oneself then later called maybe hust "experience" or trauma etc.
while the victim should learn to cope and handle and develop its own body or brain functions or even personality, to prepare for life, it is >500% overload-occupied with learning to cope with the junkyard of the abusers "personality" to prevent the small quantum fluctuations in the inbalances of the abusers psycholigical radioactive mess to avoid at least passing out due to abuse. trying to prevent the abuse is then the only available way of trying to survive, which is also instinct driven and surviving is n1 priority of the child, that is if course unless the child develops suicidal thoughts as a result of abuse. If and only if the victim somehow survives this mentally and becomes capable of doing the splits (mind, not sports) it is then eventually able to try to analyse how it could be possible and plan ahead solving the problem by maybe leaving forever or maybe finding other solutions, beeing on a constant lookout for what might bring security instead of learning to live or enjoying life let alone build up his life.
Children don't know what possibilities society in general offers or the risks child"care" offices pose to them (neither the other way around). They only rely on that little they know which is only their own experience and the "experience" of all ancestors combined and inherited in "instincts", which are both unreliable in such cicrumstances: instincts are sort of predictable by adults and often abused by abusers thus bad to rely on in an abusive context when still a child. The own experience is still very little, likely poisoned by abusers and logic (brain instinct?) also needs all relevant variables to make good decisions while the lack of experience causes a lack of knowing what variables would be relevant or do exist at all also again likely beeing poisoned by abusers. Decisions are made out of the visible(!) possibilities which are likely also intentionally reduced overall by abusers for this very reason maybe by cutting the cholds connections to others, telling the child that those neigbours were very evil persons etc.
Some types of abusers intentionally destroy their victims believe in themselves. this makes it very hard or impossible for the victim to get out on his own, sometimes the victims mind may even start to think (what narcisists heavily work on to achieve) that the current abusive situation was the best possible outcome of their life, which then stops the "want" of leaving the abusive context as result of the psycoligical trap the abuser intentionally layed.
Also leaving abusive circumstances always is risky, and one should be thoughtful about risky decisions in general, right? Obviously abusers already are ok with substancially harming the victims body, mind, life and soul. Also they usually fear to face consequences (not sociopath or psychopath they don't fear consequences), some would rather completely destroy the life of their victim than facing the consequences of their actions. Narcisists would probably make the friends of the victim believe the narcisist was the victim and the victim was the offender, deliberately destroying all friendships A sociopath would probalby cause unimaginable damages of any type to the victim not preventing even damage to himself, while a psychopath would maybe kill the victim for any reason including removal of evidences. Considering all of this does not make "leaving" abusive situations an easygoing task but a decision that can possibly and realistically end very horrible. Additionally victims might fear to get similar punishments from others when telling the truth so in fear might not even tell the truth when help would really be at the tip of their nose. Then saying weird things could be such an instinct kicking in and maybe not(!) a thoughtful decision. Saying such things (out of trained fear) that protect the abuser or even add insult to the victim itself (as trained by the abuser that the victim always has to insult and calling itself beeing responsible for all bad things or face even worse punishing) might also affect the victim to start to believe really untrue thing about itself.
Most people struggle to get out if a single devils-circle, but what if a second circle was added?