What Love Isn't

Falling in love is fun, scary, exhilarating and an event that rarely strikes twice.  It is often mistaken for physiological reactions and chemical processes. Most often it is mistaken for...

1. Sex. Love isn't sex, though love should result in sexual contact. Sex doesn't 'make love' though we call it 'making love' (it can make babies though!). Sex is definitely an intimacy that is often thought to be without its own impact and many try to have it without attachment - then somebody gets hurt. Love is not self-centred pleasure.

2. Romance. 'Tonight will last forever', you hear that line in a lot of songs and it sounds nice. But the night will  always last about 12 hours give or take a few, depending on season and latitude (things get dicey in the places where night is 6 months - that kinda romance could be a health hazard). People get easily carried away with sweet talk, roses, chocolate and a pretty face - anyone can buy those (they're called players). But they are a fairly convincing artifice if one is willing to be fooled.

3. Indulgence. No it's not 'anything he/she wants'...well it is as long as 'what he she/needs is already fulfilled, and even then. Two do become one, but they are still two and losing oneself in a relationship is not a good idea. Why? Cause then where's the person your partner fell in love with?

4. All the right things. Some folks surmise that since they 'tick the boxes': ambitious, attractive, petite, tall, knows 5 languages...whatever, then they should officially be in love with X. We all know that it just doesn't work that way. Now that doesn't mean, 'his little homicidal manic  problem' should be overlooked, but you get the idea. Some people are wrong for us cause we are wrong for them. They become what we hate because we're their partner. Ha! Put them with someone else and voila! Decent human being.  Still, sometimes what rubs us the wrong way can help us to help us react in the right way.

5. Needing each other. Falling in love? Involuntary. Loving, a totally elective surgery. Need implies dependency and dependency implies absence of choice and freedom. More like blackmail than love. Though the idea of needing does come in to play when one realizes that life wouldn't be as lifey without that certain person, the need comes into play after the free choice of mutual commitment.

'To love someone is to see a miracle invisible to others'. That saying is why there are some things that just don't qualify as love. Because they can be shared with any stranger or weirdo. Love is the kinda thing that wants only one object and to be the only object. Now that only qualifies for the 'love relationship' love, but the universal phileo, brotherhood love - well that's another kind of kind.