What's the big deal about love, anyway? Well, the whole concept of love is on everyone's mind, whether they like it or not. Human beings are predisposed to the idea of finding a mate, procreating, and building a long-lasting relationship to enhance possibilities of continued procreation. That's really base level of things. But love is much more than that. It's the reason the world is the way it is today. People kill for love, they die for it, they do all kinds of crazy and ridiculous things to keep people loving them.

So what happens when you DON'T have love in your life?

People become depressed, withdrawn from the world, withdrawn from life in general. It's a sad existence. Would you want to be there, probably not. Is there anything to be done about it? Sure. . .FIND ANOTHER LOVE!

Ok, everything I've said before is sarcastic, although it has some level of truth to it. For me, I've only truly been in love, deeply madly in love, three times in my life. Some people have only been in love once, I have had the fortune of being in love that many times. You know what makes the difference? When that love leaves your life, you feel lost for a while, but when you come back to living in reality, you realize just how important that person was for you becoming the person you are, and you never, and I mean NEVER, forget them.

I'm not afraid to say that my first love, Paul, was a great guy. Fun loving, not really too romantic, but he had his moments. However, there were a great many things I overlooked when it came to him, HENCE, the term "love is blind". The blindness cleared when I realized how he wanted to control me, make me dress in certain ways, have me see him more and more (I'll explain my stance on seeing people shortly). . . it was constricting. There were other circumstances that pushed me toward leaving him. In the end, it was I that did the leaving. It was the saddest day I can remember, also the most angry. We said so many things, horrible things to each other, HENCE, the other term "there's a thin line between love and hate".

But in the end, even now, 5 years after everything was said and done, I have to sit back and thank him for all the stuff he showed me. He was the one that pushed me to learn Japanese, he was the one that helped me get my first job, he introduced me to a world of intimate pleasures. . . Now that I'm older and more experienced, I can say that I do have some idea of what I want when it comes to love.

1. Love is not supposed to hurt you, and if it does, then you're not in love. PLAIN AND SIMPLE.
2. People that love you should respect your space and not try to control your every move and take up all of your time. You should ALWAYS have a life outside of your boyfriend or girlfriend (or for you married folk, husbands and wives).
3. Love has nothing to do with how many gifts you get, or how much money you lend. It's all about the head and the heart. Presents, in my opinion, should be something genuine and original, not something that you can get for any old person, like flowers and candy for Valentine's Day or something. BE ORIGINAL!
4. Sex should not blind out love. Granted sex is good and everything (see my section on sex . .), but if you love someone, it should be done keeping that in mind always. It shouldn't turn from "making love" into just plain old "fucking".

I'll truthfully say I hate love. If I could simply be with someone of the opposite sex in terms of companionship only, sleep with them for terms of procreation and personal pleasure, and have a father-figure to raise my children, I would live an excellent existence. But things are not like that because we all want to love, whether we like it or not.

Still, if you don't have someone to love in your life, you're VERY lucky. You learn how to deal with life on your own, never having to depend on anyone. It makes you a very independent person. I was like that up until a year ago. I drew myself away from the whole mess of men and love and crap. It felt good just to be with friends, hang out, have fun, without the pretense of love hanging overhead. As expected, love reared its head, and put together a circumstance even I wasn't prepared for. But that, my friends, is another story.

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