Chapter 2 – Love, what it means, and why

Love probably now needs some sort of definition, because many people see it as many different things. To tell you the truth, I really never thought about what love meant to me prior to college, it was just something you said when you cared about someone. That was just the way it was for me.

I always think the best way to start is by being friends with someone, because you get to know who they really are.  If that turns into a relationship, fantastic, and if not at least you made a friend.  It’s important to me to just take time to know someone and find out what they like, what they don’t, and even how they feel about things.  It seems as if society is moving away from this, but it’s still how I strongly feel about relationships.

At the relationship stage, I think you start to depend on the other person.  You want to spend time with them (sometimes just them, other times with friends) and you want things to work.  Working together is the next thing that I find important, because you should want to share how you feel, and what you are like.  Often times, the first couple months of dating are just putting your best self out there, and hiding all your flaws. 

This brings me to my definition of love. You depend on that person, you completely like who they are and don’t want to change them, and  you can tell that person anything.  To depend on that person, it’s basically that they have eyes for you and only you, they do things to help you. (and you should be doing things to help them!)  One thing that scares me is that people claim to like who their partners are, but they try to change them.  That is what’s wrong today, you like 3/4 of a person, but hate 1/4 of them.  It’s also important to be able to tell the person anything about everything, because you both are there for each other.

I think the biggest problem with couples today is the fact that many want to change the other person.  It probably stems from the fact that people have differing opinions on what love is.  Everyone is not raised the same way, and probably the most important thing is finding someone who fits into your definition of love and you fit into theirs.

Continuing on my story, I started hanging out with a girl after my breakup.  We became friends and started dating, and things were going good.  Then the inevitable happened- I went to college and she was still in high school.  College changes so much of who you are and what you are looking for that the relationship did not survive.  I had found someone else…