Romance vs. Love

Wikipedia defines romance as “an emotional feeling of love for, or a strong attraction towards another person, and the courtship behaviors undertaken by an individual to express those overall feelings and resultant emotions.” Wikipedia says the following about love: “Love encompasses a range of strong and positive emotional and mental states, from the most sublime virtue or good habit, the deepest interpersonal affection and to the simplest pleasure.” I’ve experienced different kinds of love from different relationships.

I wanted to find a romantic love that was long lasting, but I wasn’t able to guarantee whether it would last or not. Love was usually fleeting for me. I felt lost and melancholy about it. I wanted to grab onto romantic love, but that required another person to show me that he wanted to be in my life.

I would meet a couple guys and they would be really nice and then once it seemed like they got what they wanted, they lost interest quickly and were disengaged from conversation.

I felt like I had to hack love. There was no easy way to do it. There was so much different advice coming from everywhere, but I felt like I needed to find something to feel stable and secure in my search for love.

I studied and did self improvement work on myself. I listened to audio about the “how to”s in love and read about how relationships worked from various sources. I continued to do things for myself that made me happy.

After I grew my knowledge on love and how it worked, I could blatantly see that many guys were just not going to be a fit for me. It was uninspiring and made me feel hopeless.

I was able to find romantic love in different gestures. A lot of it was fleeting. Romantic dinners, a firework celebration night, a massage trade, a swim day. I was looking for long lasting love that was not passionate and exciting just at the beginning and then faded out. I was looking for love that had a foundation to it and was stable and solid where there were real values and integrity involved. I did end up finding the love I was looking for once I got clear on what kind of love I needed.

Love is sometimes difficult to understand. I wanted to grasp it and keep it, but that’s not how it works. I see it as an evolution of the state of a relationship. It isn’t a souvenir. It is part of an emotional state. There are many factors that can end love, but the best way to ensure it is long lasting is to create a relationship with someone who can add to your life. Finding someone who values you in the state you are in is the best way to ensure that the love will not fade.