On the subject of love and relationships, I don't think I will ever fully understand what it means, or how it is all to work.

How can the subject of love be so complicated? After all, love is a beautiful thing, right?

This is not an intellectual debate. This is a debate of the heart.

Over the years I've been on this Earth, I don't pretend to have all the experience. But I have watched so many people dance around love, and frankly, I hold the position that the idea of love is a joke.

Why won't I call it a joke? Consider this:

We get hung up on romantic movies and fairy tales that feed an illusion we hope will be reality. These narratives often feed the hunger for unmet needs, needs we may not even admit out loud.

Whoever sold the idea of romantic love to my generation sold us so many lies. Don't misunderstand me, I'm not a love cynic. But the version of love that was marketed might not have been accurate, and possibly may still not be. But the fairytale still sells, why? Because it keeps us in longing. At least, if I can't experience it outright, I can keep my soul alive by wishing, hoping, wanting. We need some form of catharsis. At least in that moment you are either satisfied or get a witness to what you hope for. Make sense?

Now let's look at this advice: "Be the person you want to meet." Pastors have preached it. Books have written it: "Be the person you are looking for."

But what if you're the only one following this advice? What if everyone else continues to be anything but their ideal self? Then the only person you'll be meeting is yourself.

If a significant percentage of the world believes they are perfectly perfect, that nothing needs to change, you'd be walking into the world of very perfectly perfect humans where you and your imperfect self become the absolute outlier. Your best can never match their best, and vice versa. We all have to be singing from the same song sheet to be aligned. If not, we are living in delusion. Perhaps, we are deluded?

Now here is another one: Be kind. Be of good character. This is the most interesting one. If you choose kindness, good character, you have to understand there's no guarantee it will attract the love you seek. Understand that is your personal values stance and it's perfectly okay. But it's no guarantee of the love you seek. The irony of this world.

Sadly, all these false expectations create grandiose anticipations that simply do not exist. They don't always appear as simply as we have been made to believe. Life is simply not that clear cut. It isn't just all black and white.

These are the reasons why the self-love industry boomed. The frustration at the illusion led us all to, I'm just going to love me first. And why wouldn't you? When no one is meeting you halfway, of course you will choose you. You should. If not for anything else, for your sanity's sake. I say amen to that.

But, even self-love has its limitations. Not because it's not valid. It has to be valid because it's self preservation.

It has its limitations because somehow no matter how much we try to swim in this ocean of self-love and make it enough, there remains a fundamental human desire for companionship. We still cry out: "This is not enough! I want more!" We still want to belong in or with someone that exists outside of just ourselves. We can ride the wave of self-love for the longest of time but at some point, you just want someone across the table from you that you can share a cup of coffee with. Another, present.

The reality is the more we seek may come or it may not. That's the darnedest thing. How much control do we have over certain things? You can't control another but you have full control over you and what you will or will not welcome into your world. Another darnedest thing being if what you want is not within reach, then it is back to that couch and sipping your hot cup of tea alone. Netflix and chill. It's just me, myself and I. Cheers to me!

In my poetry collection, Love-ish, I wrote:

Let me elaborate: if you will agree with me, perfection in love does not exist. If a person chooses you honestly and journeys through life with you in solidarity, knowing fully well that life may not always be rosy, that curve balls will be thrown at you individually and collectively. That will be love truly. Choosing to stay together without damaging each other. Being committed to each other's best interests, setting egos aside, practising humility daily. Not because you are perfect, but because you are perfectly imperfect. You both see it. You both know it. You both own it. You are both accountable to each other in that.

Now, that version of love would be worth it.

Or is that another illusion wrapped in the same illusions of love but just worded differently?