Looking for Love

Romantic Love is like the proverbial "needle in a haystack" for many people. The harder you look - the less likely you are to find "it". But romantic love is the one thing almost every human wants, even when they say they don't, chances are, inside - they are still yearning for that oh so elusive magic. Love is, in many ways what makes us human.

Without love our species would not survive. Love is what makes us take care of each other, to nurture and protect our children, and to live in family units and societal units without complete murder and mayhem. But the love between two people, romantic love, is the need to not be alone, to have someone who cares for you above all else, who cares if you are happy or sad, another human to share the simplest of life's experiences with.

Love is so hard to define and yet so essential to our existence.

But why does love seem to be more intangible than ever as our measured time on this earth moves along? In 1900 only 5% of the population lived in single person homes according to the U.S. Census. By 1998, this number rose to 26%. In 2004, 43%, or 95.7 million Americans were listed as single. These numbers are only indicative of how many people live alone, which is more acceptable in our present time and yet are possible studies on the condition of love relationships in our present society. If we had a poll to ask how many married or cohabitating people felt loved in their relationships, what would the numbers show?

Many people end up in marriages and relationships they went into looking for love, yet still found it to be evasive. Is romantic love nothing but an ideal, as some people choose to believe, bred in the Courts of Europe in the days of Knights and Chivalry? Or is it that romantic love was not the ideal...but the expectations of love became an ideal?

When looking for love, we don't always realize how our own expectations have been tempered and controlled by the world we live in. Movies, television, romance novels, and magazines - all paint pictures of love for us. These same venues fill our visual senses with pictures of "beautiful" people, humans who appear to be almost perfect in form and design. Young girls start fantasizing about their future love and in their mind he takes the form of a young Adonis in their teen magazine. Boys start envisioning the perfect mate, and their fantasies evolve around the airbrushed, glossy, goddess like depictions of models and actresses that inundate everything from movies and magazines, to billboards.

The idea that love should be connected to "looks" and always be intense, always be up, and have drama wrapped up in every little nuance sneaks into the subconscious where it sits like a little broom brushing away anything that does not fit into this ideal. The concept that love happens between two people who have similar interests and lifestyles that match is a basis on which so many "dating" websites "match" couples together.

Dating services, matchmakers, online dating sites...all have become prominent, viable businesses in our society. People actively participate in these services, even on television for the entire world to see. I was curious - who were these people looking for love and what if anything made them different from others who found love without outside help. I decided to visit a couple online dating sites looking for an answer.

While there were many people who simply had busy lives and many who were emotionally "scarred", there was a common connection I saw amongst the majority. "Looking for someone with the same interests as me" was a constant as was also very specific requirements on looks and ages. Unrealistic, unbending expectations seemed to be a common thread. Fifty year old men who would accept no woman over the age of twenty five, women who wanted men with "six packs", men who stated "must be slender, must be attractive" (counterproductive as many women will worry they don't fit the bill), very exacting specifications on who they may even consider, down to hair color, height, weight, eye color....every little detail. I found myself wondering...are these people trying to buy an object...or looking for love.

Love is not perfect. It does not have a color, a size, a shape, an age, or a specific occupation. It is not predictable or controllable. Love is not a fixed thing, it is mutable. You can buy sex or companionship...but never love. Can romantic love grow out of mutual likes and dislikes and similar dreams and goals? Or from the beauty the eye beholds? Maybe... sometimes... or so many now divorced couples thought and hoped.

The truth is love just happens. It is not about looks, or money, or societal status. It is an indefinable connection between two individuals, often unexplained, seldom planned, and normally fits into no preconceived notions. It can happen anywhere, yes, even on a computer, and at any time. Many say looks are important, but what looks good to one may not look good to another. Chemical attraction can happen, and often, people will shy away from someone they are attracted to out of simple worry about what others might think or because that person does not fit an ideal. Does a young boy turn away from a girl who would love him and who he is attracted to because his friends might say "Ewwww, she has a big butt"? Yes. And years later, he could be one of the millions of lonely people putting his picture on a dating website, still making the same mistake...and stating his desire for a "perfect" woman.

A young girl told me one time she was "gay". She also was very lonely and finding it hard to locate her "perfect match". I told her not to label herself or put herself into a box because love could come from anywhere, at any time, and if she had herself boxed into one way of life, she could miss it. Love does not always make sense and does not always conform to the conditions we have set on ourselves. This same girl ended up in love and married to a young man a year later.

Many of us might never find romantic love. Maybe we overlooked it when it was staring us right in the face because it was not exactly the way love has been portrayed to us. Maybe our paths have simply not yet crossed or we lost our mate somewhere along the way and have not yet found another. But if we label ourselves, or decide we can only "love" certain types of individuals, and limit ourselves with our own ideals....we may never find that togetherness humans crave with another human being.

If you truly want to be loved, be open to possibility. Love flows where it will and you never know when it might knock on the door and what disguise it may be wearing.

Sources:
U.S. Census
Connecting Singles
Match.com
Census Records