What's love got to do with it?

Ninety nine point nine percent of the time not a damn thing. No, I'm  not being bitter. I'm ridiculously happily married. No, I'm not being sarcastic, I'm not being grumpy, I'm stating a fact. When it comes to life 99.9% of the time, love has no bearing on an individual's actions. Why? Well let me tell you.

First off, most people don't understand, care to understand, try to understand, or even remotely think about love. They get the chemical high and call it good. Never mind the fact there are a million and four chemical reactions that happen in your body the second you see someone. A million and four more if you're attracted to the someone you see. Therein lies the rub. See, those more often than love, are the other chemical processes and the reasons behind those that are the cause for action. Usually it is a far more self serving reason.

The biggest reason for action, or inaction as the case may be (and most often IS!) when it comes to relationships is lack of self esteem. If you feel that you aren't good enough on your own to have some worth, you can totally borrow the worth of this awesome guy/girl/thingy here! Example: "Dude, he treats you like shit! Leave him!" "I can't! I love him!" Which actually translates to, "I can't, I'm not worth anything if he isn't willing to stick around and prove I'm worth something by staying with my worthless ass!" Not that they will ever say that to you or themselves. The cure for this? Get some self esteem. Stop trying to prove your worth through someone else, and figure out why you're awesome on your own. As a matter of fact, stay the fuck away from any relationship that isn't friendship until you've figured out that you're awesome. Everyone is, or more has the potential for being awesome. Everyone. Find it, live it, love it, take responsibility for creating and maintaining your own awesome, and you can finally find that elusive love creature. Until you have your own inner awesome, what you have isn't love. It's co-dependance. You can't give to someone else what you don't yourself have. Period. That's a damn fact. Don't believe me? Let me take a moment and prove it. Love is selfless. We can all agree on that point? Relationships are *NOT*. They are give and take, they are moments of awesome punctuated by moments of dick move. Love, however? Selfless. And because it is selfless it allows all parties to move past the moments of dick move. This is an over simplification, but since I'm not trying to write a book on the topic of why Romeo and Juliette were complete morons and have ruined society as we know it, I have to keep it simple. Back to the topic and ignoring my mostly unnecessary trashing of the biggest piece of crap to ever hit the big screen... Where were we? Oh, yes. I was proving the you have to love yourself before you can love anything else point. So, love is selfless. In order to give something to someone else that comes from a base of not you, you have to be able to be in a place that isn't about you. The interesting thing about fear is that at the end of the day it's ALL ABOUT YOU. Afraid to be alone? Totally all about you. Afraid to look at yourself in the mirror? Totally about you. Ashamed of yourself? Totally about you. Not good enough? Hey! Totally about you! Now, this isn't to say that everyone who truly loves is a completely adjusted, happy all the time, never insecure, bouncy, peppy, perfect Dudly Doright. It means that all these imperfect people have, at their core, a foundation of love for themselves.

All I'm saying is that being honest in a relationship means that you have to be honest without yourself first. Otherwise you'll always be unhappy. You'll always be missing out, and you'll always know it deep down. Tend to yourself before you jump headfirst  into "love". Quit giving love a bad rap, it's got enough troubles of it's own.

End of part one. Next topic? Differentiating between love and lust.