Ten Things about Love

Feelings, calculations, and transactions

Photo by Jamez Picard on Unsplash

1. Select well, or love will ruin you. There’s no place for love if you’re with the wrong person.

2. Only those who consider their value matched can be in love. Otherwise, one is simply buying time.

3. Young love is pure. Older love has experience. The young love passionately and intensely; older lovers understand practicalities and implications. Know what you’re in for.

4. All love, eventually, ends. Things don’t need to end badly, but they’ll end.

5. Men want what they want; women want what they want. Women shouldn’t complain about what men want, and men shouldn’t complain about what women want. What another wants doesn’t have to make sense to you; they want it regardless. Either you can give it to them, or not.

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6. Every man wants more sex than he can get from one woman, and every woman wants more attention than she can get from one man. A relationship only survives when each thinks the one they have justifies forgoing what they cannot get from the other. No one is ever enough for someone. It’s about whether they’re worth the things we have to quit for them.

7. A man should take his time; a woman should find a man early enough. That’s why love is for those who judge that their value is matched. She chooses him at a time when she can have anyone; he commits even when he can always find a better option by waiting.

8. Before a certain age, a man gets a poorer deal than he’s worth. Past a certain age, a woman cannot find the deal she could get yesterday.

9. By now, one thing is clear: pure love is for teenagers. Past that, love is business and deal-making where everyone tries to secure the best deal subject to their value as determined by the sexual marketplace.

10. Good love hides all the ugly things beneath it. Two are happy, kiss, and hold hands because they’ve overlooked all the transactions underpinning their love.