The Beatles once said, "All you need is love." The seemingly infinite other love songs out there preach a similar message. We live in a culture that glorifies "love," this concept of feeling like you need someone. Love is often inexplicable and heart-warming, and it makes you feel complete. Because of these attributes, all people seek love in their own way. Whether you find love in a person, a deity, animals, food, any combination of these, or anything else, you are in love. But I'm here to wake you up, people. Love sucks. Why? I'll tell you why.
Before we begin, I need to do a little clarifying. While I listed several things that you can love and find love in, I will be referring specifically to the romantic, lovey-dovey kind of love for the remainder of this article unless otherwise specified.
Love is an irrational thing. Whether you believe it to be divine intervention or chemical reactions, you have no explicit control over who you love. Sometimes we fall in love with Prince Charming, and that's nice. Then, we wake up one day and realize that Prince Charming is a pig. Unfortunately, we still love him because that's out of our control. You can't help but love someone, even if you don't like them at all. See where I'm getting at with the whole "love sucks" bit?
If you deal with anything like anxiety or depression you probably know that love is a HUGE trigger for such things. "Oh my gosh, I love him!" *has panic attack.* "Oh my gosh... I don't think I love him..." *has another panic attack.* Trying to grapple with your affections, reciprocated or not, is extremely difficult when dragging the ball and chain of mental illness, not to mention your mental illness may be seen as a deterrent to those you love.
Also, get ready to sip your wine passive-aggressively, because it's time for a side rant. Half of what society calls "love" these days is not even love. In a lot of cases, people use "love" where they should be using "infatuation." You don't "love" someone you've known for only a few days, you're "infatuated" with them. Love cannot truly develop at the tip of a hat. The more we use "love" casually, the more it delegitimizes the real thing. This rant is over. *sips wine.*
Back to the subject, I have one last reason why love sucks: IT'S TERRIFYING. Let's think about this. If I am in love, then a large chunk of my happiness and well-being teeters dangerously in the balance of my relationship with this other person (that I didn't choose, see paragraph three). In other words, whether or not I'm happy lies largely outside of my control. This other person just randomly gets half of my heart and, with it, half of my health. The concept of losing control over my own happiness to some other person that I may not even like is horrifying.
Who came up with this concept of love and decided it was a good idea? I want their head on my desk. In the meantime, I hope you're lucky enough to fall in love with a decent human being.
