What is love?

If you’re not singing right now, I don’t know if we can be friends.

But seriously, this is something I’ve been thinking on over recent months. What actually is love?

I’m what you could call a hopeless romantic. I love a good romantic movie, cheesy and predictable or not, I just love a happy ending. I’m sure a psychologist would love to rip into that one, but I can do it myself. The lack of really positive romantic relationships to look up (combined with Disney movies) clearly gave me some need to reach for something that’s basically, let’s be honest, kind of unattainable. There is no perfect formula when it comes to love and relationships. Which brings me back to… what is love?

There’s a quote from a movie (yes a cheesy RomCom) that says, “Love you get over in two months, big love you get over in two years, and great love, well great love... changes your life.” I used to think I would have this epic love story that I could tell my grandchildren about. So I guess “great love” is what I was always hoping for. That’s what movies and bad teen soaps always show us, right? The big gesture and grand romantic declaration of love, they run into each others arms and kiss as the credits roll. That’s what we know. That’s what’s been shown to us in countless movies since they started making movies (and, let’s be real, in plays before movies existed). But what does it actually mean? Does it mean that if you don’t have that, that somehow your life is empty or unfulfilled?

I’ve been leaning on the notion recently that love comes in so many forms that not having romantic love doesn’t make you any less worthy of being loved. Sure, romantic love is nice and it’s great to have someone hold and comfort you in the way only a romantic partner can, but I don’t feel like my life is lacking because I don’t have that branch of the love tree. I have friends who I love so much that I can’t imagine my life without them. People who I would quite literally die for. I love my cats more than life itself. I’ve been saying that Mojo is the love of my life, but clearly that’s now split between him and Magnus because this little ball of fluff as stolen my heart.

I mean, just look at that face!

I can wax on for hours about the different kinds of love and spout all kinds of wisdom about how loving yourself is just as important, but I’ll be honest… at the end of the day it would be nice to think that I still have some great love story that’s yet to be told. Maybe it’s all a fantasy. Maybe part of me just wishes to live in a romantic comedy where on some random day someone will come along and declare their love for me. Maybe I just need to lay off the romantic movies for a bit and try a different genre, but I like the predictability. I like the happy endings. In a world that, let’s be honest, isn’t all that great right now, why is it so bad to want a happy ending? Real or imaginary, sometimes it’s nice to think that life can work out that way.

So tell me, if you could choose your happy ending… what would it be?

- Danielle