"People are juss losers and they'll anything if someone cool do it but they won't do it first so I guess they not cool

The more and more I have learned about certain things, the more and more it affects how I feel about certain processes that are so ingrained in our mind about normal society and the normal functions of human beings. For example, three classes I took at the same time out in California directly talked about romantic love. One talked about the fact that romantic love is a relatively new phenomenon in society, another about how all emotions and functions are a result of programmed chemical impulses that you have little to no control over, and a third discussed love as a business transaction involving the reciprocal trading of benefits and costs.

Before the 1800s (or so) people were married in arranged type marriages as part of a social contract in order to raise or lower the social status of the family. Nowadays we think of arranged marriages as weird, though the process in Indian culture still exists and is generally more successful than marriages of "love" on the basis of divorce rates.

Now, think if your parents were allowed to choose your spouse for you, who would you have ended up with? I know my answer. Putting aside your sexual and romantic feelings on the matter ... would it have been a good match intellectually, socially, emotionally, etc.? You may not like it, but they probably would do a good job matching you with someone who would probably be a good friend. Without the concept of "romantic love" this would be perfectly acceptable but we want more than a good friend to be our life partner. With romantic love we are constantly on the search for just that little bit more.

Emotions, including love, are controlled like everything else in our lives. Chemicals in our brain are triggered by every sensation in our lives. It makes you question free will since your brain is basically programmed to produce certain actions based on stimuli and past experiences. It learns quickly what it likes and what it doesn't and the chemicals eventually decide what the reaction will be to those stimuli. So love? Certain things make you happy, others not so much. Get enough of the happy and you are in love. It is obviously more complicated than that ... but it is the gist.

I still don't know how I feel about this. I know 99% of people enter into marriage because they are in love and they plan on never getting divorced. Yet half of them fail. How true of an emotion can romantic love be if it fails on this large of a scale consistantly. Obviously the hope is you meet a person and you just know they are the one for you. How good of a sensation is that for the long-term? What have you based this love on? Seeing someone and having a conversation (maybe)?

My ultimate theory on this is that romantic love exists but not in the manner we try to go about it as a culture. Too often we rush into a relationship. We meet someone and are dating them within weeks or months. Even if things are great three years later and you are about to get married, there is a chance you never got to know each other because that takes extra effort. You may have kept feelings or likes and dislikes hidden to accomodate your lover or in fear of losing them. You get married, it seems more sure you will stay together. You start to let the real you show and to the other person you have changed and it may change how they feel. Add in the effects of daily stresses or big stresses and these relationships seem a lot shakier.

It is the rare, but usually the strongest, relationships of people I know that begin as platonic friendships. As the people grew as friends they began to get to know each other better and better and more intimately. Eventually they realized they had found someone special and begin dating. They know each other already and if dating works for them, they have a strong relationship. Sometimes they don't work romantically, but they can generally stay friends as long as it didn't work both ways. One way .. yikes.

I thought I was in love once in high school. Looking back I would say it was just a strong friendship with an attraction attached. When I compare that to the strongest feelings I have for people I relate them to the feelings I have regarding close friends. I love them no doubt. I love family, but you don't choose family. You choose your friends and the love you have for them can be more intense than with family, because the familial bond is one of safety and unconditional love. So was I in "love"? I don't know. I know I loved them like I love any close friend. Is that all there is to love? Take a friendly love and add attraction? Or is there more to this romantic love? I tend to think that is what it is... you love them because of your friendship with them, the attraction adds romance, and when you get old and the attractions on both sides have wrinkled and aged that baseline love is still there. Though there are people I love as friends, who I admit are attractive, that I know I could not marry. So what gives?

So what am I trying to say about love? Maybe it doesn't really exist as our culture tries to force it down our throats. If I had the choice between meeting someone, falling head over heels in minutes, and rushing off to get married happily after ... I would pass. I would much rather have the friend for a long time, someone I know well and who knows me well, who for a variety of reasons I never dated until one day we both realize we get along way to well to not try out dating and it works and we get married. It isn't a Hollywood romance, but why are they the judges on romance in our society? They call it a success if their marriages last half a decade.

Next up on the questioning things it seems everyone in life wants to do but I have no idea: Children.