Ah, love

I've been in love two and a half times. Two guys were genuine (who comprise the "two"), and two other guys (who comprise the "half") were not. But I figure that the two non-genuine guys add up to about half. Saying "I love you" to someone is one of the hardest things for me to do, and if I said it to the two latter guys, then it must mean something. Then again, it's amazing how much pressure you feel when a guy says "I love you" to you first, and kind of just gazes at you, waiting for you to reciprocate the phrase. I may have succumbed to pressure.

Then I wonder, what if all this time I had thought I was in love with whomever, and in reality, I had never been in love? I had mistaken long-term, intense "like" for actual "love"? And then I will have wasted my I-love-you's on these undeserving guys. When you ask people who are in love how they knew they were in love, they give you that frustrating response: "You just know." Oh, okay. Thanks for clearing that up.

Or, perhaps I'm building love up to be more than it is. A friend told me that the idea of marrying for love is a modern concept, one that didn't exist until the mid-late twentieth century. Even my mom, who I think is a bit liberal for the average Asian immigrant mom, thinks it's better to marry someone who is good than wait for someone you love. "What is love anyways?" she asked. A bunch of chemicals in our brains that helps propagate the species? A social concept we made up to justify sex?

I'm sure I'll figure it out once I get there, whatever and wherever "there" is. And then hopefully, I'll just know.