But in the last few years, I’ve met people who actively practice and play “the game.” People who devote a lot of time to studying behavior so that they can meet and date as many girls as possible. And to all of them, I’ve asked the same question:

“Don’t you just want to be yourself and find a girl who likes you for who you are? Do you really need to practice?”

And the answer is sad, and telling, and a reflection on our superficial society as a whole.

Sure, I’ve heard all the excuses about how annoying Valentine’s Day is for people who aren’t in relationships. I’ve heard the various complaints about over-commercialization, and how it’s just a cheap ploy for greeting card and chocolate vendors to steal our hard earned dollars. But I see both of those issues as the problems of the disgruntled masses, not implicit in the holiday itself.

This is the ol’ guise that we’re all so familiar with: a very young and immature understanding of romantic love, reinforced by idea that we are — apparently by our nature — unwhole and alone, and that the most important goal in life is to discover that one soul-mate in this world who may finally and perfectly complete us.

Make no mistake – society does not want you to love yourself. Society wants you to conform to its rules, to go with the flow and to fulfill the role it has assigned for you. Loving yourself, on the other hand, often requires going against the grain and blazing your own trail, to which society would say, “no bueno” (if society spoke Spanish.)

Her eyes were smoky and painted, cream-and-coffee colored. They gave me a reason to get out of bed. I couldn’t get over them. They haunted me.

I was never expecting to fall in love during my Freshman year of college. I also never expected to be married by the time I was 26, but love had other plans.

I’ve come to realize that we have far too many expectations around love. There are far too many expectations around life in general, but in particular around love.