[Elspode]

For me, the biggest problem is that "love" is not one single, indentifiable quantity. It is very different things for different people. I've got four, actual, real, sincere cases of it in my 48 years, and not a damned one of them has anything in common with the classic ideal of the concept.

As near as I've been able to figure out, love is being able to stand the bad stuff about someone long enough to get any of the good stuff out of the whole arrangement. That's why it takes work. That's why it takes self-sacrifice.

I think it is putting the other person's needs before your own, even if they don't know what they are, or recognize that you're doing it. I think you fall out of love when you get tired of beating your head against a wall, and then you go find someone who will give you what you've been giving everyone else for such a long time.

Ideally, we'd meet someone who would give just as much to us as we do to them. Seems like there's always an imbalance somewhere.