What is love?

(...baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me no more...)

I've only ever been in one relationship; my wife and I got together when I was 16 and she was 14, and we've been together ever since. We've had our share of ups and downs, but we've never really even had a serious quarrel. Honestly, we're disgustingly happy.

Maybe that's why I've had quite a few people seek me out for relationship advice. Well, I haven't done any research or anything, but I've got a very simple Theory of Love(tm) that is composed of two parts, which I will be sharing in this post. For ease of discourse, my pronouns assume that I'm talking to a guy who's possibly in love with a girl.

Here's Part One of my Theory of Love: "When you love someone, making her happy makes you happy."

Read that sentence again. It is VERY different from "You're happy when you're with her." The key is that when you're in love, your happiness is tied to her happiness, not her looks or her actions or whatever. There is nothing wrong with enjoying someone's company, but if you love her, you'd enjoy doing things to please her, because seeing her happy makes you happy. Naturally, seeing her sad makes you sad. If you enjoy going out with her to a party, that's fine. But if she wants to leave because she's got a bad headache and you'd rather stay than send her safely home, maybe it's time to re-evaluate the relationship.

Here's Part Two of my Theory of Love, which is just as important as Part One: "The relationship only works if she feels the same way."

Duh, right? Well, it's amazing how many people forget this part. I see many budding relationships where both parties are happy: he's happy because she's happy, but she's happy because he's doing stuff to make her happy. Unfortunately, she isn't really interested in making him happy, or at least she wouldn't go out of her way to do so. I'm not saying that the girl in this scenario is the villain of the piece. Most likely she is just enjoying herself and not analyzing things too closely.

If both parties feel the same way, then the relationship has every chance of working. Take the example of a guy I know who had a smoking habit of 100 sticks a day. His wife doesn't smoke and hates it when he does, so she wants him to quit. Since he loves his wife, he's willing to try his best to at least cut down; last I checked, he's down to 10 sticks a day. Since his wife loves him, and she knows how difficult it is for him to quit, she encourages him when she can and isn't too hard on him if he needs to puff a stick or two after a stressful day.

See how this works? It's just making mutual compromises because both parties want each other to be happy. And that, to me, is love.