'Do you like me or love me'?
'I like you with all your faults and I think that is love'.
This was taken from the 2nd book in John Marsden's Tomorrow series, In the Dead of the Night.
It's easy to 'love' someone when you haven't seen their faults yet. People are so quick to say that they are in love, when really, a lot of the time it is lust. Lust doesn't always have to be in reference to sex. To me, the word lust can be used to describe a strong desire for some sort of comfort or satisfaction. Someone can lust the feeling of being loved. Someone can even just lust company.
Sometimes, one can fall in love with the feeling of being lusted/loved/admired. It gives them a false sense of completeness and leads them to returning the feeling to the person regardless of their compatibility.
Have you noticed that for a lot of people, they love someone because that person loved them first?
Like in high school, when a girl finds out that the jerk in her class has a crush on her. She will publicly humiliate him and put him down, but secretly embark on a long 'what if' journey in her mind. Eventually, she'll have a crush on him too and feel embarrassed about it.
Dating for the purpose of getting to know someone just as friends has died out. A pair getting to know each other will be pressured to 'go out' within weeks of starting to talk to each other. This wouldn't be so bad if 'going out' was just a guy and girl getting to know each other and sharing minimal psychical contact. But the thing is, going out isn't really going out. No, these days going out is like a trial marriage. The 14 year old couple will be acting like their married even though they've only known each other for a fortnight.
And it was all because all her friends were be like "Why won't he just ask you out already"?!
So there was a heap of pressure on the guy to 'pop the question'. He finally asks her...
"WOOHOO! They're boyfriend and girlfriend"! all her friends will squeal.
Wait, correction. Replace that 'woohoo' with 'EEEEEEEE!' and you will have a more accurate impression of the squealing teenage girls.
The 'getting to know you process' is ignored and the couple (who only just started talking two weeks ago) are now kissing (and doing so much more behind closed doors) and posting 'I luv you' with lots of kisses and hugs on their Facebook page.
Yuck yuck yuck. High school love is pathetic.
