We first experience love when we bond with our mothers during infancy. Yes, I recognize that some people will be able to say that they did not have or did not bond with their mothers. It’s not relevant.

This first experience with love is always the same for everyone because we all come into the world with completely blank minds. We know nothing except that we need to eat and cannot feed ourselves. As we are fed and cared for by the only other person we know, we feel deeply and unconditionally for that person, to a degree so profound that for a time it defines us as a human being.

In fact, at this point it is all we know of being human.

We love our caregiver as we drink the milk they provide. We do this every waking moment until we develop the ability to do anything else.

As we grow and learn, our world expands with each new ability. We acquire our higher cognitive skills and likewise begin to develop and a year or two later we finally learn to say the word “love.”

As an adult we crave this level of connection so deeply that we can do little else but pursue or attempt to somehow replace it, often with something rather than someone. Unfortunately, most people are completely unaware of this because they don’t consciously remember being an infant or being human. So as they build their expectations of, and labels for, the various elements of their lives it is easy to get confused about what love is. The pop culture influence has a cornucopia of different definitions for this word.

The point is that love is just a word and it is meaningless. The bond that gives a couple such a profound happiness and fantastic sex has no frame of reference in words and should be compelling; indeed, it should be overwhelming without them.

I have this kind of unconditional, indefinable and indispensable attachment in my life.  I have been pursuing it for years because that is what I do and it is who I am. Not because I am in love but because I am alive and I breathe to stay that way without thought. The technical term for this is autonomic.

My struggle to be with my lover is equally autonomic.

I don’t pursue love to get laid or assuage my loneliness, but rather it is the most basic and compelling aspect of my humanity.

You too are human, I suspect, and if you find yourself unhappy in love then stop doing it and start being it.

Be human so you will be a human being.