đ WTF Is Love Anyway? A Guide for Ugly Little Beasts With No Good Reason to Be Loved...
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An excruciatingly long and extremely unreasonable exposĂ© on the absurd miracle of love, the doom of gym memberships, and why asking âWhy do you love me?â is emotional terrorism.
Letâs get one thing out of the way: you are unlovable. Yes, you. Donât flinch, donât blink, donât even try to moisturize and correct that with a charming anecdote or a trip to therapy. Youâre moody, inconsistent, passive-aggressive before coffee and psychotically idealistic after two drinks. Your Spotify Wrapped is embarrassing, and you definitely have at least one pair of socks older than your last meaningful conversation.
And yetâsomeone, somewhere, loves you. Not because you are lovable. But in spite of that glaring cosmic injustice. Welcome to the greatest WTF of them all: love.
PART I: Gains, Delusions & Other WTF Life Choices
THE ABSURDITY OF REASONS
In a world where you canât even get a barista to remember your name correctly, someone has voluntarily pledged to deal with your digestive noises and indecisive Netflix scrolling until one of you dies. If that doesnât strike you as profoundly irrational, then I regret to inform you: you may already be in love, and no one warned you.
We often askâespecially at emotionally vulnerable points like birthdays, anniversaries, and post-coital burrito runsââWhy do you love me?â
Let me tell you something your therapist wonât: this is an emotional booby trap. Itâs like handing someone a shovel, pointing to a minefield, and whispering, âProve you can love me through this.â
No answer will ever be sufficient, because love, unlike IKEA furniture, does not come with an instruction manual or a parts checklist. The moment you try to explain love, it becomes a PowerPoint presentationâand no one has ever felt butterflies while looking at a pie chart.
EMOTIONAL LANDMINES IN THE BEDROOM
Love is not a reward system. It's not a punch card: 10 good deeds gets you one cuddle session and a backrub. Itâs not UberEatsâyou canât track it in real-time and complain if itâs cold.
And yet, we persist in treating love as a resume. We date like weâre applying for tenure. âPlease see attached: my job title, my trauma history, a filtered image of me holding a dog I met once in a park, and a playlist of songs that are meant to sound spontaneous but took me two hours to curate.â
All this because we believe that love must be earned, measured, orâat the very leastâjustified. But love is not justice. If it were, most of us would be in solitary confinement with no visitation rights.
FALLING OUT OF LOVE (AND OTHER NATURAL DISASTERS)
Maybe love doesnât end when it runs out of reasons. Maybe love ends like a TV show. It had a good run, the characters got tiresome, the plot lost steam, and the network execs (aka mutual resentment and financial stress) pulled the plug.
And youâre left watching reruns in your head, wondering what went wrong.
Hereâs the twist: nothing went wrong. Love isnât something you lose like a sock or a friend during a group trip to IKEA. It ends, sometimes, because it was meant to. Itâs not your fault. Unless you said âItâs not you, itâs me,â in which case, you deserve to stub your toe every morning for a year.
But when love does last, and I mean really lastâthrough missed birthdays, financial ruin, in-laws with opinions, terrible restaurant choices, and that godawful thing they said in 2019 that youâll never forgetâitâs not because of reasons. Itâs because you made the unreasonable decision to stay.
LOVE, LIKE LAUGHTER, JUST HAPPENS
Imagine trying to explain a joke. âItâs funny because the monkey represents capitalism and the banana is a metaphor for late-stage consumerism.â No. Now itâs dead.
Love works the same way. If you try to dissect it, rationalize it, or surgically extract the why from the what, youâre left with something that vaguely resembles commitment but tastes like dry toast. No butter. Just crumbs.
Loveâlike dancing, like crying, like belly-laughing at 3am over something stupidâis something you feel first and only understand (poorly) much later. Or never.
Trying to justify love is like trying to reason with the wind. It doesnât answer. It just moves you.
THE MIRACLE OF STAYING
Itâs easy to fall in love. Any fool with a decent playlist and manageable childhood trauma can do it. The miracle is staying in love. Continuing to choose someone even after theyâve seen you at your worst, smelled your morning breath, and heard your sleep-fart symphonies.
Love is staying up late to finish their laundry because you know they have a big day tomorrow. Itâs letting them tell the same boring story at a party for the eighth time, and still laughing. Itâs seeing them cry at a commercial about dogs, again, and not making fun of them. At least not immediately.
Love is unreasonable. Thatâs the whole point.
Why Youâre Unlovable, Why Thatâs Wonderful, and Why Love Is Basically an Existential Prank
Somewhere deep in the sweaty bowels of modern romance, between the self-help aisle of your local bookstore and the endless loop of romcoms where quirky girls fall for emotionally unavailable carpenters, lies a fundamental misunderstanding: that love is something reasonable.
Yes, apparently, a certain subsection of humanity believes love should be grounded in logicâlike itâs a mortgage application or a protein smoothie recipe. âI love you because youâre kind, funny, hot, stable, emotionally mature, good with dogs, fluent in Italian, and you once bought me soup when I was sick.â Which is adorable, in the same way a toddler operating a forklift is adorable: heartwarming but fundamentally unsafe.
Letâs get this straight: there is no good reason to love anyone. And that is the only reason it works. If there were a reason, it would be susceptible to re-evaluation. âHeâs so tall,â you say. But what happens when someone taller walks in? âSheâs brilliant.â Until you realize she gets her medical advice from YouTube tarot readers. âTheyâre so caring.â Until theyâre late picking you up and forget your gluten intolerance exists. Reasons are brittle things. Love survives only because it ignores them entirely.
THE GYM, THE TREADMILL, AND THE TRAUMA â A GENERAL OPINION PIECE ON LOVE
In todayâs world, love is often mistaken for a checklist. Popular culture, self-help books, and the hyper-curated lives we see online have created a collective delusion: that love must be earned through achievements, aesthetics, and absurdly specific routines. People hit the gym like pilgrims on a sacred journey, sculpting their bodies into offerings to some invisible pantheon of worthiness. They pursue advanced degrees not always out of intellectual curiosity, but in hopes that being âinterestingâ will make them more desirable. Even their skincare choices are imbued with the quiet hope that clearer skin might equal clearer chances at being loved.
This transactional idea of loveâthe notion that itâs something one qualifies for if only theyâre impressive enoughâleads to a quiet kind of emotional exhaustion. It convinces people that if they just try harder, run farther, read deeper, earn more, or appear more composed, love will find them. It's a belief system that feeds off insecurity and rewards performative self-improvement over genuine connection.
But love, as life often demonstrates in the most inconvenient ways, doesnât play by those rules.
Take, for instance, a not-so-hypothetical scenario: a man running on a treadmill, furiously chasing the mirage of desirability, collapses from cardiac arrest. This isnât metaphorical heartbreakâitâs literal heart failure. He falls, flatlines, and the gymâs soundtrack continues unironically with a cheesy â80s power anthem. At that moment, everything he thought made him lovableâhis fitness, his determination, his curated charmâceased to matter.
And yet, he was revived. Not just by paramedics, but by the presence of someone who chose to stay through the mess that followed. A partner who didn't retreat in the face of vulnerability, but leaned in. Someone who didn't see leaking IVs, hospital gowns, and disoriented mumbling as the end of attraction, but as part of the unpredictable contract that real love demands.
This is the moment when the myth of conditional love unravels.
True love is rarely sexy in the conventional sense. Itâs not found in flexed abs or witty banter. Itâs found in moments of complete undoingâwhen a person is at their weakest, most unpolished, and perhaps even most unpleasant. Itâs when someone sticks around not because youâre impressive, but because youâre human. Love, at its core, is not a response to greatness. Itâs a spontaneous, often irrational commitment that arises in the spaces where greatness has nothing to do with it.
In this sense, love is less of a performance and more of a divine accident. Itâs the willingness to hold someoneâs hand not just at candlelit dinners, but in emergency rooms. Itâs finding the person still beside you after youâve vomited on their socksâemotionally or literally. Itâs not a reward for being lovable, but a testament to the absurdity and grace of being loved anyway.
So maybe itâs time to retire the idea of love as a scoreboard, and instead accept it for what it really is: a wild, unreasonable decision made by people who, despite everything, continue to show up for each other.
Because in the end, the treadmill breaks, the skincare fades, and even the most carefully constructed personas collapse under pressure. But the love that remainsâthe kind that doesnât ask why or howâthatâs the kind worth surviving for.
Unlovable: And Other Fun Facts About You
Letâs be honest. Youâre not lovable. Neither am I. Nobody is. Weâre walking bundles of neuroses, deeply flawed creatures who sneeze on each other, smell weird in summer, and say âyou tooâ when the waiter says âEnjoy your meal.â We age badly, make questionable life choices, and sometimes Google âhow to fake your own death and start over.â
And yetâmiracle of miraclesâsomeone out there loves you. Or did. Or might. Why? Donât ask. Thatâs like asking why raccoons wash their food or why toddlers have a vendetta against silence. The more you think about it, the less sense it makes. But itâs happening. Or it did. Or it will. That should terrify and delight you in equal measure.
The Myth of the Lovable Self
Modern society has convinced us that love is a commodity to be earned, like frequent flyer miles or retweets. We are all desperately trying to make ourselves âlovable.â We hit the gym, take improv classes, post thirst traps of our cappuccinos, and casually mention our therapy breakthroughs in social settings (âYeah, Iâve really been working on my attachment styleâ).
But love doesnât care about your abs, your degree, or your third-place trophy in a regional spelling bee. Love is like a raccoon in your garbage bin at 3amâit shows up uninvited, makes a mess, and refuses to explain itself.
Reasonable Love Is a Glorified Spreadsheet
The moment you start itemizing your partnerâs good qualities like a list of ingredients on an overpriced jar of almond butter, youâre already halfway out the door. âI love them because theyâre generous and cook well and get along with my momâ sounds great until you realize those things also describe your UberEats delivery guy.
The real thrill of love isnât in its justifications. Itâs in its audacity. You donât love someone because theyâre perfect. You love them despite the fact that they just sang the wrong lyrics to every single song on the radio for an entire road trip. You love them even though they collect Funko Pop figurines, believe horoscopes are scientific, and once tried to fix a leaky faucet with chewing gum and confidence.
Love Is a Panic Purchase During a Fire Sale
At some point, most of us stumble into love the way people accidentally sign up for a gym membership they canât cancel: we donât remember why we did it, weâre too embarrassed to admit we regret it, and we keep showing up out of habit, vaguely hoping something magical will happen.
And sometimes it does. Thatâs the absurdity of it. Two flawed, anxious, temperamental carbon-based lifeforms just... choose to like each other. For a little while. Or for a long while. No celestial contract. No ROI projections. No good explanation.
And when it doesnât work? Thatâs fine too. Because the beauty of loving unreasonably is that itâs not a moral failing when it ends. The music stops. The raccoon leaves. The joke fades. That doesnât mean it wasnât real. It means it was what it was: an unprovable, illogical, chaotic miracle you got to witness from the inside.
The Relationship Performance Olympics
Letâs talk about that moment, five or seven years into a relationship, when you find yourself eating lukewarm takeout next to someone you once wept for under a full moon. They say âI love you,â and what they really mean is âPlease validate me, Iâm still here, right?â You smile and say it back, and then both of you subtly wonder if itâs still true or if you're just reenacting a very familiar stage play called Our Love Is Fine Please Don't Look Too Closely at the Set.
This is what happens when we think of love as a job description. When we feel like we must constantly justify it to ourselves and others. But love is not a PowerPoint presentation. There is no pie chart, no bullet-pointed list, no budget proposal. The moment we try to break it down logically, it evaporates like a fart in a hurricane.
Marriage: A Long-Term Prank We Play on Ourselves
And marriage? Donât even get me started. Marriage is the boldest commitment two people can make to keep being unreasonableâtogetherâfor the rest of their lives. It is a pact to love someone even as their skin changes texture, their breath changes tone, and their opinions on furniture placement become increasingly unhinged.
Marriage is looking at the same face every morning and saying, âYeah, I guess Iâm still in.â Not because of a checklist. But because why the hell not. Because they once brought you orange juice in bed. Because they laugh at your terrible puns. Because they exist, and somehow, you havenât murdered each other yet.
Unconditional Love: Not What You Think It Is
We throw around terms like âunconditional loveâ as if we understand them. But letâs be real: most people mean âIâll love you as long as you continue to meet my standards, which I will not share with you until you fail to meet them.â Thatâs not love. Thatâs emotional Costco.
True unconditional love is actually horrifying. It means loving someone when they are completely unlovable. It means staying even when thereâs no return policy. It means looking into the face of someone who has disappointed you for the 57th time and thinking, âYep. Still them. Still mine.â
That kind of love is not based on reason. Itâs based on surrender. On cosmic foolishness. On the ability to say, âI have no idea why Iâm still here, but I am.â And thatâs its magic.
Falling Out of Love: When the Joke Isnât Funny Anymore
If love is unreasonable, how does it end? Not, as many people fear, because the reasons run out. It ends because we start demanding reasons. Because we forget that we werenât here to begin with because of logic. We try to retrofit a sacred farce with a spreadsheet, and when it doesnât balance, we bail.
Sometimes love ends like a sitcom: abruptly, awkwardly, with a half-hearted chuckle. Sometimes it ends like a symphony: swelling and beautiful, fading gently into the ether. Sometimes it ends like a goat rodeo: messy, chaotic, and full of screaming.
But always, it ends. And thatâs not a tragedy. Thatâs just time. And time is the only real reason we ever needed in the first place.
So What Now?
You, dear reader, will never be truly lovable. And neither will anyone else. And that is the greatest cosmic gag of all: we are unworthy of love, and yet we love anyway.
So stop trying to deserve it. Stop asking why. Stop writing mental lists of your partnerâs good qualities. Theyâre probably not as impressive as you think anyway.
Just laugh. Cry. Fart under the covers. Make bad decisions. Clean up the mess. And be deeply, ridiculously, wondrously loved for no reason at all.
Because thatâmore than beauty, more than compatibility, more than mutual Google calendarsâis the only kind of love worth having:
The kind that makes absolutely no sense.
CLOSING THOUGHT: NO REASON REQUIRED
Donât list your partnerâs attributes like a used car salesman. Donât itemize your affections. Just let love be the one wild, unearned, inexplicable miracle in your otherwise overly documented existence.
And when the cynicism creeps in, when the gym calls, when your spreadsheets beg for reasonâjust remember:
And that, my friend, is the most outrageous WTF of all.
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