You might be wondering why am I asking such a question – What is Romantic Love? You will tell me that Love is an emotion, love is what makes the world go on, love makes our heart sing with joy, love makes the world appear perfect, love is what makes you feel that without the loved one you cannot live. But have you ever thought as to why do we love anyone? Is it for the other person or is it for yourself? One explanation is that all of us need that one special person to spend our life with. Then why is it that the same person whom you felt you cannot live without, also becomes a source of so much pain for us? There are several reasons why we feel love. I am referring here to romantic love. One is that it is nature’s way to bring a man and woman together for the sake of procreation. Hence many a time, we confuse lust for love. Second reason is our inherent sense of insecurity and lack, which we try to meet by finding that person who would make us feel special. The basis for this romantic love itself is flawed because nobody can make you feel special all the time. Hence, when the person does not do what we expect him or her to do to make us feel good, we react with bitterness, anger, tears and resentment. This means that what we had felt for that person was never love. It was our way of removing the void that our sense of insecurity and loneliness had created, by imagining that we are in love. Another reason why we feel we are in love is our own fantasy about love. We are in love with the thought and feeling of being “in love”. This may be influenced by romantic books and movies. Hence, we project this fantasy of being in love, this feeling, on to a person. We actually get deluded by our mind that we are in love, we start imagining and fantasizing about all kinds of things, the thought of being in love makes our heart sing with joy and reinforces the false self-made notion of being in love. This usually happens at a younger age when we are not exposed to real issues and problems of life. This kind of love leads us to make mistakes. We start imagining qualities about that person whom we are in love with, which are actually not there. Our mind creates a fantasy about the ideal person whom we would fall in love with and we project that image on to the other person. We think that the other person is what we imagine him/her to be. That person may, in reality, be altogether different but we are oblivious to it. Can you see how our mind tricks us? When I see romantic couples sitting in parks, restaurants and beachfronts, I smile at the folly of it all. The high of being in love, the low of heartbreak, the emotional addiction to this cycle of highs and lows, the preoccupation with this emotional drama to the exclusion of everything else – how gullible we are. And the pleasure is shortlived because as much the pleasure, that much the pain – the pain of loss, the pain of disappointment, the pain of infidelity. But if anyone tells us that it makes no sense to indulge in romantic love, we will not pay any heed. So I suppose all of us have to go through this experience and learn from it.