"What about love?" she said. 

    And he replied, "What so special about it? You can live without it surely."

    "But would you ever want to?", she asked me with a sly grin.

    "It depends.", he said, watching for her reaction. "It blooms and fades and always ends in heartbreak...Maybe you love her, but she doesn't love you. Or she loves you and you don't love her. Maybe she leaves you, you break up with her. She dies, you die...I mean, look at how it always happens in the movies! When you think of it that way, how can seriously say you want it?"

    "Haven't you ever been in love before!?" she asked him incredulously.

    "I've had the pleasure and pain of the experience --yes. And it's great you know. Nothing gets you higher. I've felt like I could do anything, and when you're really loved you believe you can. It changes you subtly forever.  
    But nothing takes you lower than love. It can bring you to your knees outside under the rain shivering in the cold dark wet while you're trying to be a man and hide the fact that you're catching hypothermia. And you're just screwing it up because you're out there calling for her when you should really be out in the Bahamas with a native girl taking risqué pictures and mailing them to her. Maybe she's sitting inside at the window watching you secretly behind the blinds and she sees you and she says softly in a childlike voice that she loves you but she won't take you in because you screwed it up somehow. "

    "What happened to you?", she interjected. "Flashback to teenage trauma, scene two. Cut."

    "Uh.. Never mind. I'll tell you that story some other time. Where was I? Oh yeah...Love.
    Even when it's working love isn't always easy. You ask people in relationships what they stress about and it's always the relationship. You ask people not in relationships what they stress about and it's always the lack of the relationship. It seems like nobody's happy either way. Why should I bother to look again. I'm happy now without."

    "Are you really happy or are you just not unhappy?", she probed.

    "That's actually a really good question. Could I be happier? Yeah probably. Am I happy enough? I think so. Maybe it's like food. You're hungry. And you have a slice of pepper steak. And it tastes great. But you could be having a marinated-for-three-days, tender, juicy filet mignon with rich balsamic glaze. And that may taste a whole lot better. But you'll live without it. Heck maybe you'll think that pepper steak is as good as it gets. And as long as you've only ever had pepper steak, will you be unhappy? But if you've had filet mignon and lost it, could you be alright with pepper steak? Is it better to live life knowing what you're missing or better to live it without?"

    "You're such a pessimist!", she said sourly. "You're willing to not have the best experience you could have because you're afraid you're get used to something too good? Sounds like you're bitter and you're reacting with cowardice to me."

    "Hey! I'm not afraid. I just don't fight for something until I think it's worth it. But I'm wary of love and I don't think it's easy."

    "But it is! That's how you know when it's real. When it's easy to talk, to laugh, to live with that person. When it's easy to sit and just do nothing together and then turn around and do anything together."

    "Sounds like codependency to me", he grinned evilly.

    "Not quite. When it's love it's ok to be apart and easy to be together." she insisted.

    "Hmm. I'd say that love chains you and then it sets you free. And it's hard to get to the point of letting go. But when it's love, there's no place she'd rather be, and that letting go doesn't end up hurting. And she ends up letting go of you. But there's nowhere you'd rather be. That's what is freeing about it. The choosing - that's the key. They choose you. You choose them back."    

    "Where'd the pessimism go?" she said, looking deep into his eyes.

    "Uh...So what's your story? Why are we talking about love?" He said, looking at his shoes.