After years of relative unsuccess at the game of love, it would appear to me that I have found the source of my discontent. My whole life, I have been a hopeless romantic. I used to dream at night, and often times in the middle of class about finding that one true love of my life. I often imagined that this person lived in my neighborhood, but I would never meet her until I traveled far away. The fact of the matter is that I had this little fantasy down so good that when I met my girlfriend, while away at college, and found out that we were both from the same hometown, well I was convinced that she was the one for me.

Now, before I go any further, because I know she reads these bits of worthless wisdom I write, let me say that my previous sentence in no way, shape, or form is meant to imply that she is no longer the one for me. She may very well be. However, through the course of my dating career, I have taken beating after beating, and I have come to realize that those who are happiest in love all seem to have one thing in common, they're getting more out of the relationship than they are putting in.

This simple realization has left me believing there is no such thing as true love. Instead, love has come to be something more economic to me. As any good businessman knows, when your benefits exceed your costs, you get a profit. This is a good thing. By contrast, when your costs exceed your benefits, you go into the red. If this time in the red exceeds your available resources, you go out of business. It would seem to me that the same is true for relationships.

A relationship is, in essence, a business endeavor. As with every such endeavor, there are certain necessary costs required in order to obtain any sort of benefit. Once again, as any good businessman knows, you have to spend money in order to make money. With this said, we know that in order to have a successful relationship, we have to make some sort of investment (usually time and emotion). Keeping in line with our economic analysis of love, it would seem to follow that when the benefits gained outweigh the investment of resources, this excess, this profit could very easily be called love. This is to say that when I am getting more out of a relationship than I am putting into it, then I am in love, because there is an excess return on my investment of emotion. Consequently, when I am giving more than I am getting, I am exhausting my supply of resources. And as we know, if this pattern continues for too long, I eventually go bust. Hence, I am out of love (both figuratively and literally).

So, what does this mean? Well, let's start with what this doesn't mean and then move on from there. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't give to, or put time and emotion into a relationship. This isn't saying that the other person should give, give, give, and you should just take. As I said above, you have to give to get. Also, this doesn't mean that if you are giving more than you are getting, that you don't love the other person. Chances are good that you do love the other person. If you have spent any substantial amount of time with the person, I would certainly hope that you love them. What I am saying is that you're probably not "in love" with the person anymore. If the time should ever come where you were to receive a higher return on your investment, or if you ever perceived the potential for a higher return on your investment, you would probably be "in love" again.

So, what does this mean I should do? Well, that's entirely up to you. Giving advice is the easy part, acting on it is what sucks. I'm not here to give any answers. God knows I'm not happy with a lot of the choices I've made in life, not all of them dealing with love. I call this page "grasshopper's worthless wisdom" because that's how I view my "knowledge." I'm not happy with how I've gotten to this point in life, but some good has inevitably come from it. I have a lot of experience and knowledge on the things I write. "Worthless," as I call it, is something that my knowledge and experience is not. It has a lot of truth to it, and it works in most cases. My wisdom is just worthless to me because I had to trade my youth and ignorance for it. When I needed my wisdom, the times when it would have served me best, I was merely learning the lessons that would eventually turn into that which I now call my wisdom. My wisdom wasn't there when I needed it, and because of that it is worthless to me.

But knowing that one man's trash is another man's treasure, there is the chance that you may get something you can use out of what I say. This is, in short, why I do this. In some sick demented way, I hope that there is at least one reader out there, and I hope that this reader takes what I say seriously. Know that what I write is the fruit of my experience, and I'm giving it to you. I would hope that not everybody has to graduate from the school of hard knocks. I'd like to think that some people can be saved before they are broken.

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