Here’s the thing about love. It’s complicated, until it isn’t. It’s confusing until it becomes clear. Such is the simple complexity of love, and how it works. The problem is, people often complicate, mislabel, and mistake love for other emotions and feelings, and that further muddies the pool. There are a few points that can prove love is an active choice we make from day to day. The reasons love is a choice are, in no particular order:

1. People often mistake infatuation for love, and don’t understand that craving someone in an animalistic way is not love. We often crave things until we get them, and find out we didn’t really want them in the first place, or we tire of those things after a while, and either throw them away, or push them to the side in order to obtain something that feels new and fresh. The act of pushing something to the side, and/or throwing someone away is not love, because while love is something that can dull, love will cause you to find ways to keep that person around, and attempt to rekindle that feeling that might feel lost or suppressed. Infatuation is fleeting and momentary, but people often mistake moments as being seconds in length, which is false. Moments last as long as you perceive them to, and when they’re over, you know it because your feelings about the events change. Love may wax and wane, but it does not flee, once it has taken hold.

2. Love also is not lust. Similar to infatuation, lust feels like love due to the yearning for someone, and the inability to stop yourself from thinking about that person. Lust comes in when they are so attractive to you, that you think of yourself having them, and wanting them so deeply that you pursue them with a vigor and enthusiasm that you haven’t before. But, that’s not even love. Think about this: Have you ever wanted someone SO much, pursued them for SO long, and worked SO hard to get their attention, but when you got them, and did whatever you wanted to do with them (sex, date, friendship), you noticed that that fire is gone? You no longer pursue them (because you feel like you HAVE them, so what is there to pursue), you no longer work hard to impress them (because they MUST have been so impressed with your efforts, that they gave you a chance), and no longer desire the physical aspects (because once you had sex, in whatever form you had sex, and you find out that the sex just wasn’t what you expected, and did not satisfy your wants and needs.) Love doesn’t do those things. Love satisfies you regardless of the lust that may try to consume you. You drink of the person AND their essence, not just the thought of them, or how your bodies feel whenever connected.

3. Love takes time. No matter what people say, no matter how often people say that they “fell in love at first sight,” that couldn’t be further from the truth. Unlike infatuation and lust, love is something that is actively cultivated through time, effort, and energy. Loving someone is getting to know them, what makes them tick, their good traits, their bad traits, their unusual quirks, their deepest fears, their loftiest goals, their trauma, their greatest pleasures, how they became who they are now, who do they want to be as they move forward, what they expect from you, what do they believe you expect from them, what does love mean to them, what they think love means to you, and so much more. Learning all that about a person is not accomplished through sex, nor is it something you can know after meeting a person for the first time, or just having a few dates. It takes TIME! And if you’re investing your time into someone else, then just do it. There’s no need to complain about who you already wasted your time on, in an attempt to justify who you’re currently spending your time with now. But, recognize that your time is being taken by those who are interested in, so saying that “you just fell in love without knowing it” can’t be true, because you had to devote time to that person to know if they were worth loving. We have all made mistakes, and given our hearts to those who didn’t deserve them, but you had to experience them to find out that they weren’t worth it. What is another word for experience in this case? Time.

4. This point is mainly for men. Don’t degrade the women you left for the woman you want, because it makes you look weak and immature. There can be a myriad of reasons you want to look elsewhere for a companion, but you don’t have to disrespect the woman who it didn’t work with, in an attempt to impress the woman you’re trying to bag, or to voice your disdain for how your previous relationship went. You might have had something to do with how she acted, why she stopped respecting you, and why she no longer treated you like the king you wanted to be treated as. Black men, specifically, often belittle black women for traits that ALL women have, in an attempt to justify their own migration to another race of women. They speak on things that all women carry with them (attitudes, smart mouths, nagging), but they personify the traits in black women, essentially demonizing them, while allowing those traits to not define the women they want to pursue. Time will show that all women are similar in demeanor and attitude, including nagging, until they are not given reasons to nag. Black men often don’t do the things that angered black women with other women, and wonder why the non black women are so nice and understanding. Simply put, they are not willing to invest that same time into black women as they are into women of other colors and races, until they need black women’s support. Then when black women leave black men for other races, black men are all up in arms about it, when black men often pride themselves on having a woman who isn’t black, but has all of the black characteristics.
   

   Love who you want, how you want, when you want. After all, love is a personal business, but remember, who and what you invest your time in shows what you really want, and those are two of the many ingredients that create the success of love. But, don’t try to say that love is something that isn’t chosen, because like all things in life besides our ethnic background and gender, we can choose.