ETCETERA says falling in love is stupid...

Sincerely, I really don’t care what all the love songs say and what the romantic movies and novels would have you believe.

Falling in love is a waste of time and does no one any good. It wears off sooner than later and leaves you staring at your palms like an idiot.

I see a lot of romantically challenged people asking Cupid to shoot an arrow straight into their lover’s heart. How does anyone survive an arrow in the heart and love you right back? And again, can you be sure how good a shooter Mr. Cupid is? What if he misses and shoots her straight in the eye instead? I guess that won’t bother you too, isn’t love supposed to be blind after all?
One of the best things about being sane is knowing never to fall in love. I wonder how “falling head over heels” can be attempted by anyone other than a mad man. Well, go ahead Mr. Lover-man and fall head over heels if you must. Break your neck in the process if you think it is a great idea. But don’t just recommend it to me.

I have seen otherwise smart and self-respecting people felt and acted, ridiculously stupid and call it love. For those who have dated quite a few, is it possible to look back on your dating years without asking yourself “what was I thinking?. You are always finding pathetic excuses to call her again and again even when she doesn’t call back. You are always caught in between thoughts of how to bump into her outside her house by accident. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t, at least once, gone crazy over love when you can’t stop those compulsive phone and e-mail-checking, the constant texting, and the Facebook and twitter stalking. Or you can’t stop yourself from calling her name every minute. Or shut out all those premature thoughts of what your wedding will be like, and what you’ll name your children. You can’t stop wondering if she has fallen in love with you on your first date. What more conviction do you need to know you are going crazy?

And ladies, don’t you ever feel awkward telling yourselves, ‘that the guy currently asking you out is really going to have to woo you each time, and drown you in the attention you so deserved? And that he just has to do the chasing, because you are too much to condescend to chasing after him, only for you to sneak off to the bathroom to check your phone for his messages for the umpteenth time. Yes my dear, love is a stupid thing. And more stupid is the fact that you can’t stop yourself wanting to do more stupid things when you are caught in the grip of it. Too many times you must have been taken by the desire to construct the perfect Facebook status update riddled with subliminal messages and expectations, or to leave the “not sure if you got my last message” in her voicemail. What crazier behaviour can you occupy yourself with?

Today, you see a 70-year-old man and his 24-year-old wife claiming they are in “true love.” So many books about “love” but if at the end of the day, so many men are going mainly for looks and so many women are going mainly for wealth, let’s ask ourselves how much of that “true love” story is so true after all. They use words like first-love as an evolutionary trick to force you to think irrationally and choose the first available suitable partner. Do you know any woman who can consistently look beyond a man’s wealth or a man that can consistently look beyond a woman’s physical appearance? Women now only think about the wedding and not about the actual marriage. When a piece of paper is all that is binding a man and a woman together, something is terribly wrong with the whole ideology of love. So if you think you are obsessively in love, go to a therapist and fix it. And be rid of those crazy moments of wondering if she likes you, if she’ll call, if calling too soon will look desperate, worrying whether or not she thought you were good in bed and if the argument you just had means it’s over, or if the relationship is going nowhere and you’re just wasting your time.

For the lover of love who would want to accuse me of being a psychopath, look back on your ‘dating life’ and see all the wasted efforts; the acts of devotion and love directed at liars and cheats, fickle women or men selling you tales of how they’ll love you forever, and only mean it up till the moment you actually start to believe it. And for Mr. Love doctor who attributes love to gut feelings, if you have learned anything from dating, it’s that “going with your gut” exactly that gets you in trouble. Your gut is not capable of learning. Love and romance only exist in the overactive imaginations of singers and screenwriters, so why bother?