You're preaching to the choir, Jojo! Although I thought this analogy was pretty damn funny:
I either have people who look at me as if I am thinking about drowning kittens, look at me as if I have just drowned THEIR kitten,
Seriously, what is romantic love? It's sounds like such a label. I ask this question to myself a lot because one of my best friends is a guy named Phil. We'd probably drown trying to walk on water for each other, but we're just friends who love each other. And it certainly didn't start out that way. We went to the same bar with the same group of friends sitting at the same table for two years before I even had a real conversation with him. And now six years later, and for me, a move to a new city, I still let him haul me out of bed to answer my phone at obscene hours or whatever he comes up with at 2 in the morning. (I swear he never sleeps.)
But anyway, I think you're totally right that there's a certain kinds of caring and commitment in love that aren't exclusive to the term "relationships." I realize I'm a town cynic here, but life's a bitch and then you die. So you find the people you would never want to replace and then you hold onto them. And even though, and yes strangely, all of my favorite movies have happily ever afters in them heh, I think you have to build your own happily ever after and not sit around idly while you wait for it to come to you.
JD
