Do you want to know what love is?

When I was in first grade, I had a huge crush on a little boy. I can still remember him today sitting there trying to avoid my gaze. My face almost purple in color in shyness, smiling from ear to ear.

Little girls often grow up fantasizing about their future love.

When I was in high school, my English teacher asked this question in class.

Is Love All You Need?

I never answered the question because I couldn't come up with a valid explanation until now.

From generation to generation, we see a new acceptable premise for marriage. At one point, age didn't matter. Then 18 became the new normal. Anything less was forbidden. Anything older was scoffed at.

My grandparents married at 15. My grandmother was from West Virginia. She was a coal miner's daughter. Her mother, a descendant of the Hatfields and McCoys, found work in Connecticut at Electric Boat as a pipefitter. She settled here after marrying her fifth husband, a United States War Veteran.

My grandmother missed living down south and wanted to return but was swept off of her feet by a tall handsome strong farm boy she met at the corner of North and South Streets.

As she waited for the bus one day, my grandfather passed her by on a bicycle. He stopped and asked, "what are you doing?" She replied, "I'm waiting on a bus." To which he stated with all seriousness, "how can you be waitin' on a bus, if you are standing on a street corner!"

For reasons only known to the two, they fell in love, married, began a family and until the day my grandmother passed away, my grandfather loved her so deeply like she was the only woman on earth.

What causes a couple to marry and stay together for over 60 years while others never find Mr. or Mrs. Right and end up divorcing multiple times.

Is there truth in trying to make a relationship work for you that you feel nothing from?

Many people have deep-rooted emotions associated with love that they stifle.

Possible reasons could be hurt, distrust, abuse or fear.

Sometimes bad things happen to us as children and we grow up never trusting out of fear and disappointment that we might feel that pain again that we grew up avoiding to get over.

The number one element to love is passion. Passion is a desire that is so strong it can barely be contained.

So what then, drives this force between two people?

Attraction, instinct, want, need, and a feeling of despair or loneliness?

What does it mean when someone says love is blind?

Most oftenly, it refers to someone who overlooks things that would otherwise normally turn them away because their heart speaks a different language. Little annoyances or pet peeves can be tuned out when someone's heart is shouting at a recipient of desired anticipation.

This in itself poses a problem because later on after the newness of a relationship wears off, what's really left except annoyances and pet peeves that were once hidden from sight previously?

The different is, when one is truly in love, those characteristics that a person used to detest are now at the forefront. The person learns to overlook them and love them along with the one their heart desires.

Wild Orchid is a movie about a woman heading off to a first interview with an international law firm. Her first assignment would be in Rio de Janeiro where the firm's top executive is closing a hotel deal.

This film raked in over $11 million dollars at the box office.

For most people, this film may not be appropriate due to the nature and content of the film. In fact, allegedly, it is rumored that the first version was so graphic due to mature content that it's rating almost limited its viewing potential. After editing a love scene, it was brought back down to an appropriate rating for the movies and television.

Even without the scene that was removed, it is quite notable for how the characters manipulate the desire from within the person they so want to be with to the point of no return.

The reason I am choosing this particular soft-core film to write about in this article is because after watching the film for the first time, it awakened my soul to truly understand what it is about loving someone that I can now explain in words.

It's a perfectly healthy want and desire for the person you have chosen as a partner in life.

The definition of heart throb is typically a rich or famous person whose attractiveness excites immature romantic feelings in another.

While that may be true, going back to my first grade experience, blushing over little Johnny, I've since learned that a heart throb is not just an immature lust or craving for another human being.

Hysteria is commonly defined as uncontrollable emotional drama, loss of self-control due to fear.

Yet, a 2011 film set in a Victorian Era shows how the medical diagnosis of hysteria in females led to an invention of a vibrating manipulative that replaced human touch. This movie was nearly an $8 million dollar box office hit.

In history, manual massage of women has been medically recorded since antiquity. Hysteria was confirmed as a medical condition until the American Psychiatric Association discontinued this term in 1952. (The first electronic vibrating manipulative was patented in 1883 for the treatment of muscular disorders, but other physicians caught on to the desired outcomes and started to apply it to the treatment of hysteria.)

If human touch can be manipulated through vibration, what is it that we long for in love?

• The touch of one we desire against our skin?
• A helper in life that seeks to understand us and gain knowledge about our needs and wants?
• Someone to assist us when we fall down and can't get up on our own?
• A person who wants us, wherever, and whenever, to be around him/her to share time with?

When truly soul searching for a partner in life, love goes beyond initial attraction.

While you'll want to find your partner handsome or beautiful, love goes deeper in to the heart than outward appearance.

Before trying to find the perfect mate, it's advisable to create a list. Write down specific attributes of a person you could see yourself spending the rest of your life with.

1. Appearance. What are you attracted to? What color hair or eyes do you find most appealing?
2. Style. Do you have a particular fashion standard?
3. Attitude and perspective. What will you tolerate?
4. Do material things matter to you?
5. Where do you see yourself in five years?
6. Do you want to buy or rent a home?
7. Do you want children?
8. Do you see yourself in a committed relationship or do you like your independence?
9. What are your expectations as far as this person's level of education/work ethic, etc.?
10. What's the most important thing to you in a relationship? Honesty, respect, trust?

Many people are devastated when they learn that the partner they thought was their perfect choice turns out to disappoint or hurt them.

Divorce is costly and painful.

The truth is people change.

When you set your goals and make a list of what you want in another person, you are setting forth your set of standards. This is a good place to start because when it comes to love and long-term commitments, you shouldn't have to settle for less than your heart desires.

There are all sorts of reasons that being with someone won't work out over the long term of things.

Sometimes, when you least expect it, love finds you.

You may not get what you are looking for. You'll get more than you ever dreamed up in your wildest imagination.

Are you prepared to handle a relationship like that? If you truly want to know what love is, when it finds you, will you be ready?

If nothing else, we'll always have love.

Love is a point between two people when they realize their destination has been joined by a partner. It commits no crime. It knows no hate. It loves unconditionally. The point of no return is when two people join hearts and become one. Their desire for each other grows deeper in time even though it started out well beneath the surface in the beginning.

Love is desire, want and need. The longing from within to be with that one very special person forever and ever.

Love is the unbreakable chain, the steel grip sunk deep in to the lives of each individual which creates a bond no one can break through.

Love is knowing someone, caring for them, delighting in all they do and reciprocating that very sentiment without loneliness.

Loving someone is the unselfish act of giving your all to fulfill another's hopes and dreams and likewise accomplish your own.

While I may never know the purpose of life or why we are all so unique, I do know this.

To answer my English teacher's long-overdue question about whether or not love is all we need, I can honestly answer with a heartfelt yes.

At one time I did not know whether or not love would be enough. But the day has come when love is all I have. It's all I have to give. It's all I want. It's all I need. It has gotten me through days when I didn't want to bear the pain of it all. It lifts me up.

It maintains a sense of who I am and directs my path to give love in return.

When love is all that's left, why yes, love is all we need.