Women Love Love...

I have a very close male friend who I've mentioned this blog to. Only, I wouldn't give him the link to it, which - surprisingly - hurt his feelings. "It's not something you'd like" I told him. "I'm blogging about love".

"Love?!?!" he responded, which is exactly what I expected from him, "why are you writing about that?".

I don't know the answer to that question. It's not as though I set out to write a blog and thought to myself "hmmm.... what should I write about? What do I know enough about to spend time thinking about and bother sharing my thoughts about?". It was the other way around. I tend to think about love often these days, and it's a very big topic of conversation between my girl friends and I lately, so I thought "why not express it in writing, why not blog about it".

I didn't expect this good guy friend to be offended that I wouldn't let him see my blog entries. But he was. Which I actually found quite touching, in a way. He's always cared pretty deeply about what's going on in my life, and in my head, and this proved that it hasn't all been an act. He really does care.

So yesterday, I sent him the link.

He IM-ed a few minutes later saying that he loves my writing style (yay!!!) but that the subject matter isn't exactly his 'thing'. I already knew that. I knew that he wouldn't hugely enjoy reading about loooove. I had actually warned him that he may vomit, reading what I've written. Especially the one about fairytales. And yet, even though I expected his reaction, I still felt the need to justify my subject matter. To prove to him that I'm not the only one who is this interested in love. Not the only one who thinks about it, talks about it. That love on it's own is enough of a subject matter to interest people. Some people.

"You've heard of Eat Pray Love right?" I responded via IM. "That's all about love. It's one woman's lament about it, her search for it, her quest for it, her crisis over it. That book was a huge hit, an instant best-seller, it sold millions!!!".

"Ya, it rings a bell"

"Bridget Jones' Diary? You've obviously heard of that one. That started as a writer's newspaper column, which turned into a book, which turned into a film. Huge success!!!".

Ya, he knew Bridget Jones' diary. Though he's (not surprisingly) never seen it.

And that made me realize... women love love. We love it. We love feeling it, we love discussing it, we love weeping over movies that are about finding it, and weeping even more over movies that are about losing it. We love Hollywood gossip about who's fallen in it, and who's fallen out of it. We love it when our friends find it for real. We just plain love it.

Men on the other hand, generally don't like to discuss love. They don't like the same films we love. Or the same sappy love songs we love. They don't cry at weddings. They do sometimes cry at their own wedding (happy tears, hopefully) but hardly ever do they cry at other peoples' weddings.

We're just different, men and women. Fundamentally different. Sure, I already knew that, but it's fun to be reminded.

Men love women. And women love men. But women also love love. We really love love.