Listen up, Grasshopper.

"Love" is not about finding the "kind of person you want" it's about finding someone who revises your requirements. The person you will love will or will not read Mindy Kaling. Either way, you will forgive her. The person you love will convince you to stay in when you want to go to the sunset and convince you to go to the sunset when you want to stay in.

Love is about buttressing our identities, not about defining ourselves by our choices and our tastes. Love makes solitude effortless and sharing an assumption. Love is not additive or subtractive, it is multiplicative. Therefore, we must not be zeroes when we operate.

There's this assumption amongst the lonelyhearts of early adulthood that love is "filling the void." Those who are happy in love are those who have tended to their own voids as you are doing. We do not "complete" each other. We stack.

My wife's taste in music sucks. I think in the past ten years she's bought a Norah Jones CD, and maybe an Iron & Wine. THAT'S IT. Over a thirteen year relationship I have determined that she fundamentally dislikes music that includes "bass" and "drums." Early on, I told her that she was perfect except for her taste in music. She laughed at me and said "I can buy my music at Fred Meyer. You're the one that needs to buy obscure, out-of-print German bands that howl at each other." She's right. And she won't come to my concerts, and that's fine because everything else matters so much more.

"Love" will challenge your ideas about love, and you'll love it. But you're right, and you're on the right track.

You have to be up for the challenge, and that starts within.