WHY IS IT SO HARD?

Dating just sucks. It seems like everyone wants someone who doesn't want them. Perhaps I am over-reacting, but being unattainable seems to turn most guys on. I don't get it.

A new pal of mine recently shared some thoughts of love. I had been telling him that, I feel, our culture has over-used the word "love" so much that it has come to mean very little. Love mean something different to everyone and it seems to get bandeed about too much. Is "bandeed" a word????? ...I have a degree in English.

Anyway, I found this really interesting, so with Tom's permissionn -- I am posting the LOVE STYLES he shared with me. It is my understanding that these were created by a psychologist, but Tom wrote it out from memory. So the idea/concept is not is, but this is not written as the original author would have written it.

THE SIX STYLES OF LOVE

1.EROTIC LOVE (eros) is that based on physical attraction to a certain type. It is often experienced instantaneously, even
for a stranger. It can be intense and passionate if requited.

2. LUDIC LOVE (ludus - from the Latin word for play) is light and playful. It is love as a game. All that courship intrigue of flirting, and joking, approaching and backing off, and none of it taken too seriously. It could also be just "having fun" in bed.

3. STORGIC LOVE (storge - a Greek word for a type of friendship) is the nonsexual intimacy felt between close friends.
This is the love that cannot honestly be experienced instantly but build up over time. It is warm and comforatble, not passioate or frenzied. Intimacy comes from knwoing a person well through many different trials and contexts.
This love can be put on hold, left for years and come back without damaging it at all.

4. PRAGMATIC LOVE (pragma) is the practical love for a partner who fits the right profile socially: is about the right age, has the right job, is the right ethnicity, will be approved by your parents... People want to make a choice in their partner that will be socially validated by those around them, therefore stands a better chance of "working." This type of love does not at all apply to Mary Kay Latourneau, or Romeo and Juliet, for example.

5. AGAPIC LOVE (agape - have you read the famous description of love in II Corntihians by St. Paul?) is altruistic and
self-sacrificing. It asks for nothng in return. Maybe the paradigm is the love of a mother for a helpless child, or the devoted care of a gay man whose partner is dying of AIDS and suffers from dementia so he no longer even remembers him.

6. MANIA LOVE (mania) is the intense passion of "falling in love," felt for only one person at a time. This is the most intense type of love experience. It is short lived, lasting for a honeymoon period. Tom prefers to call this "limerence" - another term
that has been coined to describe the feeling. This is a dangerous kind of love, because if it is unrequited
can lead to a depression, similar to grief over loss of a loved one.

What kind of love do you seem to share the most with? Which love is preferable?

...and, is it possible to find it "online" We shall see!