Love and the City : Love in a 21st Century World By: Olivia Lovegood: Introduction

What is LOVE?

Is it the degree that we are infatuated and empathetic and attracted to another person?

Is it the amount of attention we give to one another?

Is it the quality in which time is spent?

Or more simply could LOVE equate with continuous effort of understanding of another person's journey in this world we live in despite how fearful we are?

In my 27 years of life and my 14 years of experience (no matter how haphazard or chaotic the experiences), I'm coming to understand love as the understanding for and connection another human being. But initiating and establishing the connection is the mind boggling mystery.

In 26 years I've endured as well as done some harmful things that are now associated with my love life, even embodying some of the mistakes my parents made with each other. Over this past year I've been doing my best to change the paradigms but the damage has already been done and many of my memories have created a cage to keep my heart safe from enduring or inflicting the same amount of pain from my past experiences. Creating a barrier to actually creating genuine [in the moment] connections with others. So much in fact that after my last break up last August I've only had 1 internet romance and one attempt at "dating" were I dove head first into the kiddie pool and smacked my head.

That leaves me wondering if I'll ever really find or be able to accomplish true unconditional LOVE. Seeing how my memories have already created so many conditions.... Oh the irony!

In this 21st Century world where access to information and connection to others are only but a touch screen away I found that the landscape of relationships have changed. Many of us have made ourselves so accessible, through our social networks ( Facebook, twitter, Linkedin, foursquare, even yelp) and have meticulously charted out our interactions, likes, dislikes and social connections for almost anyone to access, making the "getting to know you" process so much more different then it was 5 years ago.

This fact alone has changed the dating world, I've even begun equating the degree in which someone cares about me with, whether or not the person reads my blog entries or likes my flicks on FB.

LOVE IN THE CITY - is exploration of dating in the 21st century world. how do we get to know each other and how do we maintain connections. Stay tuned. ;)