I’ve spent my whole life chasing the wrong things for the right reasons.

Meaning.

Cash.

Praise.

But mostly women.

There’s nothing better than a woman’s love. The world will never convince me otherwise.

It’s why I fall in love with every woman I meet. Unfortunately, it’s not an exaggeration. I can’t help myself. Emotional immaturity or some sort of complex isn’t necessarily off the table, but I like to believe I’m onto something bigger than that.

Every single woman has that one damn thing that makes them uniquely beautiful. And when she shows you it, you can’t help but fall in love.

Maybe it was the way she defended Bob Dylan’s voice. Or her smile. The perfect back dimples could swell a man’s heart. Or the way she got excited over finding the perfect dog toy for her baby. The way her lips curled upwards and her nose crunched up before she started to laugh. The way she always had a comeback. When she’d grab and kiss me to shut me the fuck up. The way she played with her nieces and nephews. How she didn’t want to completely lose herself to a man, so she hyphened her last name. Or how she was the breadwinner of her six-person family since she was sixteen. And of course, the way she does that one thing.

That doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the depth of the women I’ve been lucky enough to love.

Or any woman on the planet.

Have you ever seen a woman when she’s wild and free?

When she finally let’s go of the insecurities burdened onto her since birth?

When she gives herself permission to be herself?

It’s the most powerful drug on the planet.

Trust me, I’ve tried quite a few.

I chalked my love of women as the writer in me romanticizing love – tossing logic to the wind and convincing myself that there was really more to life than what’s seen – like a love worth living for.

But this complex made the matters of the heart quite complicated.

I’d fall hard and fast, ignoring the obvious flaws in budding romances. In the beginning it’s always easy. But as time goes by the world has a funny way of complicating even the simplest of things. The love always flames out faster than it starts. She’s confused and heartbroken. I return to the lovesick fool so desperate for the perfect romance that I hold the women I love to unspoken and unrealistic expectations.

Like every other asshole on the planet.

Love can’t survive on beauty, whether inside or out. It was a lesson I struggled to learn.

Women watch us selfishly lie, cheat, manipulate, kill and destroy our way through the world … and love us anyway. There’s something insanely beautiful about that. And maybe in that, lies the obvious secret about love.

Any asshole can find the beauty in a woman, there’s always more than enough to discover. But when you see a woman at her absolute worst and still see the beauty in her, maybe that’s what love is.

It’s how women love men.