This is just a list of things people try to tell you about dating. Reasons you're not having much success or things to look for in a potential partner (or things to look for in yourself). Ingredients that we are convinced will add up to the perfect relationship if mixed in the right proportions.

• Compatibility
• Having anything in common at all
• Being happy with yourself
• Being "ok" with being single
• Being "ready"
• Looking for it
• Not looking for it
• Having a job/car/money/house/education
• Having confidence
• Being a "perfect gentleman/lady"
• Being a "bad boy/girl"
• Being a certain weight or looking a certain way (big boobs/muscles)
• Being in a particular place spiritually (i.e. "being worthy")

Some of these things I might elaborate on in their own articles, but most of them can be explained as myths simply by saying "love happens". We hope for it and dream about it and deride Disney for overdoing it precisely because love is a real thing. It really happens and it stops time and turns worlds upside down. And that's what most of us are looking for.

These things are myths because in the end they really have no bearing at all on whether or not two people will fall in love. Deep down inside we know that love is unpredictable, but we refuse to accept that. Humans like to be in control, so we convince ourselves that if we do this or say that, we'll make love happen, or love didn't happen because we just weren't ABC or they just weren't XYZ.

But love happens. It happens whenever it wants, whether you're ready for it or not. It happens whether you say the right things or because you say all the wrong things. It happens because you smell good, or stink like an outhouse, or because your car didn't start, or it did, or because you were happy first, or morbidly depressed. It just happens.

Love happens.