There is a common belief in society that love is a word which has lost all meaning. Some people say that many throw the word around, like a football. However, since the great recession, you will notice that people have stopped using the word love so much, stopped searching for relationships, and are more concerned with money, sex, power, and status. Even suburban grandmothers have turned into trap queens. There is now an entire population of detached, independent, self-sufficient, noncommitted individuals who correspond to the description above. No one really needs to get hurt in modern human relationships. You can be intimate with someone and then leave, and nothing bad will happen. We had dinner at your place, you cooked the most delightful oven parmesan chicken with penne marinara. The basil really added a wonderful flavor to the cuisine, and it was nice and golden brown. I was really impressed with how well you can cook. And for dessert we have coffee with cream and a spiced pineapple carrot cake with homemade cream cheese frosting.

However, after meeting you, my opinions have changed—human relationships are the most important things in the World and so very hard to come by. As I sit here in this apartment, wait and waiting for you to return, I understand that relationships are desperately important to both our mental and our physical well-being. The fact is that social isolation, the lack of human companionship, dieting, stress, death or absence of a loving relationship, sudden loss of love (as we both have discovered), and chronic loneliness are significant contributors to premature death. Quite literally, we must either learn to live together or face the possibility of prematurely dying alone while burning a roast and a pizza and drinking dummy juice on Christmas. Cancer, tuberculosis, gastrointestinal infections, suicide, mental disease—all are significantly influenced by human companionship. Nature uses many weapons to shorten the lives of lonely people. To love and to live well is wished of many, but incident to few, but indifferent to all. To love without reason is an argument of lust, to live without love, a token of folly. The measure of love is to have no mean, the end to be everlasting.