Dear reader, remember to ask yourself if you love them in the right way

The hint the fortune teller gave me couldn’t have come at a more ironic time. She said, “Be careful with your romantic view of life, which borders on innocence”, just after I had ended my nine-year relationship, because I had fallen in love with this boy — the Santa Claus’s elf — whom I’d met only 40 days earlier, at the end of my internship in Ireland. In my defense, I had simply forgotten what falling in love could feel like. And it was the first time, in my adult life, that I felt the desire to be with someone not to impress or please them, but simply because I was feeling something that could no longer be expressed in any other way. Have you ever felt that? Being aroused because you have feelings for someone? It's a nice feeling.

I know that being in love is just a bunch of chemical substances in your brain creating a pleasant kind of anxiety, and maybe I fell for him so hard because I projected onto his elf shoulders some kind of freedom, resilience, and a quiet, resigned kind of courage that I was missing in myself. But still — doesn’t it feel good?

Dear reader, I truly hope you get the chance to feel this way. Hopefully without hurting a good guy in the process, like I did. I have to admit that over the past month, I’ve been acting like an impulsive main character in a cliché romantic novel. And beyond the comfortable life I gave up — with the promise of a stable marriage, children, and support for my writing career — I also carry the guilt of breaking a good boy’s heart. So here’s a piece of advice: friendship, even a good one, isn’t enough to sustain a romantic relationship. If you are a romantic soul, you need at least a spark of romantic desire and adventure. So don’t lie to yourself, ok? Ask yourself if you love them in the right way. And if you feel the urge to avoid the question, it’s probably because you already know the answer.