I hate Valentine's Day... the English assignment

Writing Exercise 2 (February 2004, speaks for itself)
1. Andrew Sullivan’s argument in the essay, “The Love Bloat,” is that the value of romantic love in our culture has been elevated to a degree that it makes promises it cannot keep. Love is an illusive emotion that can not be contained nor sustained. People fail to give credit to better expressions of love like faithfulness and kindness that are acts of the will, choices we make daily.
Sullivan assertions are a bit exaggerated especially love “If taken too seriously, it kills.” (843) His assertions highlight the truth that people who take these cultural myths about love seriously, and make decisions like whether to divorce or not based on them, are being mislead.
2. I have seen Sullivan on T.V. shows like Hardball and find he is an intense and interesting man who can’t be categorized politically. I consider him an independent thinker. His references to accomplished writers of the past and present like Shakespeare and Rousseau, Alan Bloom, conservative Professor of sociology, and Noel Coward, self educated Renaissance man, give you the impression he is well read.
Being married for 25 years I have seen romance come and go and have learned to embrace it when it appears but not demand it from life. I appreciate Sullivan’s alternatives. I would describe my relationship with my husband as not glamorous but deeply satisfying, not without problems, but not without hope. It is not based on cultural definitions of love but on Biblical blueprints that have passed the test of time.
3 & 4. I agree with Sullivan’s assessment that love is“a blight, a joke, a slave for an empty emotional center.” (845) Romantic love as played out for us in movies is a form of escape. I think people find this romantic love in movies and books, but rarely in their lives and it gives them deep concern that something is amiss. They search for it like someone searches for an escape in a drug instead of looking to Sullivan’s alternatives of “affection, caring, friendship, the small favors of a husband for a wife after thirty years of marriage.” ( 844) Sullivan’s alternatives to romantic love I think describe his ideal marriage. He believes if we knock love off its “Hallmark pedestal,” there is hope we can find fulfillment in relationships. This pedestal is the mass marketing of sex and romance where beautiful, successful men and women laugh and drink beer without mention of the morning after hangover or regret.
5. I would rather have one good lover who is my husband. I believe men and women were created for that bond. When that bond is not there other relationships fill our common desire for companionship. Marriage requires the support of other relationships because no one person can fulfill all your needs although the myth of romantic love will tell you that.
Sexual equality exists in our society on the socioeconomic level of jobs, education and opportunities but does not change that fact that men and women are different. Opposites attract and men and women were made to complete each other. The emotional depth of a relationship between a man and a woman cannot be reproduced in a friendship. The commitment in marriage over a lifetime brings more to life than equal access to jobs no matter what a good step toward progress that is. Women no longer need men to survive physically. They are able to thrive without a romantic love relationship. When they do find a marriage partner they are better off without the needy expectation of an emotion that can’t last. So what place should romantic love have in our culture? Romantic love should be like a box of chocolates on Valentine’s Day, delicious but not the mainstay of our diet.