What Is Romantic Love?

I was asked by someone recently to kind of share my thoughts on Romantic Love. 

Personally it tends to be my least favorite kind. It gets hyped up and sung about so often and then you look around for songs that express Love of Nature or Love of Family or Love of God or Love of a Friend and you're sh*t out of luck. If ANY kind of love doesn't have the unconditional, forgiving, empathetic, understanding, spiritual love as its foundation its useless and empty.

And then there's MY BRAIN'S rational line of thought with regard to Romantic Love on the spectrum of ALL possible kids of love.

But actual romantic love itself for me has always been allusive in my reality and hard to grasp conceptually.

It once occurred to me that if I actually managed to find someone who could handle this level of random and weird, and I actually managed to open my SOUL up to that person, hand my heart over to them, and let them in entirely -I might die. If that love were rejected, denied, thrown aware, wounded, ended in any way for any reason I might not have the ability to survive. That kind of love is terrifying and yet it's the only kind worth having. So I avoid it. I'm meant to do other things in this life. I'm staying out of the wrestling ring this round. 

I think in the past I've tried to love people. Friends AND family. And when I opened up -the little or great I did -it was always ignored, cast aside, unappreciated, wasted... It never amounted to anything. You look for buckets. People you can dump love into if for no other reason than you have it to give. But it winds up being lost on people none the less. And I've had the same happen to me. It's always a strange experience when people want you to be their bucket. Why me? I accept and love ALL people, why would you want me to be "special" or this kind of love to be "deeper" than that? 

Romantics is SOFT and YIN and CARING and WARMTH. I can take the warmth. But the TRUST required and the other aspects that involve more "fluff" are hard for me. I was built tough. I was built ALONE. I was built to survive. I was taught these notions don't exist outside of fairy-tales. 

I have seen others in love, but that's because they were made by God for that purpose. It is written on their souls: You shall find romantic love in this life. But mine seems to have a different inscription: You shall GIVE love to ALL beings in this life. It's hard for me to fathom life-long romantics like it's hard for some people to imagine life-long single, global LOVE.