Maddie Butchko
I’ll be upfront with you. I won’t hide it, the way I used to hide my elementary school crushes. I’ve been assigned to write about love. As if I’m qualified.
Don’t worry, I have some credentials. Yes, I’ve been in love. I’ve dated, I’ve cried over exes far too much and I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time staring at my phone, waiting for a text that was never coming. I’ve fallen into a pit of heartbreak-induced existential dread, convinced that I would never recover, only to be fine a week later after rewatching “Pride and Prejudice” for the 17th time.
So yes, I know something about love. But do I understand it? Enough to explain it? Enough to be your Valentine’s Day guide to all things romance? Probably not. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t had questions about love. And the people who ask me the most questions about it? Hopelessly romantic elementary schoolers.
—
Morgan: The detective of my love life
My 10-year-old niece, Morgan, is obsessed with love. She loves romance novels, princess movies and, most importantly, interrogating me about my love life — or rather, my complete lack thereof.
“When are you going to get one?” She asks, like boyfriends are something you just pick up at Target, right next to the throw pillows and seasonal candles. “Do you at least have a crush?”, she’ll push further.
“No,” I tell her.
“Are you sure?” She narrows her eyes, studying me like a detective grilling a suspect, convinced that if she presses hard enough, I’ll crack and confess to a secret, hidden romance.
“Yes, Morgan, I’m sure.”
She then looks at me with the kind of deep, maternal concern usually reserved for people who have just received bad medical news. “But… why?”
Internally, I sigh and think to myself, “Trust me, Morgan, it’s not that I don’t want to be in love. It’s not that I don’t want to have a crush. But how? But where?”
I feel like I’m playing Where’s Waldo?, except it’s Where’s My Love Interest? and the answer is nowhere to be found. I used to think that maybe having a Yale-branded partner would help — like upgrading from Walmart to Whole Foods. Surely, I thought, a place that breeds senators and hedge fund managers would also breed stable, emotionally available partners. But somehow, I am still struggling out here, like a contestant on Survivor, except the only thing getting eliminated is my will to date.
I look back at Morgan, who is still waiting for my response, still baffled by my absolute failure at romance. Morgan thinks love is obvious, cinematic and ever-present. She hasn’t yet learned that sometimes, love is just confusing, disappointing or missing entirely.
I tell her the key is to be patient. Well, that’s also what I tell myself late at night, between me and my pillow, in a conversation that is increasingly starting to sound like gaslighting.
But Morgan is not my only tiny inquisitor.
—
Ellie and the Cookie Theory of love
Then there’s Ellie, one of my former students from an after-school robotics class — which, for the record, was far less sophisticated than it sounds. Picture 7-year-olds aggressively smashing Legos together and calling it “Robotics,” a label mostly used to reassure parents hoping their kids will grow up to be the next Elon Musk.
One day, somehow, we ended up talking about love.
Ellie turned to me and said: “When I feel love, it’s like a fresh-baked cookie.”
She said it with absolute certainty, as if she had just cracked the code of the entire human experience.
“Not if it’s burnt though,” she clarified. “And not if it’s cold.”
At 7 years old, Ellie had already figured out something it took me years to learn: timing is everything.
She then turned to me, tilted her head, and smiled.
“What do you think of love, Miss Maddie?”
At that moment, I shrugged. “It’s… alright.” I pressed my lips into a smile, swallowing down the urge to launch into a tirade about all my exes like a seasoned war veteran recounting past battles.
If I had been a bit younger and more hopeful, I might have given her some flowery, optimistic answer about soulmates and fate. But enough Yalies and heartbreaks will do that to you.
Now, months later — under the pressure of having to write a Valentine’s Day article — let me try again. Between Morgan demanding answers and Ellie handing out cookie-based wisdom, I have an attempt to explain what love really is like.
But not with the usual metaphors. Not with roses, sunsets or a flame that never dies. I wanted something everyone could understand — not something that needed to be analyzed like a Shakespearean sonnet while squinting at it in confusion and pretending to have profound thoughts. Love shouldn’t require footnotes… or a SparkNotes summary to make sense.
—
Love is like buying avocados
You try to pick the right one. You stand there, squeezing them lightly but not too aggressively, trying to pretend you understand what “ripe” feels like. You Google “how to tell if an avocado is ripe” as if the internet can somehow save you from making a terrible decision. Then, you commit. You take it home, filled with hope and optimism, convinced that this time, you got it right.
Only to discover that you have made a critical miscalculation. It is either:
- Rock hard, completely inedible, and will not ripen until after you’ve died of old age.
- Rotten and mushy, despite looking perfect just yesterday.
At no point is it actually ready when you need it. It is either too soon or too late, and somehow, you always miss your window entirely. And yet, you keep buying avocados.
Because you refuse to believe that something so full of potential could be this impossible to get right. You tell yourself next time will be different. Next time, you’ll wait just the right amount of days. Next time, you’ll be able to tell by the texture alone. Next time, you won’t get attached too early, and you won’t hold on for too long.
But next time comes, and there you are again — back in the produce aisle, cautiously squeezing, hoping, trying again. So yes, Ellie, you could say timing is an important part of love. Though honestly, I think it might be easier to figure out avocados.
—
A special aside for Yalies: Love is like an unpaid internship
You tell yourself that hard work pays off. If you just show enough dedication, demonstrate your indispensability and exceed all expectations, you’ll be rewarded. Despite all this effort, there is no paycheck. No benefits. No guarantee of a permanent position.
But you hold out hope. Because surely, if you just work harder, you’ll finally get promoted to Girlfriend, Fiancée or Spouse, or at the very least, Someone Who Gets Texted Back In A Reasonable Timeframe.
So you keep investing in the relationship, convincing yourself that all this emotional labor will one day translate into security.
Then, one day, you decide to ask.
“So… where is this going?”
And they hit you with,
“We’re not really hiring right now, but we’ll keep you in mind!”
And just like that, you realize you’ve been working a full-time job in someone else’s life with absolutely no job security. And still, you stay. Because deep down, you love the work. Or at least, more like you’ve put in too many hours to quit now. And so you keep showing up, hoping that one day, they’ll decide to make you a full-time hire.
(Or at the very least, give you a LinkedIn endorsement for “Being There” and “Trying Really Hard.”)
—
Love is like assembling IKEA furniture
You see other people in functional, aesthetically pleasing relationships and think, “I can do that.” You open the box, lay out the pieces and tell yourself that as long as you follow the instructions, you’ll have a fully assembled relationship in no time.
Then, you start. And something is immediately wrong.
One of you swears the instructions are misleading. The other insists you’re just not trying hard enough. You both spend hours arguing over whether ‘Part G’ even exists, and by the time you step back, sweating and exhausted, the whole thing looks slightly crooked, and one piece is missing.
You wonder if you should just throw it all out. But you’ve already put so much effort in. And deep down, you believe that if you can just figure out this one part, everything else will magically fall into place.
(Spoiler: It will not.)
Even when you think you’ve finally figured it out, something still feels off. Maybe one of you was never sure about the assembly in the first place but kept going out of obligation. Maybe you forced a few pieces together that were never meant to fit.
Maybe, just maybe, you’ve spent so much time tightening screws and realigning parts that even when you realize it’s completely dysfunctional, you convince yourself it’s better to live with something wobbly than to start over.
Until one day, you walk into someone else’s place and see a perfectly constructed bookshelf — no missing parts, no uneven edges, no emotional damage in the shape of a misplaced Allen wrench. And you realize: maybe love isn’t supposed to be easy, but it also shouldn’t require this much duct tape.
—
Love is like borrowing a library book with someone else’s annotations
One time, I went to dinner with a guy, and he casually mentioned that his ex used to bring him to this exact restaurant. I swear, everyone at Yale and their mother goes to Mecha — it’s not my fault this place has a monopoly on decent ramen!
“She always ordered the tonkatsu ramen,” he said, staring fondly at the menu — without looking up at me, which was probably a blessing, because if looks could kill, we’d be skipping dinner for a funeral. But the only thing that got killed was my appetite. I put my chopsticks down.
What I wanted to say: I am not in a relationship with your ex. Please stop making it feel like a threesome.
What I actually did: Nodded stiffly and stuffed my face with more ramen, as if sheer consumption could drown out the specter of his past relationship looming over the table.
But here’s the thing about dating someone with a lingering history — it’s like borrowing a library book only to find someone else’s notes scrawled in the margins. You get glimpses of what came before you — what they underlined, what stood out to them, where they hesitated. And no matter how much you want to focus on your own story, there’s always the ghost of someone else’s thoughts whispering in your ear.
Maybe it’s an old inside joke you don’t understand, a song that isn’t yours but was once “theirs,” or a restaurant that, as it turns out, comes with a side of nostalgia for someone else’s love life. You try to ignore it, to write over the annotations, but part of you wonders — am I actually creating something new, or just reading between someone else’s lines?
—
Love, as it works out
So, to finally answer Morgan and Ellie’s burning questions — is love all bad? No, I admit. But it’s not what we were told. Love is not exactly a fresh-baked cookie. Not a dramatic airport chase. Not whatever happened in “The Notebook” — which, for the record, seems deeply toxic.
If I had to sum it up, love is like a gym membership you keep forgetting to cancel.
At first, you’re all in. You commit, show up and tell yourself this time, it’s different. Then, reality sets in. You start skipping days, then weeks. You tell yourself you’ll get back into it soon — just as soon as you’re less busy, less tired, less … yourself.
Meanwhile, the charge keeps hitting your bank statement, a monthly reminder of what could have been. And yet, you don’t cancel. You could. You should. But what if one day, you wake up motivated again? What if it was never the gym’s fault, but yours?
So you hold on. Out of hope. Out of guilt. Out of sheer stubbornness. And just when you’re ready to quit, you have one amazing workout. Maybe it’s the rush of endorphins, maybe the treadmill just hit right — but suddenly, you remember why you signed up in the first place.
And before you know it, you’re back. Which is how love works. Even after missed workouts, bad form, and regrettable decisions involving the elliptical, we convince ourselves that eventually, we’ll get it right. It’s the same reason some poor soul out there is still paying for a Planet Fitness membership they haven’t used since 2018 — because quitting feels like admitting defeat.
Most of all, love, like the gym, is a commitment. Sometimes, the hardest part is just showing up — but if you stick with it long enough, it might actually work out. And if even your date is not a good fit, at least you’ll still be fit.