What is love?

I recently realised that I know absolutely nothing about love. I know I've been writing about it, whining about not finding it, looking for it, expecting it to come my way, all these things, but I don't know the first thing about it.

This only occurred to me recently and the reason is I have been dating someone for longer than a month! Yay, congrats to me! Seriously, it's not even funny, it's such a new thing in my life and it looks like I am learning as much about myself as I am learning about him.

I am learning that having been single for almost 5 years (yes, my dears, almost 5 years!) turned me into a selfish person. I want things to happen the way I want them (after all, I've been waiting for so long, I might as well get what I want and how I want it!), I want him to do the things I want and jump to conclusions because of my past experiences etc. I am also learning that I am pretty traumatised person and somehow I keep expecting things to turn out for the worst, despite everything going pretty smoothly. And that, to a subliminal level, I am creating scenes and starting up arguments only to prove myself that I was right: things would end up badly sooner or later. That, despite thinking that I am selfless, I actually only really care about myself and what the other can give to me...

Hard things to swallow...  But I realised that by facing this reality I may still have a chance to find out what love is. For now I am catching glimpses of it: liking someone despite their shortcomings, accepting that not everything and everyone is perfect (least of all me!), that things don't always go the way we plan, accepting I am not always right and that perhaps we should give the other person a chance to surprise us with some love instead of always expecting them to let us down...