Nothing sells like love. It is the trashy heart hanging outside every gift shop, the conspicuous couple sitting along a sea-facing promenade, the candy/gum promotional campaigns galore. Love is bought; sold and rehashed everywhere one looks... Nowadays love is manifested through the urgent, whispered lies of hormone-crazed teenagers, the fruitless relationships formed through the internet.

Basically we have led this greatest of all feelings down a road that is paved with greed, lust and redundancy all the way to hell. This side of the conservative hemisphere we have learned to quell any emotion that does not have the blessings of our elders and so we are born to believe that all those who endeavour to take this path are individuals with little character or moral standing, while the other half of the world has just gotten bored of being faithful to anything but their pets.

Childish, cheap, vulgar are but a few of love's synonyms these days. The number of youngsters out on a date, even in our prude of a country, is staggering; therefore does that not mean that there is hope for the emotion this scribe is harping about? Done to death like one already said folks! Let's not flog it any further.

The crux of the matter is we all want to be in love. There are no two ways about it. It is like wanting to have a good day; waiting for rain to come after a dry spell; wanting a good meal; or expecting a cozy bed after a hard day's work. It is second nature for us to want a high in a life that is mundane and hinged on survival alone. To be thought about by someone, to have butterflies at the simple mention of somebody's name. Yes, a lot of the readers have, right about now, started shaking their heads. Our faith has dwindled. We shun all things romantic, especially the men. Unfortunately for most of us, we need their species in this.

Romance novels are made fun of, movies are called 'chick flicks' if they have anything to do with a man and a woman uttering words of endearment to each other. Where are the men who waited in the rain to serenade you, opened doors for you, took hours deliberating on how to make you catch your breath at a gift they bought for you, curbed all their animal urges until you willingly gave yourself to them?

Where is Edward Cullen? The guy who has the ability to flit in and out of your room, and uses that time to watch you sleep or just talk to you if you decide to be awake? The guy who has the urge to drink your blood but instead trains his instincts to actually become your protector and saviour? The one who agonises over giving you what you want when you want it? Who will not laugh or cringe when you trip over your feet or not look your glamorous best all day? And right about now this scribe has probably lost all male readers. If you are still reading we still have hope.

So what really is the point? Is it that we have too much or too little of this effervescence of an emotion? It has become a tug of war of the worst kind. Whereas the male populace refuses to be sucked into romance and looks upon it like a bad word the ladies become more and more in need to find a 'soul mate' which raises their standards to such a degree that no 'human' male will do any more. It is not that their yardstick for measuring their better halves have become inevitably unmatchable, it is that men have stopped paying too much attention to trivial details like feelings. Has that been an age-old tradition? For sanity's sake one would not like to believe so. Fiction cannot be completely without fact and inspiration for the centuries of poets and playwrights could not just have been the lovely scenery. Perhaps that is why our century has a dearth of great works of prose or rhyme, barring a handful. Maybe that is why we look to vampires to end this yearning.