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How many times have you been properly in love? Properly, like when it hurts your heart. Do you have

an answer? British journalist and TV presenter Piers Morgan asked Oprah Winfrey this question on the first episode of his CNN talk show Piers Morgan Tonight, and she replied with, “Three”.

“But this is what I learnt: Love

doesn’t hurt,” she said.

Love could have fooled us; in fact,

it did. Dating expert Matthew Hussey

(Gettheguy.co.uk) says that when you feel

like you love someone, the stakes are

higher, making the potential to get hurt

higher too. “It’s entirely possible to

get hurt by someone we love than

by someone we don’t love,” he says.

“Because everything that concerns

that person is emotionally charged, and

when they make us angry, it makes

us passionately angry, and if they

hurt us, we get passionately hurt.”

So what’s Oprah saying?

“I think she means that if you really

love someone, and if they really love you,

then you make every effort not to hurt

each other,” says Hussey. “Everything you

do should come from a loving place.”

But in reality, this isn’t always the

case; relationships are sometimes equal

measures of pleasure and pain.

step up.If you’re used to being treated a

certain way – having your heart put

through a meat mincer, for example –

it’s difficult to accept being loved by

someone who doesn’t hurt you.

“Although our logical minds know that

has got to be better than being hurt, we

fear the unknown – and just because it’s

better logically, it doesn’t mean it’s less

scary,” says Hussey. “Having someone

What is love (baby don’t hurt me)? We’d like to know – without the tears.

actually.

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LOVE & LUSTtruly good for you means you have

to step up your game and be worth

the love they’re giving.”

It’s far easier to be with someone

not worthy of your time, because then

you don’t have to look at yourself and

be the best you can be. Harsh? Maybe.

and love is what, exactly? “I’ve never had a relationship that goes

past the initial giddy period,” says

22-year-old student *Tumi. “My

boyfriend and I just celebrated our one-

year anniversary, and, while I love being

around him, I question if I love him.”

Romcoms have given us a completely

disillusioned idea of romance and

relationships, one where we expect to

see fireworks, feel butterflies and hear

Coldplay songs whenever we see the

leading man in the movie of our lives.

This is why we get a fright when the

soaring soundtrack stops and we’re

faced with a guy with faults and torn

tighty-whiteys. But love isn’t a perfect

feeling, it’s what you do.

“ask yourself, ‘what am i doing to contribute? am i being everything i can be?’.”

to be spontaneous, and to continue to be

sexy”. If you’ve let yourself go and you’re

wondering where the romance has gone,

you need to put down the Four Cheese

pizza, and put on your ‘I want you right

now’ pants. “People complain that their

partners don’t find them sexy, or that they

don’t fancy their partner anymore,” says

Hussey. “I think you both have to think

about what you can do on a daily basis

to make yourself attractive. Ask yourself,

‘What am I doing to contribute? Am I

being everything I can be?’.”

“You have to have an honest desire

for the other person to grow and

achieve their dreams,” says Hussey.

“Love is thinking, ‘Do I genuinely want

the best for this person?’, and if your

actions support this thought.”

work it. Your couple friends with their cutesy pet

names make relationships look easy, if not

vomit-worthy – so if only they’d drop the

PDA and let you in on the secret, right?

Hussey believes a successful relationship

should have a consistent and relentless

drive to make your partner feel special,

“by treating them to surprises, looking for

little ways to make their lives better, ways

Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt): I love how she makes me feel, like anything’s possible, or like life is worth it. “I don’t think it follows,

necessarily, that a person who makes

you feel like anything is possible is

the right one, because you can love

the way someone makes you feel,

but they can still be wrong for you.

Sharing gives your life meaning, and

with relationships like this, you should

just enjoy the excitement, buzz and

thrill of right now.”

Rachel (Chloe Moretz) to Tom: Just because she likes the same bizzaro crap you do, doesn’t mean she’s your soul mate. “People love to find things

they have in common and then use

them to justify why they’re so perfect

for each other. If you both like comic

books, it doesn’t necessarily mean

you’re right for each other; it means

you both like comic books. It says

more about the relationship if you

both have the same values.”

Rachel to Tom: Look, I know you think she was the one, but I don’t. Now, I think you’re just remembering the good stuff. Next time you look back, I, uh, really think you should look again. “We have a tendency,

when we come out of a relationship,

to look back on it and magnify

everything that was great, while

putting all that was wrong out of

our minds. It creates a lot more pain

than we should be feeling.”

Summer (Zooey Duschanel): I woke up one morning and I just knew. Tom: Knew what? Summer: What I was never sure of with you. “It’s important

to analyse where those feelings of

doubt are coming from, and if you

don’t think you’re in love, then you

need to think about why that is. But

you can still be in love with someone

in those moments of wondering. Some

people realise days, weeks, years later

that they were in love at the time.”

Catch the premiere of Dating in the Dark USA on BBC Entertainment, Thursday, September 1 at 8pm.

hussey on quotes from the movie 500 days of summer.

The difference between a great long-term

relationship and an ‘it’s complicated’

relationship is that the two people in the

great relationship see themselves as a

team. “They’re not trying to make their

own rules all the time and they’re not

trying to do everything on their own

with the other person in isolation,”

explains Hussey. “They’re two people

who genuinely work together and

it’s a case of ‘them versus the world’.

Those relationships last forever.”

*Name has been changed.