While waiting in line at the local Safeway this week, my eyes mindlessly scanned the magazine racks at the checkout counter. This week's cover of Time magazine immediately grabbed my attention. The photo of an attractive scantily clad couple in a seemingly private and passionate embrace was more Redbook than weekly newsmagazine. The Cosmo like headline teased, “How Your Love Life keeps you Healthy.” The stories inside read like a torrid Discovery Channel primer on the birds and the bees: “The Science of Lust”, “Mating”, “Animal Urges”, and “S&M.”

I purchased the magazine thinking to myself let's find out: What is this thing called “love?” Whether we spend our lives singly or as doubles we've been programmed since birth to find love, be in love, be loved, love! Behaviorists point out that our first movements outside the womb are to extend our arms in search of an embrace. We are doomed to repeat this motion until we find the supreme connection in the arms of our soulmate.

Ah…love. I remember many a late night dorm conversation dissecting the finer points of this elusive emotion. As naïve freshmen we longed for that first kiss from an upperclassmen, which we secretly avowed confirmed their feelings of mutual attraction. Giddy with excitement we obsessed over the object of our affection's every word and glance in our direction. Come Spring, feverish activity exploded as dozens of young nubile bodies rubbed up against one another in lecture hallways, dark corners, lawns of warm grass and behind closed dormitory doors. This behavior signed, sealed and delivered by Cupid.

Love is an elusive trickster sent to tempt singles with the promise of something more. What proof can you offer that love actually exists? A warm embrace, a shuddering kiss are acts but not the thing itself. My feminist friends postulate that, men to enslave women, to take their property and to persuade them to give up their rights, created the idea of love.

At 36, Suzanne, a marketing director for a San Francisco telecommunications firm, is a slim, attractive blonde with a sunny personality. Suzanne belongs to a group of single women in their mid-to-late 30s who meet monthly to explore the interrelationship of the feminine and the masculine. She explains why women need love like a fish out of water needs a bicycle. “The reason we're built the way we are is because we should be non-monogamous, men should be monogamous. Women are multiply orgasmic. We can't be satisfied by one partner. Our closest living primates use sex across family lines, gender, and use it to keep the peace, negotiate. They use it in every way. Women are being pushed in the direction of being monogamous.” Love is the chain that binds us to the other.

And love's links are a heavy load for singles who are told you can't buy love, but then are marketed to 24/7 by online and offline dating & matchmaking services promising to find “the one.” Love is definitely for sale. And some believe you can pretty much find love anywhere. According to Match.com, in a December 2003 survey of more than 500 singles, 6 4% of Match.com subscribers have experienced "online chemistry."

Chemistry, researchers believe is the secret of attraction. Our brains literally and emotionally catch fire. Claudia, a 50 year old woman with fiery red hair and I met at a New Age New Year's Day party where Claudia was seeking advice on how to direct her search for love in 2004. When I asked her about love she replied matter-of-factly, “Love is the universal uniform.” When I pressed further she said it's the “electrical charge to awaken the cellular structure of the human being to breathe deep and appreciate life.” Being in love is definitely an altered state.

Anthropologist Helen Fisher confirms the existence of physical evidence for our pursuit of passion in her new book Why We Love the Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love . In a recent interview in ELLE magazine, she theorized, “Romantic love is a drive, probably stronger than the sex drive. It's harder to control.” It may be lust at first sight but it's love that drives us to distraction. Dopamine, a natural stimulant in the brain, affects arousal and the focus of our attention. The flip side is the same chemical interaction is associated with addition—and yes, as the song says, you can be addicted to love.

It's this very physical description of love, which rankles some. After a satisfying dinner with a couple of black Muslim married friends at my home, we settled down to our typical after dinner repartee of sex, religion and politics. His wife charges too many American couples are interested in “scratch & sniff” her metaphor for sex. He smiles at his wife and says quietly “I don't say ‘I love you', I say ‘I trust you.' I'm uncomfortable with the word love and what it means in this society. But I know what it means to ‘trust' and that's the deepest feeling I have for my wife.”

In western culture we're very skeptical of arranged marriages. We see marriage as the natural result of falling in love. As if losing our balance caused us to lose our mind to the idea of commitment. Whereas East Indian and Asian marriage practices support the belief in love growing over time. Not the microwave American love matches where heating things from the inside out produces a “chemistry” which cools if not consumed or consummated quickly.

Ian, a forty-something Welsh transplant, points out that there is more of a need to verbalize emotions in American culture than in a lot of European cultures. He grew up rarely hearing those three little words, “I love you.” He looks me directly in the eyes and says with his European lilt “My father would say ‘I missed the sound of your voice.' We communicate through subtleties. It's understood.”

As a single person it is even more of a challenge to understand and embrace this concept of love. Not only might it not exist but I can't even use the word?!! Bah humbug! The season of love approaches. On Vixen and Cupid! The telltale signs of the virus have begun to appear around me: the swapping of bodily fluids in public places, the loss of appetite by close friends, and the I-can't-possibly-live-without-him-or-her-obsessions. Does love actually does exist? I cannot touch it or hold it. With each new relationship, I ask my self “Is this the real thing?”

Do you believe in love? Send me a love note!