Love is conditional.

My wife and I have come up against a topic a few times in jest that has stirred debate in the past about the depths of true love. In the movies, poems, stories or other fantasies of love we're taught that love is unconditional! True love has no boundary. I, callously, find this to be a big fat hairy lie on the wart of sentimentalism.

Love is conditional. Under specific conditions anyone can stop loving another person or thing for that matter. Love that Chilly Cheeseburger? The first time you find a large toenail hanging off the bun you may find that love quelched. Love your high school sweetheart? As soon as you walk into the locker room after the big game to find your cheerleader honey doing "sit-ups" on the JV coach you find the brick wall on the highway of endless amore.

Anyone who denies these truths has either A) never been truly in love or B) exists in a fantasy bubble-city filled with Meg Ryan and Hugh Grant clones. A recent discussion with my Ladylove brings forth the truth of this sage wisdom.

"If I became a vampire, would you let me turn you?" my wife asked after the completion of a True Blood episode.

"I don't know, honey. As much as I love you, I really don't hate the sun as much as you and I've tasted enough of my blood in this lifetime to let me know I hate the taste."

"What if I were a werewolf?"

"I'd totally let you shred and turn me into a werewolf," I replied hastily. "They get all the cool things with long life and immunity to diseases, plus I'd get an excuse to go psycho once a month like most women do!"

"If you turned into a zombie, I think I'd have to join you, because I wouldn't want to go on alone," my wife noted.

I informed my crestfallen wife that if she went zombie I'd crush in her skull and run.

See? We have conditions on our love. I'd join my gal for werewolvery, most likely hit up a life of lightless blood-drinking, but when it comes to being a mindless meat-machete it's game over! I guess I could say I would kill my zombie-bride out of love because I couldn't bear to see her in such a horrid state (nothing cool about zombies, kids), but that'd be lying to you all. The conditions of my love are set pretty high, though, so I feel like I'm on pretty good ground.

She's a Lucky Girl...

In most things in life, I consider myself plagued by abysmal luck. I've never won a game of Bingo, I rarely luck out with a great parking spot or fast checkout lane, and I don't even bother playing the lottery. I have come to accept the fact that in a past life, I committed some terrible crimes against humanity that I now have to pay for in this life.

Or, perhaps, all of the luck in my life was focused on one main thing, one event that changed my life irrevocably for the better: meeting and falling in love with my husband. Not only that, but he fell in love with me back. For both of us, since that first 14-hour marathon date over five years ago, there has been no one else.

Our relationship is not perfect. There are ups and downs: some more up and some more down than others. But this is how love works; you don't move through a relationship in a linear fashion. You don't love each other the same from one day to the next, or even steadily more or less from day to day. Love evolves and changes from day to day, month to month, year to year. There are fits and starts, bursts of love and bursts of anger. Some days it's easier to accept the other person just as they are, and some days you want to scream if you see that same tick one more time. An overwhelming majority of the time I'm happy or content in my relationship and in life with my husband. That's what counts.

Here, I will chronicle the dichotomy: the bursts of love and joy I have with my husband, and those times when I wonder how we ended up together in the first place.