Love is a booming business. All the magazine covers shout at us about how to get our man, how to keep him, how to find a new one. We listen to songs and watch tv shows where people do nothing but chase it and tempt it and cling to it. We go to the gym, we buy wrinkle creams and aftershaves, we hang out at the right places. We do so much to draw someone to us.

We are so concerned over finding that person and what that person has to offer us that we forget to make sure we have anything to offer that person, when we find them. We spend so much time looking for these things outside of us because we are trying to fill a void inside us.

I get asked all the time what's the best advice I can give about love, and keeping it. I know this sounds trite but there are a reason sayings come about: it has to start inside of you. Take care of yourself first, and love yourself first. If you have nothing about yourself you like you cannot expect anyone else to do so. And if you want love only to soothe you for all the things you lack eventually you will lose it. People are only human. Eventually they will fail to fill some hole you have in precisely the way you need them to, they will fail to love you in the way you expect them to, and you will be hurt.

All the candles and oils and ritual baths in the world can only take you so far. It is not in my self-interest, as a seller of such things, to tell you this, but I do. What I know, what I can teach you, can get you just so far. The rest is your challenge.