By Stephanie Caruso
1-1. Love wars defined,-a. The term “Love War” is often a vague name for any one of a great variety of relationship operations. As applied to all relationships, love wars are operations undertaken by members of the opposite sex involved in budding, ending, or flat out failed relationships wherein strategic plotting is combined with diplomatic pressure in the internal or extreme affairs of another party whose dating life is unstable, inadequate, or unsatisfactory for the preservation of love. Love wars can also be fought by outside friends who are non-relationship participants. As herein used the term is understood in its most comprehensive sense, and all the successive steps taken ill the development of a love war and the varying degrees of force applied under various situations are presented.
In 1578, it is believed that John Lyly wrote “all’s fair in love and war.” Yes, perhaps, but nowadays I tend to believe that the saying should be reformed to “all love is war.” A bit cynical I know, but think about it. Pat Benatar once shouted to us that love is a battlefield and really, she wasn’t far off.
We don’t live life in the movies, where our secret love bumbles into our grocery store and help us pick up the box of cereal we embarrassingly knocked over. No. Real life means we strategize and plot. We figure out what grocery store they might just happen to populate, and perhaps which time of the week they may find themselves there. We of course nonchalantly pretend to have no idea that they’re there and-oops-knock over the cereal in a woeful moment of shame. There are no happy accidents, there is preparation met with good timing. But back to the wisdom of Pat Benatar.
Love is a battlefield. Battles have models and structures, love has flowers and hearts. I would much rather try to understand such an abstract concept using a model than trying to figure something out that’s represented by two doves smiling at each other. When have you ever seen a dove smile? I’ll tell you when-never. With battlefield models, love becomes easier to understand. Well, let’s face it, relationship interactions become easier to understand (love is like a black hole. You know they exist, but just try explaining it to someone).
There are many different techniques in this battlefield of love. Some can be used against us, some we can use ourselves. But as every successful general knows, it takes strategizing and plotting to have a good shot at winning. The more we understand how we’re fighting, the more “happy accidents” we’ll appear to have.

(cdn.last.fm)