Before I left to study abroad in Budapest, my family warned me, "Don't fall for a Hungarian." This advice was repeated several times and with heartfelt conviction. There was to be no confusion; my exclusive job in Hungary was to not fall in love with anyone living outside of Los Angeles.  

            This got me to thinking about how we find love. America is a romantic country. We want the "happily ever after," and we desperately want to find our so-called soulmate. We join Match.com, Nerve.com, MySpace, American Singles, OkCupid, JDate, It's Just Lunch, Greater Relations, Great Expectations, go on blind dates, endure speed dating, go to bars, clubs, coffeehouses, and psychics. We were relieved when Rachel and Ross ended up together and hoped that Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke would really meet again in six months. We all fear not having a New Years date and hope that date will stick around through Valentine's Day. Yet there is one place in which we seem to be decidedly unromantic - our dating radius. We are desperate to find The One, as long as they are no more than a half-hour drive away. Date someone in West Los Angeles? Are you kidding me? Have you seen the 405?

            I did meet someone in Budapest. He's wonderful - brilliant (he speaks six languages!), attractive (in a Jason Lee kind of way), funny (he does the best Borat impression I've ever heard), and, more than anything, he is truly kind. There are certain people in life that can make you feel like you're home anywhere - even in the most remote regions of the world - and with him, I have found a home in Budapest. Yet I know that once I leave at the end of December, I will more than likely never see him again. And why? Because we both are sticking to the plans we made before we met and to change them now would be difficult. What happened to "all you need is love?" In reality, it seems "all you need is love... if it's convenient."

            So I will go back to Los Angeles and continue dating men in the 323, 818, and maybe, if they're really special, the 310. And I will fantasize about "the one" and never let myself stop to consider that I might have already found him. No, he has to still exist, somewhere in LA, somewhere in my Dating Radius.

            Except, wait. This doesn't make any sense.

            People backpack through Europe after high school, join the Peace Corps in Africa, become a WWOOFer in New Zealand. And why? Because they want to "find themselves." We are all in the constant pursuit of discovering who we are, though really, we are right here. If I want to know who I am, I don't need to go to Yemen to figure it out. Of course that would be fantastic - a fun adventure filled with life experience that would probably help me become a better person, but really, when you strip it all down, we all found ourselves the day we discovered we had ten fingers and ten toes. However, what I haven't found, what I haven't discovered, is the person I'm going to spend the rest of my life with.

If a man, ready to settle down, ever said, "I'm off to backpack through Asia to find love," people would think it was either code for "I'm off to have sex with underage Cambodian girls," or that he were crazy. However, saying, "I'm off to backpack through Asia to find myself," now that sounds like a productive romantic journey. I'm not saying people should travel the world looking for love, but what I am saying, is that if we are lucky enough to find someone who is that elusive other piece of the puzzle, that person that makes you happy and feel like you're home, why in the world wouldn't you change the particulars of your life to accommodate the most essential component for what we all really want - happiness?

            Still, my defiance to this norm will rest within my heart and mind. For I, like everyone else, fear that if I do take that leap, change my whole life for one person, and it doesn't work out, I will feel like a fool. Fear, the enemy of life, is also the enemy of love. So I will return to the comfort zone of my dingy dating puddle, and leave the sparkling colors of this expansive world to the dreams of my sleeping life and the boundless pages of my nostalgic poetry.

Or maybe, I will look for an internship in Budapest next summer. Figure it out. And maybe I will pursue love outside the box. And maybe, just maybe, I will defy my way out of the 323, and into my new Dating Radius - the world.