Sure, Ayn Rand hates babies and poor people, but that doesn't mean she's all bad. Her philosophy, Objectivism, is pretty cohesive, and it deals with every aspect of life, including love. It's hard to believe that a nature-hating übercapitalist like Ayn Rand could love anybody, but it's true.

Her biggest novel, Atlas Shrugged, deals with love a lot. Like everything else, she sees love in economic terms: love is a transaction between two people. It sounds cold and heartless, but it's the truth. Here's what one of her characters, Francisco D'Anconia (an Objectivist) has to say about love:

Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a man's sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his value of himself. No matter what corruption he's taught about the virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act which he cannot perform for any motive other than his own enjoyment -- just try to think of performing it in a spirit of selfless charity! -- an act which is not possible in self-abasement, only in self-exaltation, only in the confidence of being desired and being worthy of desire.

Ayn Rand thinks selfishness is a virtue. "Look out for number one" is her motto. How can you worry about other people and ignore yourself? She thinks that's ludicrous. And love is no exception. Would you love someone out of pity? Of course not; you would love someone whom you wanted to love. You would never love someone just for the other person's sake; you would need to be getting something out of it, too.

Francisco continues:

He will always be attracted to the woman who reflects his deepest vision of himself, the woman whose surrender permits him to experience -- or to fake -- a sense of self-esteem. The man who is proudly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer -- because only the possession of a heroine will give him the sense of an achievement, not the possession of a brainless slut.

Ignoring Rand's chauvinism for a while, the first sentence in the above quote is the most important: a man will be drawn to a woman who reflects him. This makes sense. A man wouldn't be attracte to a woman who doesn't share some of the same values or tastes as he does. What would they even talk about? How would they get along?

I see love as being a transaction between two people. Both partners in a relationship need to get something out of that relationship, whether it's spiritual, physical, or philosophical fulfillment. I date you because there is something about you that fulfills some need I have. Maybe you're an excellent singer, or a skilled orator, or you can make houses of playing cards. There is something you have that I want, and vice-versa. You reflect some sort of ideal that I aspire to. A pretty face does not a girlfriend make. There needs to be substance, and substance such that I feel that I'm missing out on something by not being with you.

Love is selfish. And there's nothing wrong with that. I wouldn't waste my time with someone just for the sake of the other person's feelings (or whatever the reason) if I knew that I wouldn't get anything out of the relationship. My time is valuable, too, and charity has no place in relationships. In fact, to me, my own time is the most valuable and I want to be damn sure that I'm getting the most I can out of that time.

You can also put relationships in economic terms. In economics, you're making an economic profit if the value of the next-best thing you could be doing is less than the value of what you're doing right now. The value of the next-best thing is called the "opportunity cost" (for example, the opportunity cost of being at college is equal to the money I could be making working in the real world instead of being here). If I'm not making an economic profit -- that is, if I could be making more money doing something else -- then I go do something else.

A relationship is this way, as well. If I feel like I'm making what could be called "emotional profit" from a relationship, then I stay in that relationship. The alternative is dating someone else, or not dating at all. If my girlfriend is abusive and bastardy, then the emotional profit is negative and it's time to find someone else.

A relationship is also like an investment, say, the stock market. When you invest money, the only reason you give that money to someone else is because you expect all of it back and then some. In a relationship, you're turning over your emotions to someone else. The risk is that your heart will be broken (in the stock market, the risk is that you'll lose some or all of your money). But if you think that the chances of the relationship working out and your emotions getting better (i.e. more happiness) are greater than the chances of your emotions being injured, then you stay in the relationship (or you get into one in the first place). Warren Buffett is the CEO of BerkshireHathaway, and he makes a lot of money because he's good at making lots of money. He plays the stock market, but his motto is that the stock market should be a long-term investment. Sure, this month or this year, the stock market may be down, but the long-term trend is always up. You can't let a small dip in the stock market scare you into taking your money out, because you know that you plan on making money years down the road, not months. Not even one year. Lots of years. The same goes for a relationship. Though you may hit hard times, if you think there's more emotional payoff down the road, it's better to work through the problems than to simply end the relationship.

And then there was a vampire (for those of you who were bored by economics).