Today is valentine's day, we are celebrating romantic love. But, what exactly is romantic love? According to Ayn Rand, “Love is a response to values. . . One falls in love with the embodiment of the values that formed a person’s character, which are reflected in his widest goals or smallest gestures, which create the style of his soul — the individual style of a unique, unrepeatable, irreplaceable consciousness.” While most people think that love is an expression of unselfishness, Rand’s perspective is the complete opposite. In The Virtue of Selfishness , she writes that, “To love is to value. Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self-esteem, is capable of love — because he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed values. The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.” She also writes that: One gains a profoundly personal, selfish joy from the mere existence of the person one loves. It is one’s own personal,