I was five years old and it was the 4th of July in Texas. This meant that my family had spent more money on fireworks than Christmas presents and we had camped out at whichever house laid in legal jurisdiction to light some shit on fire.

As soon as I could get my tiny fingers on a sparkler, I took that bad boy and got the preteen neighbor girl to light it for me (no adult would let an unsupervised small child hold a stick on fire). As predicted, I burned my hand and was left with a nasty little wound and an eventual scar that I still have to this day.

Aside from the physical impact, it became very clear that I was a fan of fire. This attraction grew to define my love life and my strong belief that you gotta have heat for a relationship to work. Of course I also developed an infatuation with the young and innocent Drew Barrymore in the life-changing (and heartbreaking) movie Firestarter.

The older females get, the louder their ovaries start screaming to get fertilized and the faster their their biological clocks start sending out alarms. Being in my early twenties, I press the snooze button each time I feel that clock start to beep, but there are still changes that come with being older.

It becomes easier and easier to create a checklist or a sort of resume for the kind of partner you want to end up with. But you can’t make the decisions to date someone purely because you wouldn’t have to lie about their criminal record when describing them to your mother. Love is about listening to your heart ... and of course the voice downstairs that controls your libido.

The problem with sparks is that they can get tricky. Often it turns into a wild flame, leaving you to turn into a flocking moth. And while NOBODY (sarcasm) has ever compared being attracted to something dangerous with a simple moth metaphor, there’s validity to it.

It’s easy to become infatuated with something that could harm you. The excitement that comes with doing something risky is enough to make the pain worth it. To quote the one hit wonder Willa Ford, “I wanna be bad.” But as proven by the fact that the majority of you probably did not get that reference at all ... being “bad” doesn’t always work out.

There has to be more than just getting the tinglies whenever you think about that person. Life brings so many complications and problems; a relationship cannot survive on lust alone. The existence of that spark doesn’t necessarily mean that you should be with someone. But if that hot connection isn’t there, it most definitely means that it’s not worth your time and energy.

The bottom line is you can’t settle for anyone other than a lover who will make your heart race ... and not just when you partake in late night Adderall binges together the night before finals.