“Love is like a game of poker. You have to know when to “all in” and when to back out or else you’ll lose everything.” My friend read from the back of her Starbucks cup.

“That’s funny”

“What if you don’t know how to play poker?”

“You don’t know how to play poker?”

“No.”

“Then you “Go fish”’

And we laughed as we discussed the rules of poker.

Later that day I got to thinking about relationships. When it comes to falling in love you cannot approach it cautiously. It will not wait for you to arm yourself. Love, like gambling, has risks involved. In fact Love might be the greatest of all risks.

Maybe that’s why some people thread slowly through life. Avoiding the closeness risk brings. Never taking chances out of fear of losing everything. Never realizing that by not taking those risks they lose their chance to win at love. “You should never gamble what you’re not willing to lose” Someone told me that once. No one should gamble away their opportunity at love. But there are those who risk love willingly. It isn’t till facing the loss of all the things they hold so dear that they realize they gambled more than they could afford to lose.

With love there’s never the reassurance that if you give your heart away that person will love you back. Or that it’ll work and a happily ever after will be written. There’s no way of knowing the future. Or the cards life will send your way.

In poker the only way to stay in the game is not to fold. Given a bad hand you might want out quick. So it’s true that in a relationship a bad hand (a bad relationship) can cause even the most optimistic of hopefuls to become skeptic. Folding out quickly before bets are placed in their next relationship.

It is said that it is in total surrender of all defenses that we truly experience love. I agree. At times you just have to take a leap of faith. Believe with out seeing, hope with out knowing, and dream with out grasping. It takes time to learn when to “all in” or when to call someone’s bluff. Sometimes you just have to face the cards you were dealt and pray for Aces or a Royal Flush. And realize that no matter how many bad cards love deals you… in the end… there is always healing and growing.