As Valentine’s Day approaches, thoughts turn to romance.

If you are thinking, “What romance? I haven’t had a date in two years?” Then I advise patience and self-improvement.

If you are involved in a relationship of any sort, or you have past or future relationships on your mind, it’s time to take stock. We make relationship decisions three ways: with our heads, with our hearts and with our hormones.

Hormones partly determine who is physically attractive to us and what we want to do about it. Our hearts allow us great joy and also great pain when we make ourselves vulnerable to love. In the best of all possible worlds, our heads provide clear thinking and problem-solving about our relationships. All three are necessary for a long-term happy, healthy romance.

There are dangers to leaving out any one of these three elements.

If you try to keep a relationship going without “hormones,” the element of attraction, you miss out on a fundamental joy of life.

It’s hard to sustain a partnership through all its ups and downs if you aren’t excited and attracted by your partner. Hormones alone won’t create the connection you crave, except perhaps physically, but they add spice and strength to your relationship.

Our hearts are easily deceived, sad to say. Often we begin a relationship based on attraction and convince ourselves that it is true love.

We can give our hearts to people for so many of the wrong reasons: because we think we can rescue them, because we think they need us, because somehow we are going to be the one person to help them rise above the misery of their lives.

Your heart needs a healthy person to attach itself to. Battered women stay with abusers because they have given their hearts. Men stay with girlfriends who cheat and cheat again because they are in love.

Our hearts need to be balanced with the wisdom of our heads, our minds.

So what role should reason play in love? You can’t make yourself love someone just by thinking you should. You don’t want to ignore the playful enjoyment of attraction and flirting, or the delicious pleasure of giving your heart to someone you love. But at the same time, you don’t want to be so blinded by love that you put yourself in harm’s way.

Healthy love is difficult at times, but it doesn’t diminish you. It doesn’t damage you repeatedly in your body or spirit.

Both men and women forget to use their minds in romance. They want so fervently to have a soul-mate that they overlook damage to their own souls by partners who aren’t really able to love.

Your head needs to be your sentry, your protector. If your partner is indifferent to your well-being, unwilling to work on the relationship, abusive in word or deed or so very different in values and goals that you can’t stay on your own path in life, your head needs to have a chat with your heart and your hormones.

Each person deserves a relationship that lifts up his or her life. It takes the thrill of attraction from hormones, the warmth of love from your heart, and the wisdom of self-protection from your head to create a long-lasting and enriching romance.

If you or someone you know needs to talk to someone confidentially about matters of the heart or anything else, feel free to make an appointment with one of the professionals at the Counseling Center, at 587-7720, located 213 University Center.