Falling in love becomes more challenging, and letting go of past loves is even harder. Why doesn’t love get easier with age? It seems unnatural—backwards, even. You’d think more wisdom and experience would make it easier to find love. And in a way, it does; falling in love is partly a decision. Love isn’t magical on its own; we make it magical.

However, with age, that magic fades. Life’s magic fades too.

How much the magic fades depends on the person. Because “true” magic (à la Harry Potter) doesn’t exist, the magic we’re familiar with happens when you accept that the answer to life is not knowing the answer.

This is partly why love loses its magical qualities over time. The more intelligent we become, the less there is to wonder about. The more you understand love and your role in it, the harder it is to find romance.

At the same time, some of the most intelligent people in the world fall in love frequently. So there must be more to the equation.

To fall in love, you need to feel that you need love. If you don’t believe you need or deserve love, you’ll reject it—consciously or subconsciously.

Wanting or needing love means desiring a partner to share life’s adventures. In other words, it means feeling lonely. Thus, the more independent and intelligent you are, the harder it is to find love.

Independence—more than intelligence—ruins relationships. Consider why people break up even when things seem to be going well. Often, it’s because they want independence. They don’t want to spend every single day with their significant other.

Even if they love each other, they need time for themselves. They need to spend time alone.

When two people enter a relationship, they give up some of their independence for a loving and caring partnership. And it’s a beautiful thing. But the more independent you are, the more likely you are to feel suffocated. People often feel suffocated when their partner has different ideas about the level of independence “allowed” in the relationship.

When one person is significantly more independent than the other, the relationship becomes messy. The less independent person will cling to the more independent partner, who will seek some breathing room. One feels hurt, and the other feels smothered.

The trick is finding someone just as independent as you. But even this doesn’t guarantee compatibility—your need for independence will vary over time, and there’s no way to predict what you’ll need in the future.

Still, having similar requirements for independence makes it more likely you’ll be compatible.

However, “independence compatibility” isn’t enough. Your intelligence will complicate things.

Romantic love—as we perceive it now—seems doomed.

We learn math, science, literature, and even how to balance a checkbook in school. But we were never taught how to love. There are no classes, no textbook chapters dedicated to it. We go into love blind, assuming that because love is natural, we don’t need to learn how to do it properly.

Running is natural, but we have professional athletes and trainers. Talking is natural, but we have professional speakers. Thinking is natural, but we have scholars and philosophers. Love may be instinctive, but there are certainly better and worse ways to love. There is plenty to learn.

Yet we don’t create a lesson plan for love. Loving is arguably the most important thing people do, but we don’t teach our kids how to do it properly.

When intelligent people experience love, they question it. They seek to understand, explore, and test it.

Get stuck on a math problem, and it’ll drive you nuts. Get stuck trying to figure out love, and it almost certainly will drive you mad.

Love has started wars, taken lives, tortured, maimed, and destroyed. The more intelligent you are, the more perplexed you will be by how our world understands and portrays love.

Because love centers on emotion, it’s not easy for an intelligent person to find and keep it. The emotions can send them into an anxious tailspin.

If you’re looking for a theory on love, you need to find one—or accept the truth that you aren’t willing to face.

Love isn’t magical on its own. We make it magical. It’s all in our heads.