I’VE come to an unhappy decision about love: I view it pretty much the way I look at Toyota: it’s great for a while until the inevitable reports of its shortcomings start to surface, at which point, I don’t imagine I can have anything to do with it ever again.

(And no amount of recalls or TV ads proffering apologies can fix what’s been broken.)

If ever there was an example of the ugly inevitability of the disintegration of love, one need look no further than how easily expendable Paula Abdul became in American Idol. In this new season, there sits Ellen in her chair, smiling for all the world as though the loopy booze hound hadn’t once warmed that chair. I mean, it seems that, no matter what you do to let love last longer, it simply never does. There’s always something to derail things. Or is it just me? You don’t nag, you turn a blind eye, you count to 20 before saying something scathingly sarcastic. You even let him leave the goddamn seat up, for Pete’s sake. To what avail?

Just in time for Valentine’s, that most clichéd of days that try too hard to be holidays, a new book of non-fiction has been published to answer that very question. Us: Americans Talk about Love is a collection of 44 printed oral histories of people interviewed by author John Bowes about that age-old topic most of us still seem so clueless about: love.

Among the narratives are the recollections of a 40-something wannabe poet who, because he continuously strikes out with women, knows he’ll be alone for the rest of his life, a man wrestling with fidelity and fatherhood while stripping at a gay bar, and a couple involved in an open marriage. What these unsentimental stories dare to show, it struck me even as I contemplated on this column, is that the search for love, with all its contradictions, is truly what unites us as citizens of this earth.

Not war.

One of the more intriguing histories belonged to Nick and Cate who opened their marriage to polyamory. (A transcript of their interview can be found on Salon.com.) I’ve always thought that an open relationship was probably the best way to keep the flame of love going. (What’s happening to me? Valentine’s is in the air and I’m suddenly using Danielle Steele-type prose? Flame of love? Ugh.) Which is why I’ve always suspected I’d only end up with embers. I mean, really. What a gift it would be to be able to say to one’s partner, ‘Okay, honey, you don’t need to limit your desire to only me’. How great would that be? It would have to take some of the pressure of unfulfilled expectations off the couple, wouldn’t it?

Which is why Nick and Cate’s story was so compelling. In their desire to be hip and cosmopolitan and explore other sexual possibilities, they decided to indulge a fantasy about a threesome, which led to unplanned consequences. They invited another man into their bedroom, but that wasn’t successful because Nick wasn’t bisexual enough to appreciate the experience. Then they invited another woman in. But, as they relate it, Cate wasn’t bisexual enough, also, for that to work. And to make matters worse, Nick got emotionally involved with the woman. Rather than sneak around behind her back, Nick asked Cate if he could pursue a separate relationship with Elizabeth. “The reason I went along with it was simply that it seemed interesting. It seemed worth it to me to push my psychological limits, to just work through it… I just feel like if you can be generous in that way, it’s better,” Cate reasoned. So she said yes but discovered that she couldn’t really deal. Well, sure enough, she too soon found herself involved with another man. And, wouldn’t you know, this time it was Nick who felt the pangs of jealousy. Despite this, they both continued to pursue other extraneous relationships — which they claimed were love affairs, and not simply about lust — convinced that it was possible to love more than one person at the same time.

Open relationships are so much better on paper.

If, as the song says, all you need is love, why is it then that we’re always desirous of something more? Something more, which, by the way, only leads to the desire for another something more. I don’t get it. If love, I mean pure love, isn’t jealous, as the Bible suggests, why is it that the prospect of our seeing our mates with other people leaves the sulfuric taste of bile at the back of our throats? Why is it that very often it’s seen as an act of betrayal, rather than the act of generosity it was meant to be?

The truth is, love is a complex and intricate set of emotions, the experience of which varies from person to person. I wish I could be as heroic as Cate, whose devotion to Nick still continues after all these years. In a sense, isn’t the subjugation of her jealousy an immense act of courage? Of, dare I say it, love? Once, a boy I was interested in asked me if I would be open to a threesome. I remember feeling enraged at the idea that he didn’t think I was enough. Because that’s how I saw it at the time: I wasn’t enough to be the only name in lights, besides his, on the marquee. But what if the ultimate act of love is to be that broad-minded, that liberal?

Still, there are those who are happy in love, I suppose. This is the kind of love that has evolved from friendship and respect and, yes, companionship. The kind of love that is free of the drama of sexual entanglement. Like the Kansas City autoworker who was interviewed, who’s been married to his junior-high-school sweetheart for 65 years. “True love exists,” he declares. “If you make it. It’s a true thing if you make it true.” But somehow I think I’ll always end up just a little left of that sentiment. I think I agree with 80-year-old Betty Ann May, the final interviewee, who has divorced one husband and buried two, and now drives her little trailer around, mostly staying in Wal-Mart parking lots. She’s happy alone, she says. “Another piece of ass,” she insists, “isn’t worth the trouble.”

Amen, sister.