I’ll start by saying he doesn’t have to be a singer or songwriter. It’s very unlikely that he will be. He can be an engineer or an entrepreneur or in finance or marketing or still figuring it all out. But I would want him to write a song for me, however terrible it would be. However much the lyrics wouldn’t rhyme or wouldn’t make any sense at all; however awful the melody would sound and embarrassed he would be to sing it; he’ll know that I would like it, because he would be writing a song for me.

When someone writes something of love about you, it’s because they want to be with you, it means that this feeling they are feeling is not merely superficial. It means that you matter to them; it means that they want to know you and be with you – to be with the real you. They want you to see them as they are, however imperfect that is, and that they might want you to one day possibly be able to love that imperfect human that they are.

I, for one, know that I am a difficult person to love for many reasons. I like to be right, for one thing. I am impatient, for another. It’s usually my way or the high way. However much I have tempered myself, I know that in my core, I am often at extremities: really intense or really laid back; really organized or really messy; really put together or really falling apart. And when I like you, I really like you, so I imagine myself as someone who would be scarily dependent and needy. And I would hate myself for it, because I like to feel in control and that I’d be fine alone or not.

So I want a guy who would write a song for me. Who would tell me that it’s okay for me to be me, all of me, at all times. The lyrics would be from the heart, and he’d tell me the truth: that I am difficult to love but that he loves me anyway. And that sometimes he doesn’t know how to love me. But that he is doing his best and that he’s always going to do his best. Or maybe it’s not a song, maybe it’s a poem, maybe it’s a painting or a silly blog post or some scribbles on a disposable napkin.

But he would have created something, something that though imperfect like me, he knows that I’d love. Because it’d remind me of me and him and us – imperfect but somehow right for each other. So create something for someone you love; create something for someone you want to love. And maybe if you ever get the courage, show it to them.