When it comes to Love, Do You Believe In Fate

The chorus of a favorite Rascal Flatts' song, "Bless the Broken Road," goes a little something like this: "Every long lost dream led me to where you are. Others who broke my heart , they were like Northern stars, pointing me on my way into your loving arms." With a single glass of wine on a particularly wistful day, those words can bring tears to my eyes—because we've all taken tangled steps to reach a man or woman we love. But is that fate, or simply the way life works out?

The topic came up with a friend on a recent evening. "Fate's crap," she said, bluntly. "You know how people have a habit of saying that ridiculous phrase when you're searching for something that's missing? 'It'll be the last place you look.' Well, duh! Just like the person you end up with is the last person you date. That's not fate—that's just life."

And that I understand. But the romantic in me wants to view things a little differently. While I can't fully side with fate, I can see each step, each past love, each regret, not only led me to the person I'm with and love today but made me into a woman capable of loving him. Change a single variable—remove one ex-boyfriend, one failed marriage, or even one move across the country—and would I have stood the woman I am today, looking across a crowd only to lock eyes with my guy, ready to fall in love? I don't know—and I wouldn't toy with those steps, or fate, if that be it, to find out.

Another friend has a different perspective: "Because I believe in The One, I do believe in fate," she says. "What I don't get is why we have to go through God knows what to get to him. It would be so much easier if fate would label people with the appropriate signs so we could stop making mistakes along the way to finding The One."

It's certainly more movie- moment -appropriate to believe in fate leading you toward true love. But it's hard to argue with the logic that your last love is simply that—the last—and was hardly ordained by some unseen life script. Either way, I still think it's important to be grateful for the steps you take until you no longer have to take them—fate or not.

So, when it comes to love, do you believe in fate? Do you think we're led on a path to our life's great love or we simply end up with the "last" person?