J: Good morning Hank, it's Monday.
So like Ze Frank and Wheezy Waiter I recently had the opportunity to talk to Rainn Wilson, and since I've always felt in my heart that Rainn Wilson would give really good romantic advice, I chose to ask twitter if they had romantic problems that we could potentially solve together.
And they did.

Alright, so the first question we have is, er, how do you get over unrequited love? How do you know when to give up?

R: I think that, um, unrequited love means that you love someone and they don't love you. So, if you're pursuing that, then you really need to learn to love yourself, because if you really loved yourself, you would only really be giving love towards someone that was reciprocating. So there's something wrong inside you.

Requited love equals, um, something broken inside.

J: I agree.

R: For instance...I had unrequited love through most of my high school years with Tria Smith. And, we're now good friends. I really loved her and she did not requite that love, but I was a really messed up young kid. I guess I was only 16, so you can't really fault me for it.

J: Yeah, I was, I had a similar experience of unrequited love through high school, but it wasn't just with one person, it was with like a series of- really, with anyone. I requited love to all of my class mates, and then none of them requited it in return.

R: Just a vocabulary note, what is 'to requite'?

J: I- it's a word I made up.

R: Yeah, but it has to be- 'requite' is a word, but what is 'requited love' if there's 'unrequited love'?

J: I think that's what's know in English Composition as a neglected positive, er, where we stuck with the negative version but we abandoned the positive [during which, Rainn mimes his mind being blown]. I agree with you, completely, as a married guy with one kid, I have to say that I cannot talk to my high school girlfriend, um, because- or that high school, my great high school unrequited love- because it's still super awkward. Um, and I act, like, I get nervous and shaky whenever I'm in a situation where, er, she is-

R: And your wife picks up on that. And so your wife is like, er, uh-uh, right?

J: No no, my wife would never be- my wife would never, like, tell me who to talk to, it just makes me uncomfortable. So I think it varies for different people, I think some people have like-

R: Interesting. Maybe there's still a spark there?

J. No, I don't think there's a spark...[laughs]. I feel bad because I think she watches this show, so now it's gonna be awkward...

R: Oh no...You have the power of editing, though, you know, you can edit that out.

J: So I have a second question for you-

R: Yeah.

J: How do you know if someone is the one, or if you're in love?

R: The definition of love changes as you get older. I'm 46 years old. I think about love very differently now to when I was 36, 26 or 16. I think about love, right now, as, er, appreciating all of the greatest things about a person's soul, and seeing positive aspects in someone: generosity, kindness, er, humor, and really looking for that in their eyes, and connecting with that. That's what I do with my wife, and I love her more deeply that I have. But it's, it's different, there's not any romance to it, there's not, um, there's no candles being lit or flower petals being scattered, or anything like that.

J: Right, right, right. I always- whenever people ask me that question I always- I, it seems to me like that question presupposes
that love is an event; that, like, love is this event that happens to you one day, and the love virus arrives, and forever after you are infected with it. And even if the idea of 'the one', er, is an event-based idea in some ways, like this, this person walks into your life and then forever after...that person is 'the one'. But for me- we're both like, old married guys, so, er, but-

R: Yeah, why is anyone even watching this?

J: Yes, seriously! [laughs]

R: There's gradations of love, is there not? I love my dog, um, I love Bobby Miller (our channel manager here at SoulPancake who's helping me run this chat), um, but I don't love him as much as Devon, the co-founder of this website, who I've known for- intimately- for 5 years. And I don't love him as much as other friends, and then I don't love them as much as my wife, and I love them differently than my parents, and I love my parents differently than my love for my child- is the deepest love- I love...God. Um, but it's all different kinds of love. Romantic love is passion, being carried away by something, just as endorphins and adrenaline coursing through your body, and you can't live without that person, and you're, you dream of their face, and you're just, like, time stops when you're with them. And that's great. It's fun, it's awesome, it's beautiful, every person should experience it, it's fantastic. But it doesn't last that way, there is no way to sustain that. Not after you've seen someone poop.

J: [laughing] Right, yeah, totally.

R: That's literally when romantic love stops. You're like, oh, they're wiping their poopy butt right now, you know what I mean?

J: Yeah, I think sometimes people get sad about that, like, particularly young people, they hear old people like us that, you know, love isn't an event, it's a process, and it changes and evolves. And that sounds depressing to them, because they want this, like, fierce, crazy, stupid love where you do dumb things all the time, and you act totally spontaneously and everything. But I have to say, I genuinely love my wife so much more than I ever did-

R: I do too, I love your wife, I love your wife so much, I love your wife-

J: Yeah. I actually feel the same about your wife, I love her so much than I did, you know, when we first met 10 minutes ago.

R: Wow, wow.

J: She seems great.

R: Fascinating.

J. Yeah..er...right, last question: I just got dumped- not me, the person, the person I'm quoting. Er, I just got dumped, what do?

R: I think that, er, first of all, it's important to feel the feelings around getting dumped. Um, people say like, "oh you gotta get back on your feet and you gotta get out there and just do something fun and see your friends and remember what life's all about.” But there is a grieving process. It is the death of something. It is the death of a relationship. There is pain with that. You have to experience that pain, you have to fully process it. You can't really move on until you've felt those feelings, and then you can move on in a lot of different ways. But if you move on before you've processed it, it's gonna be like a little, um, if they like— I had a doctor like had to take out a cyst out of my scalp. I had like a cyst in my scalp. And they, but they have to make sure they get it all cause then it can like grow back. It means you didn't get all of the stuff out of your cyst.

J: It's a fantastic analogy for me because I recently had a cyst drained by my doctor. And he drained it into a cup just so he could have the pleasure of showing me all the stuff that was inside of my cyst.

R: Where was your cyst?

J: Right here, on the inside of my arm [indicates a part of his arm]
This is, by the way, this is what old people talk about.

R: Their cysts?

J: How we drain our cysts.

R: I got a story, I got a medical story that's gonna blow that out of the water. Are you ready?

J: I'm ready.

R: I had my scrotum drained.

J: Oh boy.

R: I was collecting water in one of my scrotums, and so one of my ballsacks was way bigger than the other ballsack. It was like a golf ball and a baseball.

J: Oh my gosh.

R: At first, the doctor did a syringe. [Mimics the draining with a syringe]

J: [shudders]

R: It was like 8 ounces.

J: Oh ho ho.

R: But you know what? It filled back up. It's called a hydrocele, look it up. Hydrocele. C-E-L-E
And then I had to go under the knife, and get it — they had to take a membrane out of my scrotum. But everything's fine, now. You should see it. In fact–
[stands up, reaches for zipper]

J: Yeah, no... Yes! When we started this conversation, Rainn, the one thing that I was confident about was that we were not going to discuss scrotal swelling. So that just goes to show you that life is full of beautiful surprises.

R: That's right, you gotta roll with it.
I think we learned a very valuable life lesson and that's what happens when you get dumped: you just gotta roll with it. Bring it all back together. Boom.

J: Well I really appreciate you taking the time and giving  us such amazingly good advice.
Check out SoulPancake at soulpancake.com, youtube.com/soulpancake
It's really, really interesting stuff and I'm really excited that, er, you're bringing this important voice to YouTube.

R: Well thank you! Um, you know, we do this all the time at SoulPancake: we talk about life's big questions and um we're gonna be exploring a lot of that stuff on our new YouTube channel. Do you have any YouTube channel pointers?

J: Yeah, I mean, the thing that's worked best for us is just to use giraffe sex as the thumbnail.

R: Hey, you know what the world's most dangerous animal is?

J: Hmm, man?

R: [silent]

J: [laughs]

R: Let's not say anything else. Let's walk away from this interview.

J: Alright.

R: Seriously, I– seriously, speak of my love- I love you.

J: I love you back, Rainn Wilson. As we say in my home town: don't forget to be awesome.