Sharon and Cindy are in love. Sharon is a 43–year-old Jewish millionaire from London. Cindy is a 35-year-old resort performer from Eilat, Israel. They had a 15-year romance before getting married in 2005, during which time Sharon often traveled to Israel to visit her sweetheart, according to the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.

Oh, and Cindy is a dolphin.

At the wedding ceremony, Cindy’s trainers threw her some mackerel, after which Sharon herself jumped into the water to swim with her new husband. Sharon says she is not a pervert. In fact, she claims to be “the happiest girl on earth”. Only time will tell if Cindy is in fact the happiest Delphinidae.

Interspecies marriages. Kind of makes you wonder what the whole institution of marriage is really about. There are many in this country who would say that Sharon and Cindy are just as “married” as any gay or lesbian couple are.S There are those who would say that they are just as “married” as any man and woman could be. If marriage is strictly a legal contract, then it’s up to your government whether you are in fact bound ‘till death. If it’s a spiritual thing, then maybe your local deity has to call the shots. And if it’s just about “love,” in all its pink, red, chocolaty, mushy glory, then Sharon and Cindy will indeed be swimming side by side for all of eternity.

And did you know that dolphins are the only mammals other than humans who have sex for fun? Adds a whole other sick layer to this story, doesn’t it?

The patrons of www.marryyourpet.com certainly believe that love is all you need. The site itself has a kind of joking quality to it: the front page reads, “So you've found your partner for life, only thing is - he's an animal. Not just that he leaves hair in the bath and has abominable table manners, but that really he's an animal, i.e. with feathers, scales or whatnot.”

But then you get to the section where people can post their own love stories, and things get a bit more...intense. Take Terry and Lucy for instance: ”I have had my Lucy (shes a yellow lab) for 3 years. She is the best thing that ever happened to me. We love going for long walks and fetching the bone. I was married until Lucy came along. My wife met my needs, but she was nothing compared to my little Lucy." I don’t even want to think about what kind of “needs” little Lucy was meeting better than his wife could.

And then there’s Jacob and Sally McMan: "I went to Petco around a year ago when I was looking through the hamster section. I've always wanted a hamster, I didn't know I'd be finding the love of my life. Jacob was in the wheel, working out. He's a strong little guy; very buff and has a great body. I'd given up on men. No one ever loved me! And I loved so much! But no man ever said he loved me or cared for me or told me I was amazing... So when I gave up on men, I became lonely and bought Jacob. Jacob is a grey hamster. ..We have fallen in love and I am about to propose soon. He has given me love no man could ever give! I know he can't say it, but I know he wants to, he thinks I'm beautiful and amazing! He loves me, and boy do I love him!"

Well, at least he’s got a great body.

But these people have found happiness, right? Isn’t that all that really matters in this cold hard rat race of ours? To find a warm beating heart to sleep next to at night?

Actually, scratch that. There are those who don’t even need the beating heart thing – they have found love in inanimate objects, a phenomenon that was recently investigated in a BBC documentary, “Love Me, Love My Doll”. The movie follows the lives of a group of men who have fallen in love with their $10,000.00 life-size “real dolls”. The dolls are made to the buyers’ specifications, from eye color to cup size to down-there hair color and consistency. At first you might think of them as glorified sex toys, but after watching these men literally groom, change, bathe, and cook for their dolls, I’ve started to question the whole unrequited love thing. I mean, if it really hurts that much to be in love with someone who doesn’t love you back, then how do these men get by? Their women don’t even have a pulse.

When it comes down to it, most people believe that love must go both ways. If you love someone who doesn’t love you back, then you are someone to be pitied and hopefully empowered to leave the relationship. And if you love someone who can’t love you back, like your pet or your doll, then you are immediately labeled as a bit off-kilter, if not certifiably insane.

But I’m not just writing to judge these people, although I do have my own qualms with using animals for...untoward purposes. Rather, my point is to consider their actions in terms of what it really means to be happily in love. Can a relationship really ever be truly happy if it is a completely selfish existence? Let’s say I love my cat, and I convince myself that my cat loves me back. Then, haven’t I done this entirely for my own pleasure? I may believe that my cat is also gaining from the relationship (beyond his food and scratchy post thing), but unless I truly am clinically insane, I have to know and understand deep down that my cat does not and cannot love me the way that human beings love one another.

That’s nothing against cats - they just don’t have the upper brain function. And if you’re one of those believers in cat souls, then fine, use the doll example instead. A doll cannot love. Simple as that. A man in a relationship with a doll is in it entirely for his own happiness. And maybe he’s actually happier than the man in a relationship with a live woman who doesn’t love him back – at least this way he doesn’t have to deal with feelings of inadequacy. But really, they all say it right there in the documentary, that they are happier with their dolls than they’ve ever been with real women. They are happier to not have to actually give anything of themselves to another person. Or so they say. I don’t buy it.

If these people can teach us anything, it’s to appreciate the humanity of the people you love. I know that sounds cliché, but Valentine’s is as good a day (editor’s note: week) as any to recognize how lucky we are to love people who have their own agendas and lives and hopes and dreams. They don’t exist for our pleasure; they’re not our dolls and dolphins. We’re just lucky enough to have bumped into them, to get to know them, and to be close to them. I guess this is all just a roundabout way of saying: don’t take people for granted. Because the next time your pet is giving you that sexy “I want you” look, he’s probably just asking for food. And that’s it.