Some couples have sneered
at romantic love because of its unrealistic proportions. In 1908, George Bernard Shaw wrote:
When two people are
under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to
swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.
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And, H. L. Mencken,
in 1919, wrote:
To be in love is merely
to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia -- to mistake an ordinary young man for a Greek god or an ordinary young woman for
a goddess!
These two men, in their
cynicism, saw through this hyped-up kind of romantic love. This isn't true love, the biblical understanding of agape love.
But unfortunately, too many of us think that there is something wrong if we can't perpetually sustain that high-octane emotional
intensity, which one wag says "involves every part of the body except the brain."
The truth is that love
mellows with time and deepens as we increasingly become aware of so much more that could mark our relationship.
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