Thank you for starting this interesting thread. I am enjoying comparing ideas and experiences with others here. I have been collecting ideas about this for about 30 years.

I like the point Tiodlliwi brought up about the media selling us this pot of goo about what love and romance is supposed to be. I really believe that we can drive ourselves nuts and ruin good relationships by striving for unrealistic images of what a relationship is supposed to be.

I've just finished the unit on communication and relationships with my students, using a book by Dr. Julia Wood, Communication in Our Lives.

Each of us is driven by sets of competing desires that are part of being human animals:

<ul type="square">[*]connection/autonomy [*]novelty/predictability [*]openness/closedness[/list]
Example 1, connection/autonomy: I just love my girlfriend so much, except don't ask me to give up poker night with the guys.

Example 2, novelty/predictability: At the beginning of the relationship, it's all novelty and excitement, but part of that comes from not knowing what's going to happen and how it's going to work out -- but what we really want is the predictability of knowing that you're not going to leave me if you see someone more attractive, I get sick, lose my job, etc.

For an article about why the honeymoon period, when it's all excitement, passion and novelty, has to end, see AskMen.com

Example 3, openness/closedness: I can share anything with my beloved. What? You read my email? How dare you violate my privacy?

Another quotation that comes to mind in this patchwork quilt of my thoughts is a quotation from Dr. Bernie Siegel, the Love, Medicine, and Miracles author. I'm going to have to paraphrase it, because I can't remember the exact years involved, but it went something like this:

My wife and I have been happily married for 25 years, and that's not bad out of 32.

I'm not encouraging anyone to stay in a desperate relationship. However, I honestly believe that there is something to gain from staying together through the hard parts and the boring parts and the times you thought of leaving and didn't. It builds character to keep the promises and commitments we made. If we wander through the desert for a while, we have a chance to come through to another side where we really understand a deeper meaning of love through sacrifice.

When we speak of the passion of Christ, for example -- and I am not speaking as someone with any particular religious ax to grind but only as a scholar of mythological literatures from various cultures -- we are not speaking about the kind of erotic passion that the popular media equate with love and romance. We are speaking of sacrifice and suffering for the sake of love -- and a much deeper, richer variety of love. It's not popular to speak of suffering for love -- and by suffering, I don't mean the battered woman who stays with a bully. I mean staying with the hard-working guy who gets a little bit boring, but who holds you in his eyes with love and never forgets your birthday.

I'm not persuaded that you can get to that deeper place of joyful, contented love by being happy, happy, happy all the time.

Any more thoughts about this?