How many great things can you name that were found as such? Was it great as found, or did a lot of work go into it over time to have made it great by the time it was found?

Anyone who has been in a romantic relationship for any length of time knows it’s a lot of work. Coordinating, sharing, prioritizing, arguing, making-up, among other work required, with feelings to complicate it ever more. Even those who have never been in a serious romantic relationship may know this, from having observed others in serious romantic relationships and/or learning about it in other ways. For the work required to make romantic relationships work, I object to the very popular English idiom of finding true love. I look at the divorce rate and think if that were how people expected love to happen in their lives, that they would only have to find it, then they should not expect anything less. Of course, many do work at their serious romantic relationships and can’t reconcile their differences, in and out of marriage, but the divorce rate is an accurate, even if somewhat symbolic, indicator of my thought and feelings on the matter.

Now, English also has an interesting idiom for sexual intercourse, the most intimate act of romantic love, in making love. In my opinion, supreme intimacy can be symbolically equated well to supreme or true love. With true love being generally considered as what it takes to sustain a romantic relationship over time, and making being a verb that denoted work and effort, English helped me out nicely to get this favourite quote of mine to reflect my views of the love required for romantic relationships to work, that true love is made, not found.

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This post is one of 70 quotes I wrote, each with an accompanying essay, in my e-book and paperback Stars I Put in my Sky to Live By, on Amazon or Smashwords (choose your price including free!).