by Carlo Rodriguez

Created on: August 25, 2009

Two dominant feelings which play a very enormous part in our lives are love and hate. They follow us through the most important part of our lives, as well as the smallest. They also help determine the quality of our relationships between one another, such as in marriages, or couples in a romantic relationship. Now what is the difference between the love in a long-term marriage and the romantic love between two young lovers? And how does hate intertwine?

Love in a long-term marriage seems like more of an obligation instead of the romantic love, which is more pure and idyllic. However, several long-term marriages which happen to be successful and filled with passion, tend to be much more rewarding in the sense of managing to achieve such a feat. An example of such an extraordinary accomplishment takes place in the movie,

The Notebook, when the relationship between the elderly man and woman is revealed. It turns out they have been happily married for many long years, although the wife developed Alzheimer; but nevertheless, it had been one lifetime of felicity. As delightful as it may seem, these kind of marriages do not occur often.

Sometimes couples get married in Las Vegas in a hasty attempt to attain a happily ever after, such as in what occurred in Joan Didion's recount of marriages in the exotic city of Las Vegas in her essay titled, Marrying Absurd. She briefly mentioned the requirements for such a marriage, as well as a situation in which one hundred and seventy-one couples got married in the night of August 26, 1965.

Unfortunately, these are usually a recipe for disaster. Marriages, whether they're long-term or not, have a very low success rate nowadays. This could be due to the hatred which originates in these false illusions of true love, which leads me to bring up the more naive and yet, sweeter type of love.

The main problem with romantic love is that it causes the two "love-birds" to enter a period of blissful ignorance, in which they are simply not aware of each other's imperfections, and once an imperfection is revealed, it shatters the crystal-clear image of their "perfect relationship" and all of a sudden, the domino-theory comes into play, thus crippling their relationship at a snail's pace, and perishing the perfection which tagged along. That is the tragedy of the romantic's love, which is similar to what happens in The Break-Up.

After the relationship had started off merrily, the problems started pouring in. Appreciation between each

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