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Love is complicated. I know it sounds simplistic and self-evident, but the reality is most people forget that truth. Love is not the same everyday in a long-term relationship. Romantic love has no logical basis. Parental love, familial love even friendship have some logic to them - kinship, common interests and understanding. Yes a romantic partner should be your friend and have common interests and ideals, but any woman or man can meet quite a few people they have things in common with, enjoy being with, but they don't fall in love. Love, on a very deep level, cannot be explained or quantified and while there many be pros and cons to a specific relationship, you cannot make a list of why you love someone. You can make a list of why you like them or why the relationship works, but you simply cannot define the indefinable. That is part of what makes love complicated and that is also why it is so hard to find. I think the most important thing to remember is that you fall in love with a flawed human being - like yourself. No one is perfect. My husband says he wouldn't want to be perfect because the hours are lousy and people expect too much of you. The main thing is that if you love someone you must be willing to forgive and truly forget. You must be willing to put aside petty quarrels and shortcomings. You are not going to love someone exactly the same way every day. The passion of new love wanes, but then comes back as the relationship matures. Passion of old love is something quite beautiful and rare. You can love someone more the more you are with them - if you like them, too. That is a key component to long-lasting love. Attraction is immediate and you don't even have to know someone to feel it. Love is described as "friendship caught on fire." That is so right. I think people fall out of love because they never fell into like. Yes you can stop loving someone if all there ever was between you was passion and romance. You can never stop loving someone if you like them too. When you like someone, truly like them, you forgive them and enjoy spending time with them. I am often teased by women friends for being too attached to my husband. I can't help it - he is my best friend! Believe me there are days when I could throttle him and days when I adore him and days when I question the choices we've made. I never stop liking him though and so love returns and grows and burns through all the trials and sadness and joys and routine of every day life. That is what love is for - not the good times, but the bad. Love is for healing wounds and giving strength. If life were one big party and we all did and said and had the right thing all the time, we wouldn't need love. Life is complicated. This is self evident too. Life is short. Love is long. At least is should be.

Learn more about this author, Maria Healy.
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