WHERE IS THE LOVE?

These days I met a girl friend I didn't see in many years, we talk and I ask her:

"So, how's being married?"

She thinks about it, then says:

"He's not the Fairytale Prince. But I've always been a practical person, you know that. He was fine for me and I was fine for him".

That makes me think. Of 10 couples that married in the last years and I know enough to have inside information, 8 got married for convenience or compromise, and just 20% for love alone.

Be careful, I'm not saying they weren't in love when they decided to marry: I'm saying that they did it first of all for a residence permit, better financial conditions for married couples, an unexpected pregnancy, fear of remaining alone or pressures from others, and secondly because they loved each other.

In a couple I know she proposed, and she said more or less "Look, it's been 8 years we're together: either we marry or break up".

Well, maybe I'm too strict, let's say the couples that married first of all because they were in love are more. Say 30 or 40%. But even if they were 50, it seems to me they're still too little.

Songs, novels and films make us dream. They teach us since we're kids to look for our perfect match, our twin soul, the other half of the apple and the butterflies in the stomach.
Beautiful verses touch us so deeply we continue to listen to them forever and write them on our diaries; love stories that last 2 hours on TV make us cry and feel we want to suffer in the same way, one day.

Then the most of us drop their hopes and the will to search, and chose a comfortable solution with no tears, nor passion. They divide a piece of paper in pros and against, and if the pros are at least one more it's a Yes.

They leave the others to burn, and are pleased to watch from a safe place.

Has anybody seen love?