Lance Cooper:  

ressions they try to make and the mind games they play. But how do we go about doing that? Many of the images we have of love and romance come from movies, television and romance novels. They're all about pursuit and capture, dominance and submission. Once the guy gets the girl, the movie ends. That leaves us with a considerably incomplete picture of love as it is in the real world. Love is much more than just an experience of beginnings. Our culture has a rather poor and adolescent understanding of what love is and what it takes to create real love. At the start of the relationship, we are swept away by emotions and fantasies and expect the other person to fulfill them. When those expectations aren't met and we begin to see the imperfections and differences in our partner, we walk away. We search for the "perfect" partner, not knowing that he/she can never be enough because he/she will always be different from what we expect. The beautiful thing about a romantic relationship is that love isn't found or fallen into -- it is co-created. Yet there are countless people who search for love as if it belongs to someone else. We don't find love. We find one another and allow love to grow between us.".