True love is a wonderful myth.

You fall in love, and you have sex, and you get married. Or maybe you get married and then have sex, which is pretty risky, in case you and your mate don't click that way. In either case, you're convinced that you've found the love of your life, the person you want to spend the rest of eternity with, that one special person who was meant for you. Congratulations!

And in the beginning, you're inseparable: you look forward to spending every minute with your Chosen One. You're in love -- true love -- and you can't believe how lucky you are!

But time passes, and you get older. Maybe you have kids. Things about your partner start to bug you. You get too "comfortable" with each other: you and he/she are just pieces of furniture in the space you share. As a friend of mine once said, "I come in and think: there's the sofa, there's the TV, there's Julie. All is right with the world." You kiss good-morning and good-night, but it's just a peck, like you might give to one of your children. Given time, true love has turned, as it most often does, to convenience.

No, of course this isn't how it always goes, but this is the way it goes a lot of the time, with most married folk. You've seen those announcements in the newspaper about a couple celebrating their 50th or 60th anniversary, right? How many of those couples do you suppose actually see that signicant other as their "true love"? How many secretly can't wait until he/she dies? How many have recurring dreams about someone else from a long time ago? (Someone, by the way, who likely wouldn't have turned out to be any better than the current one.)

But back to you: you've been married a while and maybe have kids. You certainly have a routine that involves him/her getting home from work, a meal being prepared, maybe some chat but more likely some TV. Once in a while, you have sex, but it's not the way it was when you first got together. Then a quick peck on the cheek, on the lips, and goodnight.

In the meantime, you still have the same sexual urges you always had -- just not for him/her.
You start to read steamy romance novels, or you watch porn. You find yourself fantasizing about someone at work or at school or at the supermarket or the gym. You feel guilty about it.

What's going on?

Biology. Psychology. Whatever makes us tick. I don't have hard data to back me up, but I strongly suspect that we are not meant to be with only one other person, that there isn't really just that one true love for each of us. I'm afraid the truth is that we are attracted to any number of other people -- of the opposite sex or the same sex, depending -- endlessly, over and over, until we die. At some point, though, we have to choose someone and make the best of it. We look around and pick the best prospect, crossing our fingers, and get on with it.

Love songs have it right and wrong, depending on genre. Most pop songs idealize love as lasting forever, which we all know it doesn't (e.g., half the marriages in the U.S. end in divorce). No, if you want to hear the truth, listen to country and western songs. They're all about lost love and the men and women who let it go, carelessly, and the anguish it produces. You may not like the sound of those songs -- all that twang and that endlessly repetitive melody -- but they do, for the most part, get it right. As humans, we're all about being attracted to one, then to another, and having to drink a lot to reconcile the two. From Hank Williams on, country and western songs have always, much more than pop songs, told the truth. Sad but true. Pop me a beer.

So do be glad if you've found -- and even married -- that Mr. or Ms. Right, that "true love".

But don't fool yourself. Commitment is hard, requiring a lot more than just sexual attraction.
If you're going to make it work, you're going to have to work at it. You'll have to resist the incessant call of nature to find a "better" mate than the one you're with, or just a prettier face, and you're going to have to put up with a lot of bad behavior and irritating personal habits you didn't notice in your mate when you were in the "courtship" and "bonding" phase (i.e., having sex every two hours or so). When that first "rush" wears off, as it will, real commitment begins. And it's serious. That's why we have laws that bind you together. We know you'll be tempted to be selfish, but we, as a society, are going to make it hard for you to act on those temptations. We want it to be hell for you to divorce the one you've chosen as your "true love".

For the sake of the kids.