Love quote of the day by Louis de Bernières: ‘Love is not breathlessness; it’s not excitement’

We have been told love is just like fireworks. Popular culture curates romantic heroes as passionate, people who make you breathless. But most films end precisely at the moment the earthquake begins. Why? Because nobody really knows what comes after. What happens after the ‘I do’? Do they really grow in love once the ‘happily ever after’ begins? Nobody really knows. According to English novelist Louis de Bernières, love is anything but excitement. In his novel Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, he differentiates between being in love and love itself.

In the 1994 novel, he talks profoundly about love. He separates infatuation from real love. He describes what most films miss – two people choosing each other on a Tuesday morning when nothing is particularly cinematic about it.
He says, ‘When you fall in love, it is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake, and then it subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots are to become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness; it is not excitement; it is not the desire to mate every second of the day. It is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every part of your body. No … don’t blush. I am telling you some truths. For that is just being in love; which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over, when being in love has burned away. Doesn’t sound very exciting, does it? But it is!”

When romance is fresh, we all fall into that initial madness. The intrusive thoughts, the electric skin, the sense that this person is the only oxygen in the room. But here’s what nobody tells you. This ‘madness’ is not love. It is infatuation. What comes after is what really matters.

Somewhere between six months and two years in, the madness subsides. The texts become less electric. The habits that you once thought were just cute start to get annoying. The passion is not quite there. And at this point, most people begin to wonder - Have I fallen out of love? Is this person the wrong one? Should I be searching for that feeling again? This is a dangerous phase, because popular romance narratives have often sold the idea of intensity. What de Bernières understood is that the subsiding is not the end. It is the beginning of the question that matters: Do I want to grow toward this person?

Love is beyond that madness. Real relationships are not built on breathlessness or excitement. It is not the urge to be intimate with your partner. It is certainly not anticipating it. Love is what comes after the excitement. It is what remains after the breathlessness. If the leftovers are trust, respect, care, shared life, loyalty, and kindness, you have hit the jackpot, because that’s love itself.