My own opinion is that [love] is felt most completely in marriage, or some comparable attachment of long duration. Love takes time. What are called “love affairs” may afford a wide, and in retrospect, illuminating variety of emotions; not only fierce satisfactions and swooning delights, but the horrors of jealousy and the desperation of parting attend them; the hangover from one of these emotional riots may be long and dreadful. But rarely have the pleasures of love an opportunity to manifest themselves in such riots of passion. Love affairs are for emotional sprinters; the pleasures of love are for the emotional marathoners.
Robertson Davies
Robertson Davies (b. 1913), Canadian novelist, journalist. “The Pleasures of Love,” The Enthusiasms of Robertson Davies, Viking (1961).