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explanation of the beginning of love sounds much less emotional than love is assumed to be: “for
when a man sees some woman fit for love and shaped according to his taste, he begins at once to
lust after her in his heart; then the more he thinks about her the more he burns with love, until he
comes to a fuller meditation” (qtd. in O’Donoghue 41). This type of love begins in the physical
realm and slowly moves towards the emotional, but never seems to move to the final step of
marital commitment.

In fact, the type of fairy-tale happy ending achieved in so many romantic epics of the
time rarely comes to the relationships of any real-world devotees. Part of the passion of courtly
love is the constant desire coupled with an inability or unwillingness to make the union final, and
knowing that the exclusivity of marriage is unattainable. Yet, other selections seem to encourage
a commitment to monogamy regardless of marital status. The rules of love assert that a true lover
will desire no one other than his beloved, as any other partner would seem cheap and boorish by
comparison (Capellanus qtd. in O’Donoghue 42). Furthermore, these rules echo much of what
modern marriage counselors tell their clients, that true love is putting the good of your partner
above your own desires (Capellanus qtd. in O’Donoghue 45). Without that sacrifice, no marriage
- or relationship - can be a happy one. Each partner would constantly expend all of his or her
energy trying to circumvent the other’s desires and needs, rather than joining together in a
partnership to achieve their goals. So it would seem that romanticism had much of its process in
the right place, as far as creating a functional relationship is concerned, and came very close to
being a picture of a functional marriage. Despite this, courtly love relationships and marriages
were determined, “to belong to different realms, neither of which is said to be superior”
(Capellanus qtd. in O’Donoghue 47). This schism that separates courtly love and marriage must
be kept in mind before moving on to further examination of the conflicts between courtly love