I have for a long time thought this obsession we Americans have with encouraging excessive princess-thinking in our girls is part of what leads to disappointment in young women out of their live and marriages.

I like the line someone said, that marriage is a choice to love and work with the other person, not something to bail out on at the first sign of trouble.

I sure would feel a lot more secure about the idea of marriage if I thought there was any plausible reason to believe women are willing to work on marriage. I see a lot of people instead giving up way too easily.

I love romance, I love to treat women well, but lately it seems I am with the wrong women or something, they use me for the romance and do not feel the need to reciprocate back (and I am not talking about just sex!). It is as if the women EXPECT princess treatment just because they are women, as if they are only there to take things. No wonder I give up on women and treating them well. With that kind of BS, it only makes sense to treat women badly, like the sort of guys that women actually sem to gravitate towards.

That's why we have the fantasy worlds. If you want to find true passionate love, then yes you have to be receptive of it but realize a guy who really likes you is not necessarily going to hire a string quartet to serenade you or send you flowers repeatedly to get your attention.

To find love you have to be open to it and yes you have to do a little playing. I met my husband in my art class, in fact I signed up for art class to find a man who would probably have things in common with me and as soon as I saw him I knew I wasn't going to try and leave it to advance to a higher course(as I could have as I was way more advanced). So I set myself up to be noticed. When break happended I waited till he left to see where he went. Then I positioned myself on a bench to make sure when he came back I was the first thing he saw, it TOTALLY worked. By making myself open he came over and started to talk and flirt with me. I would notice that he would draw me or sit next to me whenever he could. After a month or so of the flirting and rides home he got up the nerve to ask me out and we've been together ever since. So I totally agree with Cary's advise. I think that sometimes love just falls in your lap, but I think more often than not it is something you have to work towards the same way you do building a resume. You have to know that you want and make sure any object of your affection notices you. You can't be completely passive.

And appreciation of the small things really works wonders. I fall in love all over with my husband because of remembering all the things he did when we were dating, how he remembered what my favorite pie was and bought it for a surprise. Little notes to me, doodles he didn't know I knew about, inviting me totally into his life and introducing me to all of his friends right away.

In my opinion anyone can make grand gestures that can be genericly passed around and it's called romance, like candelight dinners, rose petaled bathrooms and bedrooms, but it's any gesture catered spefically to you that is truly romantic.

When you meet someone new there should be a hightened level of excitement. There should be drunken butterflies banging about in your stomach. You should feel like the most attractive woman on the face of the planet while in his company. You should also be wearing an oversized pair of love goggles when it comes to sex so that ideas like licking warm whipped cream off his hairy belly seems like a delicious prospect.Etc. Etc. Etc.

There is a reason that you need lightning bolts in the beginning. It's called marriage. Marriage is a wonderful thing. Two people committing to each other for life, sharing the good and the bad. It can also be pretty damn boring. In a nice way. In a flannel pajama,funny bedhead, did you feed the dog and mail your moms birthday card way. In my experience familiarity breeds warm affection in a marriage, not hot hot XXX action.

So don't settle! Get all the damn lightening bolts and bodice ripping that you can. If you do 35 years later when you look at him your eyes will still twinkle with those memories.

As skwilson noted, it is the small things that one might overlook in the romance novels that make a difference in loving relationships. Allowing one's significant other to catch a few more minutes of snooze by herding the cats out of the bedroom. (Hmm, "herding cats"...maybe that's bigger than I thought .) My partner's told me for years that these are the things that she finds "romantic" because she feels "heard" when I do them.

We still give each other cards, no-special-occasion gifts, etc. Even do the occasional "grand gesture" of flowers, dinner with candles and such. But the "romantic" gestures of every day life and something seemingly mundane as taking the time to listen to the other are what bind our relationship and help keep the "romance" alive.

Read letters about this articleFemale arms race In the last seven years gun sales among women have increased 50 percent. What's behind the upswing?

Read letters about this articleKing Kaufman's Sports Daily Barry Bonds' "lousy" production goes to show how rare good players are, because he's still been better than most.

Read letters about this articleThe billion-dollar gravestone Instead of being a testament to the dead, the hubristic 9/11 memorial will remind viewers of the arrogant folly of Bush's America.

This is cache, read story here