The people who have given the ideas about love have given very wrong notions. One notion that they have given is that if you love a person then you have to love the person forever -- if it is real love. That is their criterion. If some day after ten years you find your paths separating, then the criterion that you have been carrying in the mind says, "All these ten years you were in a false love and you thought it was real."
The reality of love has nothing to do with its longevity. Is the flower not real just because by the evening it fades? Is only the rock real because it will remain tomorrow and the day after tomorrow and the day after that, because the day you were born it was there, and the day you die it will be there? Is only that rock real; and the flowers, thousands of flowers that came and disappeared, came and disappeared, were they unreal? Do you make length of time the criterion of reality? I don't see any relationship between the two. But because of this idea many people go on hanging around each others' necks because their love has to be real. They are killing each other to make the love real. If they separate that means their love was not real.
That does not mean that they have to separate to make the love real -- don't move to the opposite extreme, that you have to separate. It will depend on each individual case separately. It is possible that two persons may love their whole life without ever looking anywhere else. It is possible that one may love one person for the time being and then suddenly find that energy is no longer there.
It had come from the unknown.
It has gone to the unknown.
It was not within your power to love somebody; it is not in your power to prevent love from disappearing. You cannot do anything about it, you are simply helpless; so is the other person. Don't blame anybody. Because of the wrong idea of love, lovers go on blaming each other: "You are destroying it." Nobody is destroying it. It is a free breeze; it comes, goes -- you cannot hold it. And if you close all the windows and all the doors to hold the breeze, it is no longer the same cool breeze. Soon it will be stale as all marriages are -- stale, dull.
Both the partners are trying to escape through some place -- some window, some door -- but the other is keeping watch. The other is also trying to escape from some door but the other is keeping watch. Soon husbands and wives become each others' jailers. Love has to be for the whole of life, then only is it real -- this is stupidity. And because of this idea in the name of love, marriage had to be invented. It is a more stable thing, permanent, legal, social -- just like the rock. It is no longer a flower.