There were times I truly really believed that Love Conquers All.

Do you still remember how you felt when you fell in love? Those toes-curling feelings: an innocent look at him made your heartbeats quicken, palms sweating, and his mere presence could crowd everything else out. The power of love is so strong that it holds you prisoner, pierce your skin, enter your blood, and light up your dreams. Inside you, it works magic. For thousand years, the poets have tried to describe it, the artists present it, the philosophers interpret it and the psychologists analyze it. But nobody could have ever come closer enough to touch the hem of her Majesty’s gown.

Certainly with such unbelievable power, She could make everything possible.

Or is that simple?

Life would eventually teach us a lesson, sometimes in a very hard way, that Love, with all the power she has, could be the most fragile thing we ever owned.

Recently, two friends have gone through very ugly breakups and both of them are deeply emotional scarred. One was betrayed by his love in the worst way you could ever imagine, and it finally led to the end of eight years marriage. After first denial, then outrages anger, my friend seemed to enter into another stage of hurt: Reflection. He kept asking himself: why could this had happened to him?

It takes two to fail a relationship. Although he is the one who hurt most in this relationship, he realized that he had also played his part: careless and took everything for granted. With this realization, he tried to forgive, tried to be open-minded, and tried to work things out. But the hurt had run too deeply, things went too crazy complicated, and the most important thing is, Love needs to be built up on mutual trust, however, it might take only a few minutes to betray a trust, but it would take more than years to rebuild it. With a broken heart, he finally gave up.

I have known them for years. I saw the way they once looked each other and I know Love did exist. For eight years they have gone through so much. How could this relationship end so tragically? Here, love had conquered illness and poverty, but it couldn’t conquer a stupid misunderstanding and the temptation of looking for a kick. How ironic it is.

Another friend had also ended a two-year relationship. I really don’t know what to say about this. There is nothing more frustrated than two persons in love broke up for some obvious reason. It seems that the fate had played some cruel joke on both of them. They loved each other and they still do. The only reason that they couldn’t be together is so pathetic:  in public eyes they were outrageous mismatched. The gap between them is so huge that when the man had finally worked up his courage to break this news to his parents, his mother thought he was joking and laughed.

I saw this ending almost from the very beginning. We all saw it coming. But how had I wished that I could be wrong about this one. Here love is simply defeated by the obvious.

Love Conquers All? I don’t think so---not because that I’ve lost my faith but I've known better now and I realized that a successful relationship requires more than love. Like any other success in the world, a successful relationship also requires efforts, determinations, skills, and a bit of luck. Only love can't make it work.