pub#1

 Jayden Risch

Professor, Brady 

English

17 March 2026

Love Isn’t Perfect, and That’s What Makes It Real

Many people believe in the concept of “perfect love”. They are under the belief that if two people truly love each other, then their love should always seem easy, and they never should fight or disagree about anything. The idea of true love can also give people unrealistic expectations, perpetuating this idea that love is always easy. However, in the romance novel The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks, the main character Noah claims to have had “perfect love” with a girl named Allie. Although at first glance it seems like their love is perfect, once their true relationship is examined, they dealt with many issues, including heartbreak and changes in their feelings that occur over time. Therefore, true love is not perfect. True love has struggles, changes, disagreements.

In the opening pages of the novel, we learn that to Noah, his relationship with Allie was perfect. The narrator comments on the impact of true love. “Noah had been in love once… and it had changed him forever. Perfect love did that to a person” (Sparks 11). We have only Noah’s hindsight and memory to use in evaluating their love and while what we remember is often rosy, we tend to remember the beautiful moments and forget the disagreements and flaws that were part of their relationship. We later learn that their years of separation are a big part of the relationship, which therefore cannot be considered perfect.

I think that perfect love does not exist because there is so much fighting between the main characters, Noah and Allie. The two argue many times throughout the story. The misunderstandings between them are a major factor in their disagreements. Society pressures also tend to bring Noah and Allie down a bit. Like when Allie’s parents object to Noah’s working class background which splits up the lovers. Then when they run into each other years later, it is to add insult to injury when it is revealed that Allie is already engaged to a man named Lon. All the drama in the two lovers’ lives show that love cannot be simple, and because of all the hard work the two do to be with each other, it could not have been perfect.

Noah and Allie’s relationship also illustrates the idea that love can change. In their youth, the love that Noah and Allie share is lustful, but as the two characters mature the love that they share becomes a more mature love, an impersonal love of responsibility and sacrifice. In the final scene of the novel, Allie develops early onset Alzheimer’s and forgets everything, including Noah. Noah stands by Allie and reads their true love story to her everyday, though she never remembers him. Through this Noah shows that love is not always easy, it’s not always beautiful and it’s not always fair but it’s always worth it, because it’s all about choice (Sparks). The love between Noah and Allie is enduring and meaningful because they keep choosing one another through the ups and downs of life.

This concept is also seen in Psychology. The psychologist, Robert Sternberg, thought that love has three main components: intimacy, passion and commitment. These are not always of equal strength at the same time, so love is a dynamic emotion that can never be in its most perfect form (Sternberg 119). This means that even though love is often idealized in movies it can never be truly perfect. This is evident in The Notebook, where although Noah and Allie first fall in love during their young years and the passion that follows, their relationship later evolves and is supported by a strong commitment to one another. Thus love, unlike the idealistic depiction of perfection in movie romance, is not something static that exists in perfection – it is a feeling that constantly changes and mutates.

Perfect love does not exist. It does not matter that Noah feels that he and Allie had perfect love. In reality, the perfect romance would not be able to withstand the disagreements, the separation and the changes in life that the protagonists and their families had to endure. What is important is that the people loved each other enough to want to work through the problems and to carry on. And it is the imperfections in love that are most valid.

Works Cited

Sparks, Nicholas. The Notebook. Warner Books, 1996.

Sternberg, R. J. (1986). A Triangular Theory of Love. Psychological Review, 93(2), 119–135.