Love is a complex animal. No matter how hard we try to understand and decipher it, it will never compare to feeling it through internal emotion over the physical body.
"We look at the world, at governments, across the spectrum, some with more freedom, some with less. And we observe that the more repressive the State is, the closer life under it resembles Death. If dying is deliverance into a condition of total non-freedom, then the State tends, in the limit, to Death. The only way to address the problem of the State is with counter-Death, also known as Chemistry." -- Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day
Read books? What about Jane Eyre?
You're right in the sense that life is not a fairy tale. But plenty of couples are happy or even better yet, content. But I think I have said enough on this point.
I'll keep reading...
Love is the fuel of happiness. But why, dear friends, does it burn so quick...