For me, the term "true love" always meant "the real thing", not some cheap imitation like infatuation or just plain lust. In the time of those songs I think there was a belief that there was one true love for every person on earth and the challenge was to find him/her.

That in fact has put a lot of pressure on a lot of people to work out what true love is and to know whether the one they loved at the time was "the one" i.e. Mr or Ms Right. What if they just thought this was true love but they had made a mistake? And with "till death us do part" expectations on marriage then to make a mistake could lead to a lifetime of misery. Marry in haste, repent at leisure.

And, if you were like me and didn't find true love until you were 42, then all those attempts before that were really taking potshots in the dark, because before actually experiencing it I could never figure out what the key to the mystery was in knowing what true love is.

All those attempts to define it, articulate it, clarify it only really made sense when it actually happened to me. Ah, now I know what they meant when they said that!

And Hollywood doesn't help at all. Hollywood - for the sake of an interesting plot - advocates quick resolution to a steamy bedroom scene within minutes or hours of meeting, and not the deep getting to know you times, getting to be friends and then falling in love.

Helen