Love must be learned, and learned again and again; there is no end to it.
VerifiedThe Necessary Enemy, Essay published in The Days Before, Harcourt Brace, 1952
Why This Matters
Read full quote →Porter is telling us something harder than "love takes effort"—she's suggesting that love isn't a skill you master and then possess, like learning to drive. Each relationship, each season of life, each fresh disappointment and reconciliation requires you to learn love anew, as though you're a beginner again. When a long marriage stumbles into unexpected territory, or when you must forgive someone for the third time, you discover she's right: there's no muscle memory here, no diploma that carries over. The insight cuts against our hunger for permanence, insisting instead that love demands we show up perpetually unfinished, perpetually willing to be taught.