In a similar manner, the greatest love stories are those where romance and desire is allowed to build to a peak and then is cut short. When love does not have to survive the strain of time, it is easy to imagine it, instead, as "timeless". This is why, in other great love stories, especially those for children, we hear the "happily ever after" cliche time and time again. "Happily ever after" is a way of either reconciling the boring reality of a constant and reliable love or a way of glossing over the eventual deterioration of that love.