They try to get together again, but the conflict may be real, or their newly found happiness, always tinged with regret, may be threatened by other factors. Love and devotion are considered more or less as ideals, but in a romance with this theme, the ideal is subject to the frailties of human personality. Family objections, differences in background, intricacies of other relationships, any number of overwhelming forces separate the lovers. When they meet again, the past or the separation presents the main obstacle to their love. This shifts the plot from the nuances of falling in love to recovery of lost love.
Passion is intensified by memory and by deferred longing.
In the Reconciliation pattern, that guidance failed for some reason and now love becomes more a condition of hope, a place where memories of the heart can still recover meaning. As old conflicts, and new problems, are worked out, the reader enjoys the affirmation that love is constant, an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never really shaken. There is no mistake, no weakness, however serious it seems, that love cannot ultimately forgive. True love wins, yet again proving its strength and stability in a complex world of opposition and difficulty. It takes us to the 'ever after' part of love, the times of trial, growth, change, redemption and forgiveness, where we discover the true power of the heart.