Validation

Easily missed while writing the hero and heroine is a technique I call validation, the one key ingredient to true love (and not obsession or carrying a torch which is an incomplete love). It isn’t that scene where one or both say “I love you” or the current upgrade, “I’m in love with you.” It’s not that scene where he gets down on one knee. It’s not even, “I do.”

There comes a moment when you realize somebody compatible is crazy about you and it is almost always in internal thoughts. Then you realize what you have been feeling isn’t wasted because he/she feels the same way you do. Then the couple just knows, whether they said any words of love, before, during or after their knowing. There’s not a greater feeling on this planet than the realization that you are loved and you have someone to love back. Forever, is now part of the fabric of complete surrender.
Miss this subtlety and, IMO, you have not written a complete romance.
Dick Powell sings, Busby Berkley directs the musical number from Dames, 1934, I Only Have Eyes For You.