I wouldn't quite say unequivocally that those are lies, or at least that true love is a lie.
The poem True Love by Nobel Prize Winner Wislawa Szymborska replies better than I can:
True love. Is it normal /
is it serious, is it practical? /
What does the world get from two people /
who exist in a world of their own?
Placed on the same pedestal for no good reason, /
drawn randomly from millions but convinced /
it had to happen this way - in reward for what? /
For nothing. /
The light descends from nowhere. /
Why on these two and not on others? /
Doesn't this outrage justice? Yes it does. /
Doesn't it disrupt our painstakingly erected principles, /
and cast the moral from the peak? Yes on both accounts.
Look at the happy couple. /
Couldn't they at least try to hide it, /
fake a little depression for their friends' sake? /
Listen to them laughing - its an insult. /
The language they use - deceptively clear. /
And their little celebrations, rituals, /
the elaborate mutual routines - /
it's obviously a plot behind the human race's back!
It's hard even to guess how far things might go /
if people start to follow their example. /
What could religion and poetry count on? /
What would be remembered? What renounced? /
Who'd want to stay within bounds?
True love. Is it really necessary? /
Tact and common sense tell us to pass over it in silence, /
like a scandal in Life's highest circles. /
Perfectly good children are born without its help. /
It couldn't populate the planet in a million years, /
it comes along so rarely.
Let the people who never find true love /
keep saying that there's no such thing.
Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.
When I call them lies, I didn't mean to say they don't exist, or that two people can't be happy, in love and monogamous forever.
But we certainly misrepresent to children the prevalence of this sort of thing.
Look at fairy tales and movies. To a child, _all_ people grow up, meet their perfect true love, marry them and stay together forever. As for the damaging part of the lie, of course there's no need to work at a relationship because the match is just so perfect.
That's why I started out saying "working at love" - make sure to tell kids that things don't magically turn out happily ever after. Tell them that lots of marriages end because of things like money, selfishness, infidelity, and boredom.
There are a lot of things about my marriage that are worse than when I was single, but there are a lot of things that are a whole lot better. On balance I'm way ahead, but we both work at it every day. It's worth working at because of how great it is. And that's a truth worth telling.
Aside from good analysis, the beginning is full of humorous gems. I'm not sure if the humor is accidental, or if the author picked humorous examples deliberately.
I'm sure it's intentional. Pinker's written many excellent books for laypeople which are full of great, fun examples. And the books themselves are great. He has a knack for explaining new, interesting ideas in an engaging way.
