I see this much as Inky does.

I’ll put it a different way, though, just for fun and maybe it will be helpful also.

Falling in love is very much a chemical experience. Your brain gets flooded with phenylethylamine, which is a stimulant. You feel high, confident, amazed at how perfect your love interest is. I suppose that’s how nature gets people together to procreate and perpetuate the species.

But what happens inevitably is that concentrations of phenylethylamine will fall off, and the very same person who once seemed perfect inexplicably has flaws you didn’t see before (they were there all the time).

The bad news is that one typically feels disillusionment at this stage. The good news is that now you can get busy building a real relationship based on who the person actually is.

It could be that the woman you were with for a couple years would be a happier match for you. I don’t know.

But I think comparing your wife (who’ve you known for a long time) with a woman with whom you probably never moved out of the romantic stage, is comparing apples and oranges.