It’s hard to communicate anything exactly and that’s why perfect relationships between people are difficult to find.

The remark links two ideas Flaubert returns to repeatedly: the inadequacy of language and the fragility of human intimacy. If meaning cannot be transmitted “exactly,” then even good-faith exchanges are haunted by misunderstanding—people respond to what they think was meant, not what was meant. “Perfect relationships” become rare not because affection is impossible, but because mutual comprehension is structurally limited: words simplify, distort, and lag behind experience. The thought also implies an ethical caution—humility about one’s own clarity and patience with others’ misreadings—while retaining Flaubert’s characteristic skepticism about idealized harmony between individuals.