Yes, believe it or not some of us have had that pain more or less constantly for years. That is exactly why most of us have adopted a fibre rich diet and regularly take supplements such as Metamucil and Miralax (among other things). We cannot just take those supplements only when we get symptoms, because we have symptoms all the time. So for many of us the fissure diet and taking supplements has become a way of life.
Also, many of us do have periods where we are fine and then we have a reoccurrence. Usually, a recoccurrence is caused by a particuarly hard or large stool, or a bout of diarreaha. Unfortunately, that is not uncommon with fissures.
As you probably know by know from reading these discussions, the general approach is to try anything but surgery for as long as you can, and then if it appears that nothing else is working, opt for the surgery, which works most of the time. Most acute fissures (90%) can be healed without surgery. Most chronic fissures (60%) will eventually require surgery.

I agree with Phil, I've had rectal pain for 11 years, sometimes it's just been a minor annoyance but other times it's caused me emotional distress and totally affected the way I live, it's a very long road and that's just to get the correct diagnosis and treatment, here in the UK it's so damn hard to actually get to see a consultant, I complained over the course of 5 years to my GP about severe pain in the rectum (that's a hell of a lot of GP visits) before I got to see a consultant and even then I was sent packing with diet information and told it would heal on it's own, which was clearly not the case because my Fissure was chronic by then.

I also went to my GP here in Canada and complained about rectal pain for five years before he referred me to someone more qualified. He completely missed the fact that I had a fissure, even when his digital rectal exams would send me through the roof with pain.
From my experience, most GPs know a thing or two about hemmorhoids, but next to nothing about fissures.
If I had received a correct diagnosis when I first went to my GP, or even a referral so I could get a correct diagnosis, I probably would have been able to avoid several years of pain and discomfort.
It was funny really, because when I first got referred to my GI surgeon, the young student came in and saw me first. When I described my pain to him, he said "That doesn't sound like hemmorhoids to me". I thought he was a moron, because I knew I had hemmorhoids - I could see and feel them, and I could sure as heck feel the pain in my butt. But, it turns out, he was right. The pain was from the fissure; not the hemmorhoids. So in about one minute with no physical exam, this third year medical student arrived at a better conclusion than my GP with thirty years experience had arrived at from several physical exams.