m y . t h o u g h t s . o n . t h i n g s

5/15/05:
I first wrote this Love and Marriage essay 5 1/2 years ago…I was a freshman at one of those “marriage factory” Christian colleges, where everyone is practically engaged or married by junior year…needless to say, though I was reasonable in my thinking, I was also fairly naïve about the whole love/marriage thing.

So then, about a year and a half ago, I re-wrote it, from a slightly older, slightly more experienced perspective on the whole thing. By then I had gotten into (and out of) a relationship, and had seen people around me get married and realized the reality that marriage brings. I again think I was reasonable in my thinking…however, I now realize that the experience of love itself changes you completely…and this was the experience that was needed for my essay to fully develop…and this was the experience that I was lacking.

Only I’m not lacking it anymore.

I am currently engaged to be married, and completely in love (though I use to think that ‘in love’ was simply a “made-up fantasy to give people dreams”). I now realize that love is beyond my realm to rationalize and describe, and that marriage is far more real and complicated than an essay could ever relate.

And that it’s about time that I updated this essay.

I am one of the most rational people I know. I never ascribed to the silly notions of romantic love or being swept off my feet. I always figured that love, true love, whatever that is, was practical – a giving of oneself, a continual sacrificing of one’s own needs, stability, caring, contentment. I assumed feelings were involved in there somewhere, but I never gave them much thought - after all, weren’t those supposed romantic feelings just a by-product of a good, stable, trusting relationship?

Every day I am still blown away by this recent amazing discovery: the capacity to LOVE. There is something to this love thing. And it is completely, utterly, outrageously, and totally beyond my ability to describe it. I’ve spent hours upon hours mulling it over in my head, trying to make sense of it, and somehow I just know that it is right, that it is real – its intangibility has flourished despite my usual tangible-only world.

I don’t want to get all poetic, but I want to take a second and try to explain it: There is a person, a guy, whom I have met and gotten to know intimately, and after a quantity of time have realized that I feel a very peculiar way when I am around him, or talking to him, or otherwise thinking about him. I have no clear explanation for what constitutes this feeling, I only know that it seems to be as unique and indescribable as other people have called “being in-love”. So, I must concede – I am in love.

But “in love” is a feeling. And feelings will fade. Yes, I am in love, but I also LOVE. These two are completely different things and I think most people associate them as being the same…and I think that this is the reason that many marriages/relationships fail.

Love, NOT being in love, is a choice. It is the continual “putting up with a person day after day and learning not to be bothered by the little things that annoy you”. It is working together and committing to figuring out how to make things work even when it seems impossible. It is realizing that you are not always going to have your way, that things are not always going to be happy, that you are going to have to be brutally honest with both yourself and your partner, and that you will sometimes learn things about yourself that you do not like.

It is literally sharing a life. If you are not good at sharing your toys, then you probably should not get into a relationship. Plain and simple.

However, along with sharing a life comes this AMAZING realization – you are sharing a life, you are ONE person, only together are you whole, and though you may not have been aware of it before, you are only a half – and like a puzzle, when together, the other part brings twice as much depth and meaning to both of you.

Love is passionate. and deep. and will drive you to do crazy things for each other. It is easy to get caught up in love and let it own you. Movies glorify this kind of love, and while this kind of love is intense, it is fleeting. It does not last. And when it passes, you are left empty, and either you seek out a new relationship or get angry at the one you have for not living up to what you thought it was going to be.

But loving a person, actually knowing all their faults, having sought out and being fully aware of everything that makes up their inner person, knowing the good and the bad, and still choosing to be with them – that’s love. That’s what you must have in order to experience the feeling of being one. And only when you can both love and be ‘in love’ with another human being can you ever know and feel what you were taught love was supposed to feel like in fairy tales…

As for my earlier essays, I still do not believe in “the one”. Though I consider myself an insanely lucky girl to have found the man I did, I know I cannot claim to never have found this in another human being. He fits me beautifully, and I feel that we are soulmates – but I do not believe that there could not have been another soulmate had I chosen a different path that didn't cross his.

Once again, I think it’s all about the choice. No one is ever going to fit that perfect ideal image of what we want in a future spouse. You can keep searching for forever, and yes, there is no way to deny the possibility of finding someone better than the person you have now. But is it worth it to willingly give up a good thing just on the chance something better comes along in the future? At some point, we all have to choose – we have to choose to commit, we have to choose to make it work.

But at the same time, it is one of, if not the, most important choices you can ever make. Choose wisely, Know what you are getting into. You will not change the person, you must accept them for who they are now, for those parts of them that will never change.

It still blows my mind that I have found the love that I have. I never thought I would. I always thought that I was destined to be one of those girls that stayed single forever. I always thought that the ideas of romance were beyond me and that I thought too much into things and was thereby incapable of love.

But I was wrong. And I’m so glad that I was.

I recommend this love thing to anyone – it has changed my life in so many ways and I wish everyone could experience this completely unexplainable joy.

I realize that I may just be naïve in everything that I am saying. I am only engaged to be married, I am not married yet. I do not have first-hand knowledge of what married life entails. But I have thought long and hard about it. And I am ready for whatever it may bring.

last updated:
5 /18/05