This is a guest post from my dear friend.
I'm a ridiculous, emotional, over-sentimental sap. I guess that's why I answered my husband on our third date. After four months of dating, we were engaged. Three months after that, we were married.
Marriage, quicker than I was ready for, did this thing: It started sucking away that emotion. How can you feel it when you get into an argument? How can you feel it when you think it makes perfect sense to put your socks on the floor after you're done with them? There was no way I could keep that dating fire burning as practicality invaded our lives. And at first, it drove me nuts. That emotion meant love. It took me longer than I care to admit to understand what was happening. But eventually it became clear. Through giving, through doing things for my husband, the emotion that I had been so desperately seeking naturally came about. It wasn't something I could force, just something that would come about as a result of my giving. In other words, it was in the practicality that I found the love I was looking for. And what was even more interesting was that once I realized this on a conscious level, and started trying to find more opportunities to give, the more we both, almost intuitively, became lovey-dovey. And now, as I'm a bit older and a bit more experienced with this relationship, I've finally come to realize something. Something I haven't wanted to admit for a long time, but is undeniable. I didn't love my husband when we got married. I didn't love him when we got engaged. Because love isn't an emotion. That fire I felt, it was simply that: emotional fire. From the excitement of dating a man I felt like I could marry. But it wasn't love. No, love isn't an emotion or even a noun. It's a verb. Better defined as giving. As putting someone else's needs above your own. Why wasn't I getting reciprocal lovey-doveyness when we were first married? Because it wasn't for him. It was for me. An emotion I had in my chest. And even when I let it out of my chest, it wasn't love. Being sappy isn't love. Telling someone you love them doesn't mean that you do. And that's why my husband just gave me that half-smile. She knew, even if I didn't, what love really is. And now that I've tried to change the way I look at love, the more I become shocked at the messages of love I had gotten when I was younger. From Disney movies, to my favorite shows to practically every love song released, love is constantly sold as an emotion we have before we're married. An emotion that, once had, somehow magically stays within a marriage forever.
I can't imagine a bigger lie. And I'm saddened to think about how much those messages bounced around in my head for so long. And how much I'm sure those messages are bouncing around in other people's heads as well. I think that might be a big part of the reason the annulment/divorce rate is so high. Imagine a whole nation of people constantly chasing the emotions they had when they were dating. A country of people trying to live a Disney movie. That's a recipe for disastrous marriages; for a country with a 50 percent annulment/divorce rate; for adultery (the classic attempt to turn the fire back on); for people who do stay together to simply live functional, loveless marriages. It's sad to see just how common all the above is. How many people are in pain simply because they've been lied to? Those people deserve better. We all deserve better. It's time that we changed the conversation about love. It's time that we redefine it. Because until we do, adultery will continue to be common. Loveless marriages. Annulment/Divorce. Living Disney movies in our minds, and tragedies in our lives.
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