The following is the maiden entry in my now world famous blog 😎. However, for reasons unbeknownst to me, it had disappeared. Obviously, this can't stand, so I'm reposting it, with a few edits to tighten it up (or make it worse, depending how you look at it). The entry is important to me for both the message and circumstances that caused me to write it. Also, there are a number of other entries in my blog that refer back to this one.
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about love. We all want to love and be loved; anyone who claims they don’t is lying. Those three little words can so intoxicating to hear from someone you think hung the moon. But, do we really understand what it means to love someone? To me, it involves so much more than emotion. To me, love is a verb.
Emotion is the feeling that forms for those we feel very strongly about. It’s sort of the ‘secret sauce’ of a relationship and something that I’m not so arrogant to think I can tackle explaining. You can read one of the myriad of studies on the topic, should you wish to delve deeper into that particular facet.
Blah, blah, blah…tell me something I don’t know.
Okay, how about this? Love cannot be love without commitment, a conscious decision to consider the other person’s happiness and well-being as a priority in your actions.
Alongside commitment, comes sacrifice, because in order to place that priority on the other person’s well-being, it often requires you to give something up. For example, you don’t buy the Porsche so your wife will have the funds for grad school. You sacrifice willingly and happily for the other person.
The two components of emotional bond and commitment must total up to some value, which I won’t attempt to quantify here, in order for true love to exist. However, both must be present. This basic structure applies to all forms of love; romantic, familial, love of friends, etc. The ratios will fluctuate accordingly, depending upon the type of love.
I’m sure we all know a couple who’s been together forever and their entire lives revolve around each other. They've become so emotionally bonded, that they'd be lost without the other and their entire lives have been about making each other happy. What about some other examples? A mother loves her newborn baby more than life itself, but beyond the whole imprinting and chemical stuff, how much emotion could she really feel for a screaming, poop machine that won’t let her sleep? Yet, she sacrifices sleep, her social life, a healthy chunk of her income, and so on because of an unbreakable commitment to its well-being. I can't think of a more perfect example of love as a verb.
The genesis of this entry occurred about a month and a half after Sloan and I became a couple, when I told her I loved her for the first time. She took issue with my doing so, saying I didn't know her well enough to feel that way. I responded that love was a verb and I'd made a commitment to make her happiness a priority. I still live that commitment as much as I'm able, under the circumstances, as does she.
On the flip side, we have way too many members of our society who allow their emotions to run amok, fall for every person they sleep with, and call it love. But when loving that person becomes work and requires effort, they’re not quite as in love as they thought. The emotion may have been there, but the commitment was non-existent. And that’s one of the reasons our divorce rate is so damned high.
Fortunately, I’ve only experienced this with one woman I loved. She was all in for the lavish dinners, vacations, gifts, and attention heaped upon her. But, when our relationship required work (in this case, honest communication), she ran for the exit.
I’ve dated enough women to have heard every rationale known to man for their previous marriage ending. I can completely buy infidelity as a valid reason to walk away. Abuse, a no brainer. A marriage isn’t much good if one of the partners doesn’t honor their commitment to the other. But, there have been a few who have told me ‘I fell out of love with him’, to which I always ask how that occurred. Didn’t you try to work to save the marriage, particularly as it was beginning to falter? It’s caused a few less than pleasant moments when I’ve followed up with ‘what happens when our fairy tale ends? Would you fall out of love with me too? Should I just sign over half of my assets now?’ And, that tends to be my cue to exit.
Ordinarily, I'd continue to proselytize but I think the concept a basic one. Plus, there has apparently already been much written on the topic (which I looked into after writing my own piece) as well as a John Mayer song (also discovered after writing this).
Love isn't just something you feel, it's something you do, because love is a verb.
So, I end by asking my readers a question. Do you know how to love?
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