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| top A journal of commentary, narrative and poetry about navigating through life
June 28, 2003
This Quieter Love
Falling in love does not require a great deal of self discipline and rigorous focus; it is committed, long-term love that does. Surely one of the more significant and challenging endeavors in our lives is to develop and sustain thoughtful, committed, and meaningful love relationships. If all the treatises that addressed this subject were laid end-to-end, I am sure they would circle the earth several times. There are innumerable seminars, books, marriage camps, counselors, and experts who promote all types of theories and philosophies regarding how to have successful relationships and marriages. These offerings are well balanced by a never ending supply of movies and books that seem to assert (explicitly or implicitly) that falling in love and sex are what a love relationship is mostly about.
Now I am not going to tell you at this point that I am uninterested in a satisfying sexual relationship as part of a loving marriage; far from it! But it is only one element, and it influences and is influenced by many other elements in a larger relational system. It is like a single musician in a symphony orchestra which is composed of many musicians, all who have individual instruments and parts. Each one must listen carefully to harmonize and work with the others in order to make music that moves the heart and satisfies the soul. Just like these musicians, it takes time, practice, careful listening, skill improvement, and long-term commitment to cause a relationship between two people to truly come together and work.
Over time all love relationships have periods of interaction that range from joyful, fulfilling and intimate; to discordant, painful and distant. All of these relational phases can work together for our individual good and the good of the relationship, if we are listening—listening to each other, the voice of God and our own honest internal voice. In fact, during the moments of pain and the times when we are most uncomfortable we often encounter the most valuable and significant opportunities for growth.
But in order to receive the collateral rewards of the growth derived from struggle and pain, it is necessary for us to stay open and receptive and to continue in the relationship (this means continuing to keep an open heart, not just remaining in the same geographic proximity to the other person). Let me be the first to say, this is not a natural or pleasant thing to do. However, cutting off a relationship because we are having periods of difficulty is a bit like moving from Washington to Oregon because we find we have developed cancer; it is very likely that we will carry the disease and pain with us when we move and that the new geography will not remedy the illness.
I firmly believe that we were created and designed to have satisfying, loving, marriage relationships and it is that belief (and learning from past experience) that causes me to reject the idea of “moving” to gain relief from any accompanying periods of relational struggle; far better to learn to harmonize and create music in the company of someone who knows and loves me, than to take unresolved issues, struggles and pain to the next "state."
In his book Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis ably addresses the issue of the fuel on which the engine of a successful marriage and love relationship runs. Here is an excerpt:
“Love, as distinct from ‘being in love,’ is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other; as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself. They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be ‘in love’ with someone else. ‘Being in love’ first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it.”
(Mere Christianity, bk. III, chap. 6) I leave you with this last thought drawn from a trustworthy sourceľthe Designer and Creator of our body, soul and spirit, and a worthy model for all relationships: "Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things..." (1 Cor. 13:4-7)
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