Think about the romantic relationships you see going on around you. The real ones, not the guff on TV soaps. How long do most of them last? Who ends them: the guy or the girl? Why do they end: unfaithfulness; boredom? And what about the successful relationships? Why do they last? How do the couples feel about one another? How do they deal with problems and arguments?

Anytime we find a statement about love, we need to understand what the person means by it. No-one seems to be taught that there is a world of difference between loving someone and being in love with someone. Most of us have to learn it through experience. Some of us never learn it. It is a Copernican difference: does the Earth orbit the sun – or does the sun orbit the Earth? It is the difference between you and me, between give and take, between sacrifice and selfishness.

Being in love with someone is a feeling; an involuntary reaction of mind and body. We see someone that we unconsciously think is our perfect match. Our biochemistry responds, making us feel like we’re walking on air. This feeling lasts for about one to two years; it ends after this because the brain can’t handle a constant output of endorphins.

What’s that, you say: being in love is just a chemical trip!? Yes, in part. As we grow up, we develop a picture of the ideal partner (perhaps without realising it). We imagine their physical appearance, their personality, and maybe other aspects to them. If we ever meet someone who fits our ideal, our brain sees and responds – it floods our nervous system with endorphins, chemicals that give us a pleasant feeling. (Chocolate and other substances cause our brain to do this as well.)

Building a relationship is like crossing a river. Being in love is like crossing the river in winter: the river freezes over and we can walk across. But when summer arrives, the ice turns back to liquid and won’t support our weight. The bridge of ice depends on the weather; but we need one that will withstand all seasons. We can use the ice bridge temporarily as we build one that’s more durable: made of wood, brick, or steel. Likewise, we can use the temporary foundation of being in love to build a lasting relationship based on respect, trust and friendship.

Loving someone is a voluntary act of mind and will. We choose to do what is for another person’s good, instead of what is easiest or more pleasurable for us. To love someone is to do what is best for them, at whatever the cost to ourself. General Lew Wallace (author of Ben Hur) said it well: “love, infinitely tender to its object, is equally capable of being infinitely tyrannical to itself.” This is why parents make their children exercise and eat vegetables – despite the kids’ outbursts: “You’re mean!” “I hate you!” “My real parents wouldn’t make me do that!” (Where do kids learn this emotional blackmail?)

“I love you” is a statement of choice and promise. To say those three words is to say, “When I have to choose between my desire and your best, I promise to choose the latter.” You may say, but what if my best is opposite to their best? When we’re in a relationship, what is for our best will be the same, even if we don’t like it at the time.

How do we know what’s for anyone’s best? There are some actions that are always for a person’s good: respect, truth, courtesy, mercy, and justice for example. The issue is usually not what we do but how we do it. One person prefers to be part of a team, another prefers a competitive environment.

Sometimes the choice might be obvious: we’re out with a friend who is a recovering alcoholic; so we choose to avoid going into a pub. In another situation we may not know precisely what is for a person’s best, but even if we’re mistaken, we’re still making the right essential choice: we put their needs before our wants. At another time, they might have to make that choice concerning us.

You might be getting the idea that love means sacrifice. It does. You might have the idea that sacrifice hurts. It does. If it didn’t, it wouldn’t be a sacrifice. But how much a sacrifice hurts depends on what we give up. Do we get rid of a favourite shirt, or of some extra weight, or our pride? Do we give up a hobby, or a job promotion, or our Sunday sleep-in? How much the sacrifice hurts depends on how much we value it, compared to how much we value the person we love [1].

If we want to be ‘in love’, we’re aiming for our own pleasure. If we seek to love, we’re seeking the best for the other person.

If you’ve ever been to a wedding in a church building, then odds are you’ve heard this quote from the Bible:

And now I will show you the most excellent way.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails.
(1 Corinthians 12:31 – 13: 8)

Being patient – with the beloved’s short-comings and failures: when the boy doesn’t put the toilet seat down; when the girl doesn’t tell you that the oil light has been on for a week; when the house-mate never does the dishes.

Being kind – not using sarcasm or emotional blackmail; not humiliating or embarrassing them. Kindness doesn’t use the other person’s weaknesses against them.

Not being jealous – there is a healthy jealousy, when you work to protect an exclusive relationship. But “bad” jealousy doesn’t allow the other person the freedom to do what they want to and talk to whom they want to. This type of jealousy won’t trust the other person to be faithful, so it will strive to control all aspects of the other person’s life.

Not being conceited: when a person believes themself to be superior, they belittle other people and treat them as of little or no importance.

Seeking the good of the beloved – giving the beloved what is best for them, not necessarily what they want: a compliment, or a rebuke; our time, our words, our silence, our presence. Note that “is good” does not necessarily mean “feels good” – look at children and vegetables: they think parents are mean for making them eat the horrid stuff, but years later they realise it’s for their good.

You’ll notice that nowhere does it say about what love should receive, expect or have a right to. Love is a one-way street. We’d all like love and being in love, the reality and the feeling, to go together. But there will be times when they don’t. It’s the choices we make at those times that we see our relationship for what it is: love, true love, or romance, a chance to build a more lasting relationship.

But wait – there’s more to be said. Also in the Bible, in the Old Testament no less, is a book dedicated to romance: The Song of Songs (a.k.a. The Song of Solomon). You’ll find it between the books of Proverbs and Isaiah. The lovers focus on each other’s physical beauty, and on the mystery of romance. (Now that we know why we fall in love, do you think that it takes away the wonder of the experience?) Compare it with the quote from the verses from 1 Corinthians.

And yes, the Song uses the word “love” about their romance but the book tells us about the experience of being in love; it isn’t an exploration of the semantic range of the word “love”. What a word means is affected by the context it’s used in. We can tell the difference between love for a person, a sport, and a food. But when “love” is used, referring either to romance or sacrifice, most of us can’t tell the difference. If we ever learn that difference, we learn it at someone’s cost: maybe ours, maybe another’s. I hope that reading these few pages is the only cost you’ll ever have to pay.

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Footnotes
[1] Love is an abstract noun: we can see it only in what people do. This “love” is a stative verb; that is, an action that is repeatedly so consistently that it is almost our default position, our habit.

copyright Troy Grisgonelle 2006.