What is Love?

What is Love? What kind of love does it take to actually marry someone and stay married? I've never thought romantic love is sufficient, and I firmly believe the kind of love it takes is a choice, not an emotion, though the emotional part is certainly helpful.

The only really successful marriages I've seen are lighter on the romantic ooshey-gooshey feelings and way heavy on the mutual submission and seeking the good of the other person over one's own good. There has to be a certain amount of romance, though; there's no denying that. But that can't be the only thing that brings the two of you together.

A friend of mine is concerned about my thoughts that I will never experience love. And another friend is concerned about how negative I view myself (though that's changing--my view of myself, not his concern). As far as love goes, for me to experience love (according to Chapman's The Five Love Languages), I really need words of encouragement. That's what it would take for me to make a real emotional connection that I am loved. Guess how often that happens. If someone says something to me once a year that's truly encouraging, well, that's an utterly amazing time for me.

But this is not the norm for relating with people. We are not normally encouraging to someone else. So, that doesn't leave me in a good position to feeling and experiencing love in any meaningful or fulfilling way. For me, love is truly a logical proposition: people act in ways toward me that I know is an indicator that they love me in the ways that they can demonstrate; therefore, I know people love me. It doesn't fill Chapman's so-called "love tank", but it's the best I can get. Can this ever change? Sure. Will it? I can't say. But I can't expect it to, as that would require me to think people will suddenly start acting contrary to human nature, and that will invariably lead to repeated let-downs. And I can't go looking for these words of encouragement, either, because there's nothing genuine about it. Oh, the sentiment might be genuine when expressed, but it has so much to do with the other person's desire to express those things on their own, not at my urging.

The optimist says, "People will start telling me how great I am any moment now." The pessimist says, "No one will ever tell me I'm worth anything." The realist says, "I can accept when people compliment and encourage me, but I dont' need them to tell me that." Granted, I've been much more toward the pessimist side of things in recent times, but that has more to do with wondering what my purpose in life is and seeing that I haven't lived up to much of anything.

Anyway, the relation to romantic love? If I'm resigned that human nature will not support me in any meaningful or fulfilling way, what hope can I have that someone will choose to have any kind of romantic inclination toward me? I'm not saying it can't happen, but the likelihood of it happening? The proverbial snowball apparently have a great deal in common.