What is trust? What is love? What is it to be IN Love?
I’m no expert. It may seem that way to some but I’m not.
In the 17 years I have been with my dragon we have fallen in and out of love several times. Trust has been broken on both sides. Feeling have been hurt. We have both suffered heart break and heart ache. When others would have given up and divorced, we held on. In seemingly hopeless situations, we have persevered.
Determination, dedication and commitment.
This is why we are together and very much in love.
Determination to make it when times get hard. Our wedding vows we said all those years ago meant every to us. For better or for worse. No one told us how bad worse could get. No one told us how much love hurts. Yet every night we go to bed together. We sleep in the same bed, side by side. Rarely angry with each other. That is Determination.
Dedication. Life pulls us apart. His job, the kids, friends, hobbies. It only our dedication to making our marriage last, that keeps us together at times. It isn’t easy. Some times we get so close to saying, ENOUGH! But then we remember that word. Dedication. We are dedicated to our marriage. WE face the world TOGETHER! WE not me. Not you. WE are Wed. Forever. Till death do us part.
Commitment means that even when things get hard, we keep going. Falling asleep next to someone who has deeply hurt you is hard. Sharing that same bed night after night isn’t always easy. I think it one reason we are still together. Our refusal to let anger and hurt control our relationship.
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In those times we have fallen “out of love” we put the effort back into our relationship. We work hard to get back what we lost. Picnics, movie dates, rocking on the porch. How did we fall in love the first time? We remember and do it all over again.
I see people divorce after less than a year together. They practice what I call serial monogamy. Married time after time after time. There is no determination, only defeat. They are not dedicated to a life together. They are dedicated to their won selfish desires. I’m not even sure some of them realize that marriage is a lifetime commitment. They should understand what they are getting into but they don’t.
Marriage is the best decision I ever made. I go to sleep every night in the arms of my best friend. But…. It isn’t always easy. The road to ruin is a paved divided highway. The road to a lifetime relationship is narrow and treacherous. It is easy to fall in the valleys. It is easy to get lost. To stumble. It is inevitable. You will get hurt. However, if you are committed, you learn how to climb back up, you learn about forgiveness and unconditional love.
Love can be many things. It can be an energy, an emotion, an action. It can be a state of being. That gives us plenty to think and write about.
ReplyDeleteI think that there is a practical way of identifying love. Love means letting go of the rules and choosing what we think is best.
There are many rules and there are many demands on how we react to things. There are cultural rules and religious rules and even rules we just made up. There are plenty of shoulds and musts.
But, doing what we should do isn't loving in and of itself. It becomes loving when it's a choice. Things become a choice when we have more than one option and we consider what we're doing and select one of those. It is awareness that often broadens that choice.
Staying in a marriage because it's what we "should" do isn't loving. But finding our love for the other person and making a commitment to them, keeping that commitment to them, then that is love.
The great tools for attaining love are awareness, consciousness, and choice. These allow us to look beyond ourselves to see what would be good in a broader sense and to select that good when we might have automatically chosen something less.
And even in those cases where we end up doing what we would have done on automatic, if we do it by choice then we transform it from karma into love.
In those hard times, I had to look at the cost. Would leaving hurt more or staying? What about all the great years? What can we have if we stay together? What will we loose if we separate? The pro/con list was made and evaluated. Every time the pro list has been long, the con list has been short. We have a goal. Our 75th wedding anniversary. We have a long way to go but we are determined to get there.
ReplyDeleteLittle Missie,
ReplyDeleteThat thorough analysis suggests that you thought it through and made a conscious choice. I think you went in the right direction!
Awesome post! I feel the same. It's not easy but so many people quit when the going gets tough. Our marriage is all the more beautiful because of the bumps and valleys and the things we have worked through, always together. Always working at it because it's worth it. Never giving up on one another because we had a deep deep love for each other and we still do.
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