Love is not a Feeling

It’s crazy what our culture has done to the concept of marriage.

I get these young, doe-eyed girls who come up to me all full of hope, as if their life is dependent on my answer when they ask “so how’s married life?” And then I feel this social responsibility to say, “Oh it’s everything I’ve dreamed and more” because I don’t want to disappoint their eager, marriage-minded hearts.

Marriage is a funny thing. Throughout your life, you build up these fairytale expectations and hopes about marriage, and it’s not until you’re actually in a marriage that you realize “marriage is nothing like I thought it would be.” This is both disappointing and revolutionary.

I always wanted to be married. Throughout my entire life, I always longed for that intimacy with someone. I was one of those girls who thought I was going to marry every boyfriend I dated. (I’m sure my mom loved that).

I always put so much pressure on my relationships. Since I was so focused on marriage, I tended to make excuses or salvage a relationship that was going nowhere because I didn’t know if this would be my only chance to have a husband. After doing that in a toxic relationship that lasted a year and a half, I finally had to give up. Those extreme measures I had been taking were exhausting and incredibly unrewarding. I always got this advice of, “if it’s supposed to work out, it will. It will just be easy and you won’t have to worry about every little thing or justify the parts of your relationship that discourage you.” But after relationship after relationship, I didn’t think that advice was actually real. And then I met my husband.

He came into my life at a pivotal time. I had just gotten out of my previous relationship, and was trying to deal with the pain and trauma of the break up. I’m sure he wasn’t looking for a broken and battered girl with commitment issues, but that’s what he got. He crashed over me like a wave and showed me patience, kindness, loyalty, and true love. He led me with intention, pursued me with grace, and fought for me with persistence. He took my broken heart, my confused perception of relationships, and my insecurities, and he accepted them. He waited with me while I figured things out and looked at me with compassion when I didn’t know how to figure those things out. And then, on a seemingly ordinary day, he asked me the most important question I’ve ever been asked. A question that carried the weight of commitment. A question that meant he would continue to choose to be patient with me, to pursue me, to lead me, and to fight for me for the rest of our days. And in my answer, I made that commitment to him, too.

Now, we are married and trying to sift through this difficult and unpredictable life. We have learned a lot of things in the short time we’ve been married, but I think one of the main things that has spoken to us is the fact that love is a choice and an action, not a feeling. There are a lot of days where I don’t feel like loving my husband, where I don’t want to lay my life down for him, where I don’t want to give up my wants or desires for his. In these moments I’ve discovered that if love is a feeling, our marriage would never last.

Love is not a feeling. It’s a choice followed by an action. It’s a choice to look at this other person when they’re in the most unlovable state and say “I am going to choose to love you in this moment and act on that decision despite how I feel.”

We choose to love because we recognize that we, too, are loved. We recognize that when we were enemies and slanderers and haters of the one true God, that He chose to love us. We pour ourselves out because He poured Himself out on the cross for us while we were still sinners. We lay down our lives for our spouses because He laid down His life for us in the most painful and ridiculing way. We give because we’ve been given so much.

That is honestly the only reason I have that motivates me to love my husband when I don’t feel like it (and let’s be honest- there are a lot of times when I don’t feel like it).

And I think the most beautiful part of this choice is the fact that I don’t have to rely on my husband’s response to fill me when I pour my love out for him. Relying on the Lord to give me strength to love my husband ultimately results in me becoming completely filled and completely loved by my Father. This leaves me free to love, free to pursue, and free to lay down my life for my husband.

Marriage can be hard sometimes. The two of you come home from your jobs and you’re exhausted, you don’t have time or energy to engage each other in meaningful conversation, then since you’re so drained, you fall asleep on the couch, wake up the next day, and do it all over again. Marriage sometimes means days on end not fully engaging with each other or investing in one another. Marriage means sacrifice, and unselfishness. It means pressing into an argument even when you don’t want to. It means giving up your wants in order to serve your spouse and what he or she needs. But mostly, marriage means CHOOSING– choosing to fight against complacency, choosing to be loyal, choosing to press in, choosing to voice your hurts, choosing to LOVE.

Marriage is a beautiful adventure. Nothing compares to waking up next to your best friend every morning and going to bed with them every night. It is an absolute joy to do life with someone. To share your burdens and victories with one another, to know each other more intimately than anyone, and to be there with each other through good times and bad. To know that no matter what, you‘ll walk this life together.

And although it’s a paradox, it’s a remarkable thing to choose. I want to look at my husband at the end of our life together and say, “We fought for this. We chose love when we didn’t feel it. We pursued each other when we wanted to give up. We pressed in when we wanted to run away. And now look at us! We are at the end of our big, beautiful life, and we are filled with love and memories. I am so glad that we made the decision to choose.”