Love and Marriage

Love means trying.

I believe that most people buy into the myth propagated by the film industry and romance writers that love is free.  It comes as a life-long gift, welcome without a lot of thought or effort.  Oh yes there are the trials of all romance novels but that is just for the sake of a riveting story line/  You meet a beautiful person and “fall into love.”  The two then ride off on a steed (or VW Beetle) into the sunset. It is an emotional scene but one removed from reality.

Closer to the truth is that boy meets girl, falls in lust (generally assumed to be love) and begets children. She wakes up one morning to find that he is monster and he loses the sense of thrill that he knew when he first met her on a steamy date. Troubles begin now because initial expectations were too many and too high.  Real love is not like that.

Love means trying.

Love means waking up with the baby at midnight. It is listening to the screams of the pains of labor and weeping at the sight of the tiny miracle. It is handholding when all your friends disappear, after all everything changes when you are part of a dyad. It is enduring the great fights intimacy. And surviving.

The creation of love is realized after laughing hysterically until tears roll down your cheeks and crying until the heart nearly spills on the body because of the deep anguish. Nobody can hurt us like the people who love us.  No one could. By definition, the people who love us most hurt us the most. After all, if someone unknown insults us that is hurtful but when our love is in jeopardy or our soulmate causes us pain that cuts down to the marrow.

Move is working progress. From what little I know, and less that I understand, of the business world, to make money one needs to invest great amounts of energy.   We place our whole self into work in order to become successful. If that is true to make a buck, doesn’t it make sense that we must work tirelessly at love that stays with us and will buffet us when we are bleeding?  No friend we’ll stand by us like they will.   Lose a soulmate a lot more has been lost than an ephemeral profit margin.

I am truly amazed that so many people expect so much from, free. It is not free. For the sake of love we always must be willing to give more than we get.

If, after a hard day, I come home angry and brooding I expect my spouse to be there with the comforting word and soothing touch.   I want her to act the part of my mother, easing the furrows my brow.  But who is to say that she has not had a more difficult day for me? Unknown.

There is such a thing is bliss. Eden really exists.   But it can only be located after much effort and hard work. I’ve seen many couples well into their senior years still in love.  I ask them, “What is your secret?”  The answer, “a willingness to contribute daily to the basket of love.”

A blessing that I offer each couple that stand under the Huppah, “May you grow old together.” 

That means giving every day, every moment.