We spent almost all of our first year together apart. This South African girl was stateside at college and her Midwest all-American guy was in Europe learning the ways of books older than either of us and cultures more ancient than the books.
I made a strange discovery in the midst of my missing him.
What I had felt at midnight under a cherry blossom tree on the capital mall; what I had felt walking home in a DC rain storm, sweating from the humidity, hand-in-hand; what I had felt over candles and chocolate mousse on board a Potomac river night; what I had felt when he first whispered the three most electrifying words in the English language – I love you – I couldn’t seem to access anymore.
Airmail arrived slowly; phone calls were few and far between, memories faded faster than the photographs I had. And it scared me. I knew I wanted to marry this boy with the green eyes and baseball-mitt-sized hands, but I didn’t feel it in the goose bump inducing way I used to on our first fourth of July.
So I called the man who had known me the longest. I called my dad.
I shared with him, half embarrassed, my discovery that what I knew and what I felt didn’t quite match up anymore. “Dad, I know I love Pete, and that I’m going to marry him. But I just don’t feel like I love him, you know? With him gone so long I can’t find the feeling anymore.”
I could hear my dad’s smile echoing through his words from all the way across the Atlantic, “Oh my darling, that’s because you’re confused. Love is not a feeling; it’s a choice.” And with those eight words he permanently changed the course of my and Pete’s future.
Over the next decade we would come to learn what he meant. How the feeling of love ebbs and flows, but the choice is what keeps a marriage in tact. How the romantic feeling is nice, but you need the discipline of the choice when faced with frustration, despair, and homesickness. With one of us always being away from family, home, culture and familiarity the choice became our anchor.
I loved Pete because I chose to and I chose to because I loved him. And walking in that truth I bumped smack into what Christ had been saying all along. Love is an action and a choice, often way before it is a feeling.
Love your enemy. Love your neighbor as yourself. Love one another as Christ loved us. Love protects, trusts, hopes, perseveres. Loves prays for those we may not like and who certainly don’t like us. Love chooses to go the extra mile.
Marriage is not for the feint of heart. Cross cultural marriage where one partner experiences the loss of identity in ways that run deeper than just a change of name, can be especially hard. There are a hundred every day ways that can chafe the feeling of love. Not being able to buy the toothpaste, make up, bread, clothes, or books in your own language that you are used to. Missing milestone moments or the chance for passing conversations after Sunday afternoon tea.
Knowing that your marriage is not dependent on your feelings is the only cement that will keep it together over the long haul.
And when a relationship is built on that kind of choice the feeling becomes a no brainer. It trickles down the spine from the head and spreads good old fashioned goose bumps wherever it goes. And we now see that as the reward of a choice hard won.
Thanks Dad.
Related posts:
{This post edited from the archives from a series I did sharing parts of the story that ended in our cross cultural marriage. You can read part 1 here and part 2 over here. Photos from Zoe’s Dedication and taken by the fabulous Natalie.}
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A postscript: I wouldn’t apply this kind of choice unless it was in the context of a loving marriage. Where abuse or other broken elements are present, very different choices would likely be necessary.
When people ask us about our 17 years, we say something very similar. It’s about the commitment, not the feelings. Feelings come and go, depending on stress levels, but the commitment remains. There have been times I’ve clung to the commitment and chosen to love and watched the feelings come back in waves. But, those feelings tend to not be like they were in the days of our youth…they’re not as breezy like the wind or emotional, but more like the ocean, deep and unyielding…tried and true.
Great advice from your dad!
~Kristin
My husband and I have actually been discussing the difference between love and commitment lately. There are moments i look at him and say “It’s a good thing I am committed”. LOL. (Most people say “you’re lucky I love you”)
I think it’s commitment that has kept us together all these years, because sometimes I don’t CHOOSE to love him, and at that point nothing but commitment holds us together.
Wow, great description of committed love. I used to look for the breezy love to return, which was sweet in it’s time. But now that I’ve experienced the ocean depths I’m thankful!
I love this! My husband and I dated for only a week before I had to go back to college, several states away. It only took a week to know that we belonged together, but the distance was hard for me. I felt EXACTLY the way you just described! But the knowing that we belonged together was so strong it couldn’t be denied. We joke that we practically had an arranged marriage… arranged by God. And I’m so very glad every day that I decided to trust God and listen to Him, even when I wasn’t feeling butterflies!
Oh how this touched me, Lisa-Jo! For marriage, and also for other relationships. I immediately thought of my father–who is countries away–and the father/daughter relationship we don’t have and the years of pain between us. I’ve been asking God lately about how to love my father when I don’t even know him. And God used you to light the *answer* for me. Such truth I’m clinging to today. Thank you.
And, as I thought of my relationship with my father, I also thought of your relationship with your own family countries away. You’ve been there and experienced their energy again. Your life (and theirs) will find its rhythm again with the distance in between. And still, you’ll CHOOSE to love.
{hugs…}
This is a great post and so true!
amen! we went to a wedding on saturday – love, love, love and romance, romance, romance. all good, but the wedding doesn’t make the marriage. i wrote a piece about it on monday – it’s called the 19-year list:
http://kendalprivette.blogspot.com/2011/07/19-year-list.html
“With one of us always being away from family, home, culture and familiarity the choice became our anchor.”
Ah, that line and so much more resonates with me in this post. Cross cultural marriage definitely adds its own challenges, struggles, and moments of needing to cling to the choice, amidst all the homesickness and longing that come.
Thanks for this post, such an encouragement to me.
Yes. I am from the US and married a Kiwi. How foolish I was to think that because we spoke the same language ( albeit I don’t speak the Queen’s English LOL) that there is great cultural differences between us. By God’s grace we are working it out! :)
strong post!! thank you for the reminder.
A to the Men.
Wise man, your dad. The Truth he shared does make ALL the difference. We choose to Love. That’s the grown-up version of the “feeling” love. It’s what sticks when the rubber meets the road. I am so thankful for my precious husband who truly Loves me! :)
Amen, sister! If more people understood this, think of what it would do for the divorce rate.
You have a great perspective. I had a friend as me if I believed in love at first sight yesterday. I wanted to say exactly what you said in this post, love is more than a feeling. Thanks. :)
Best advice I was given as well. So counter-culture, and so necessary.
We have learned to think of our marraige as a whole entity apart from ourselves, our feelings, and the circumstances surrounding it. It is made up of the parts that my husband and I give to it. When those frustrating moments come (and we survived more than a few of those yesterday with my dear, darling mother-in-law in residence :) it is our commitment to that entity-that whole made up of our parts that is apart from ourselves, and without which neither of us feels whole…the marraige of our lives-that keeps the smiles and giggles coming. Your dad is a wise, wise man and you are a smart girl to have listened to him. Love is an act of the will, same as accepting salvation, offering forgiveness and speaking with honesty and living with integrity and being a person of honor and acting with dignity and courage…all of those things are things we choose to have and partake of.
I totally believe this with my whole heart. In fact, I’ve been blogging about my own love story for the last little while and I had written the very sentiment – Love is a choice – in one of the parts that is yet to be published yet. I think I’ll link back to this post for the explanation of what I mean as it was more of a comment in passing and I didn’t expand on the concept at all. But I love what you have written here!
YES! And in a marriage, it’s a choice that never stops saying “Yes,” because our Covenant God never stopped saying “Yes” to loving us.
Beautiful reminder of an essential marriage truth, Lisa-Jo! Having married at 20-years-old, my husband and I clung to that commitment as the cycle of our marriage took its upturns and downturns. We have weathered many storms by remaining committed to one another, even when the feelings weren’t there.
Such a wonderful reminder of what commitment to a marriage really means! The world tells us all about the hearts and flowers and tingly feelings, but the quieter beauty of choosing to love someone every day and to cling to that relationship is something more people need to know.
As an aside, since my husband was born an American citizen, most people don’t realize how cross-cultural our marriage really is. He’s an MK and grew up attending public school in another country, never living in the US until he was 19 and came here to go to college. So, I find the cross-cultural references in your blog really interesting because I know my husband and I have gone through a lot of the same things.
Amy
makingajoyfulhome.blogspot.com
True that, there must be something to hold on when our feelings are turned upside down, something strong and more reliable than butterflies in our stomach, something like… willingness, reason and love – there, hidden in the depths of our heart, even when our brain can’t seem to find it.
Great post!
Your dad is a wise, wise man. I tell myself that all the time. I choose to love my man every day. And yes – I *still* get those little shivers when he touches me. When he kisses me or holds me, I want to simply melt. But that choice is what makes the “love shivers” reactivate, so to speak. My man deployed for a year to Iraq shortly after we made our dating “official.” We didn’t actually say the words until after he left, but it was in our actions toward one another before then. I *so* know how you felt because I struggled too. I struggled with my missing him, and the “shivers” that I got before he left, disappearing. Thank you for validating what I’ve known for quite some time – it’s nice to hear someone else say it! Blessings on you and Pete – your example is amazing. :-)
“Love without reason lasts the longest.” has been one of my favorite quotes for years now. It started out as a way for me to understand unconditional love and grew into understanding that if I didn’t love a person for a reason, then I could choose to love them anytime and every day.
Sounds like you have a wise father, Lisa Jo.
Beautiful! Thanks for sharing…blessings to you and your family!
Amen and amen. If it weren’t for that choice, made again and again during the nearly two years my husband and I have spent apart in the past three years, I don’t know where we’d be right now. But we certainly wouldn’t be here, in the depths of a love we couldn’t even have imagined.
Wow! This is a really really good post. Yes, that is something I have been learning and experiencing a lot this year. Love IS a choice. And it is NOT an emotion. Though true love does bring the emotions along…they’re just not always as strong. Anyways, thanks for sharing!
So much truth in this.. love is a choice.. your father has so much wisdom. My husband and I are about to start helping out at the Marriage Preparation programme in our church. After 21 years of marriage, some of the truths we now we wish we’d started off with.. including this one.
Thank you for sharing this.. its one of the things we plan on sharing with young couples preparing for marriage.
I love love love this post. Your father sounds like a wise man, I will be keeping what he said about love in the back of my mind. It really is a choice. Thanks for sharing!
What a smart Dad – and daughter, to listen to him! :-) My Dad taught me much the same and I’m glad I learned this lesson. Somedays, love is more of a choice than others but it is much better to make this choice daily with my wonderful husband than to lose “that lovin’ feeling.”