We hear it all the time nowadays, “I can’t help who I love. Love isn’t a choice.” To many, love is a feeling; a haze so to speak. Love is viewed as a state, as something that just “happens” to people. Walk around, meet enough people, do the right things, smile at the right people, and suddenly, you will run into “The One.” You’ll feel warm and fuzzy around them. You’ll be happy around them, joyful even. They will be your best friend, and you will want to do anything for them. Your heart will beat quickly.You won’t want to take your eyes off of them.
Sounds pretty wonderful, no?
Ladies and gentleman, what I just described in the previous paragraph is not love. The fuzzy feeling, the quick heartbeats, the googly eyes, that is not love, that is attraction. Attraction can certainly be a part of Love, it can help us to love, but for some reason there is a misconception going around these days that you cannot choose who you love. That, for some reason, despite the free will that you clearly have, you are predestined to love a certain person regardless of what you do or say. Not only is this idea dehumanizing as it denies the very part of you that differentiates you from a monkey, but it also equates to the the complete opposite of what love actually is. St. Pope John Paul II, in his book “Love and Responsibility”, stated that our, “capacity for love depends on [our] willingness consciously to seek a good together with others, and to subordinate [ourselves] to that good for the sake of others, or to others for the sake of that good.“ What does this mean? It means that love is a choice.
Love is when you choose, willfully, to help someone in need. Love is when you choose, willfully, to work together with someone. Love is when you choose, willfully, to fight alongside your fellow countryman to protect your country. Love is when you choose, willfully, to exercise patience with that one annoying friend you have. Love is when you choose, willfully, to be kind to the class bully. Love is when you choose, willfully, to continue to submit yourself to the wellbeing of a friend, despite the pain they have put you through in the past. Love is a choice.
Not only is it a choice, but it is also not limited to that one person that you eventually choose to marry. Love is not an end all thing. Just because you love someone, does not mean you must marry them. In fact, by the very definition of love, you love every single person that you ever worked for a common good with. If you’ve ever worked on a school project with other students, you loved those students by working with them, by submitting your time, effort, and maybe even tears, to that project, to that good. In fact, it is in this light only that we can make any proper sense of the phrase that “love is not a prerequisite for marriage.”
I was shocked when I was first told that love was not a prerequisite for marriage. As I was told this at a young age and had never really experienced real attraction, my understanding of love had not been changed by society, so I only understood love insofar as my parents showed their love for me by the ways that they cared for me. For many years, I struggled with that fact. Until I grew up and experienced attraction. Then it all made sense to a certain extent, but I could never understand why the love between a husband in wife was any different than the love that I had for my parents. It was, after all, called the same thing, so why did one entail fuzzy feelings and kisses in the moonlight, while the other only meant I had to clean my room.
That dilemma puzzled me for a greater portion of my (relatively young) life, until I read that quote from St. Pope John Paul II, and it all made sense. You see, when people say that “love is not a prerequisite for marriage,” what they really mean is that “attraction is not a prerequisite for marriage.” Love, as defined above, however, must be present for a marriage. In marriage, you are quite literally submitting yourself to another person for the sake of a common good between the two of you (procreation hopefully EDIT: and the mutual betterment of you and your spouse).
Even though attraction is often a great factor in any marriage, ultimately, it is the love that carries the marriage. It is the willingness to submit oneself to the covenant that was made. It is the willingness to look past the faults of one’s spouse, and help them to become a better person. It is the willingness to die to oneself daily for the sake of one’s spouse and one’s family.
When viewed from this perspective, love becomes almost simple. Instead of this haze, this indescribable feeling, love becomes concrete. Instead of wondering whether someone has the “loving feeling” we can simply look at the actions of that person, how willing that person is to jointly submit themselves to a common good. Instead of wondering whether we “love” someone, we can simply acknowledge whether we are willing to submit ourselves to a common good with that person. Instead of worrying over whether someone “loves” us or not, we can take solace in the fact that their actions speak of that love, and concentrate on preparing ourselves for the future, concentrate on improving ourselves, and at the same time, submitting ourselves to the well being of that other person, thereby clearly showing our love for them.
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